The DOMVS Almanac issue #5_Winter 2022

Crossings:
Community
& Refuge
Shire Hall, Dorchester hosts a
British Museum Spotlight Loan
A highlight of the year, Shire Hall is delighted to host a
British Museum Spotlight Loan ‘Crossings: Community
and Refuge’. Opened on Friday 2nd December, this
exhibition engages audiences in questions of identity,
belonging and sharing our world.
A Grade I Listed building, Shire Hall was Dorset’s centre
of justice from 1797 until 1955. Now an award-winning
social justice museum, Shire Hall brings over 200 years
of justice and injustice to life.
Shire Hall Museum is the final venue on this UK-wide
tour from the British Museum, the first time the
‘Lampedusa Cross’ has been displayed across the
country. Made from the remnants of a boat carrying
refugees wrecked near the Italian island of Lampedusa,
close to the coast of Tunisia, the cross carries poignant
messages about kindness, community and the
indifference faced by many refugees.
Alongside the cross will be a display of twelve tiny boats
from Syrian-born Issam Kourbaj’s series ‘Dark Water,
Burning World’ (pictured above), made from repurposed
bicycle mudguards tightly packed with burnt matches to
represent the fragile vessels used by refugees to make
their perilous voyages across the Mediterranean.
Jill Cook, Curator at the British Museum, says: “The
Lampedusa Cross reminds us of all the histories that
are lost and of the thousands of people who are not
otherwise remembered. The wood, with its paint
blistered by the sun and smelling of salt, sea, and
suffering, embodies a crisis of our times, as well as hope.
The cross invites discussion of the varied reactions to
13