Gallery aims to reclaim narrative with its racist ‘casta’ paintings

Curator of new show tackles racial stereotyping using depictions of scenes of colonial life in the Caribbean and South AmericaExploring Leicester Museum & Art Gallery 12 years ago, trainee curator Tara Munroe came across a stack of discarded oil paintings. The troubling scenes they portrayed would go on to change the direction of her career and may soon alter wider attitudes to art history.The paintings depicted wealthy colonial life in South America and the Caribbean, and had been marked fo