Since 1940, the Château Royal in Blois has had in its storerooms a set of 53 busts cast from former African captives, mostly enslaved on Mauritius island. The collection was brought together on the island in 1846 by Eugène de Froberville in the context of his “ethnographic study” of East Africa.
The exhibition “Faces of Ancestors. The Froberville Collection Returns to Mauritius” for the first time presents the collection, placed in its context thanks to a number of original documents. An exceptional testimony of the history of slavery, the exhibition, organised by the town council of Blois, has been devised by the administrators of the Château Royal in Blois and by Klara Boyer-Rossol, historian and the scientific curator of the event. The exhibition is organised in partnership with The Intercontinental Slavery Museum of Port-Louis (Mauritius island), and the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery.
The aim of the exhibition is to give a voice to the persons whose busts were cast, to cast a new light on the busts, freed from “racial science” and, on the contrary, to focus on the culture, experience and accounts of each person. Historical research has made it possible to identify the busts and partly trace the life stories of the individuals whose busts were cast. The exhibition is also a preliminary stage in the departure of the Froberville collection for Mauritius island, where it will be conserved at the Intercontinental Slavery Museum in Port Louis as from 2025.
