Memorial ACTe — Attraction in Pointe-à-Pitre

This museum is so disappointing. They translate to English incorrectly and offensively. I was shocked that they translated to the N word instead of negro. I checked with several French and English speakers too after I saw it. They also kept saying the word “deportation” of slaves which didn’t correctly articulate slavery. Don’t they have scholars who speak French and English well enough to know the difference?

The museum starts with false equivalencies about slavery in the Bible, Ancient Greece and China. Again, these historical facts don’t correlate to systematic nature of a slavery and it almost seems like the museum is saying it was just part of the economy?? There is bunch of details on Europeans “discovering” the land and a strange pirate exhibit. There is a strange cartoon room with four cartoon videos about the day in the life of a slave. The videos don’t mention anything about the horrors or suffering endured.

The museum is just constantly contradicting itself saying that all these bad things are over but not taking about the present day impact or continuation in the form of structural racism. The museum mentions so much about South Africa, the USA, and Haiti but so little about all the people who fought for their freedom in Guadeloupe and there is no tribute to all the notable Black people in Guadeloupe who contributed to the islands (food, music, culture).

The building is so beautiful, and there are a few good exhibits like the tree exhibition representing left behind belongings enslaved Africans could not take with them. But overall this museum ignores the terrible impact of slavery on every generation of those who descended from slaves. Truly a missed opportunity.

There was also a rude employee who insisted that I ignored the directions about needing a euro to use the locker. I was not given those instructions. I rolled my eyes at the situation, not at her, but before I could clarify she started going on about not using the instructions when the situation is not even so consequential. There are some reviews here about other people encountering a rude employee, that needs to change.

If you go, my advice is go on a weekday when there are less people. If you ever visit Washington, DC, the National Museum of African American History and Culture does a good job of telling the history of slavery up to modern notable Black figures in the US. I just wish the people of Guadeloupe were offered the same respect about...

A powerful and hard hitting museum, let down by a poor audio system. The museum features mainly video and audio exhibits. There are some physical exhibits with French language only descriptions. The audio relies on a headset which can be set up to work in a variety of languages. This headset automatically detects which exhibit you are standing near and plays you the appropriate audio, although frequently it gets it wrong, and either plays nothing, or plays the previous or next recording. Sometimes there is also interference so the audio quality is poor. Some of the audio clips are in French only, with no English translation, and some are music/atmosphere only. They also synchronise with videos which are playing on the many TV screens, however this often means when you join an audio file it is half way through, meaning you hear the end of the clip, before hearing the beginning to give it context. Once or twice this would be ok, but this happened to almost every sound clip. It did seem like they ran out of content/money half way through as the beginning of the museum was full of information and detail, and the end was just vibes. Big queues outside to get in, as each group moves through the museum at roughly the speed of the audio, they let in ~20 people every 20 minutes. We joined the queue at 13:45 and waited for 1 hour 20 minutes. The queue is under cover from the rain, but not air...

The three stars, instead of the five that the displays and experience of this museum actually deserve, are based on an afternoon visit. Do yourself a favor and go in the morning. The museum closes at 6pm. We arrived at 2:45 thinking that we would have plenty of time. We waited in line outside for two hours and then got kicked out of the museum after only one hour inside. You need two hours to see the entire museum.

If you go in the morning and don't get kicked out, you will almost certainly have a five star experience. The displays are very well done and powerful. The synchronous group concept is really neat as well but we were confused for the first few stations because we didn't realize that the audio would sync up with the first person to...