UWI Museum

Carolyn Chan grew up knowing the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies as her backyard. She considers herself a ‘West Road-ian’, having literally been born at #2 West Road when her father, Wilfred Chan, was in the Chemistry Department of the UWI Mona Campus. But the family also lived for some years at College Common, the other major housing area on the campus, where the Vice-Chancellor, professors, lecturers and senior administrators lived and where their children remember the 1960s and early 1970s as a time of freedom to roam and grow.

What is it that helps ground us in our cultures? Any answer would include histories, stories told across generations, natural specimens, and artifacts – meaningful works shaped by people – that we can relate to with a sense of belonging, wonder or curiosity. Yet the illicit traffic in historic cultural property is leaching that away and it has become a matter of serious concern in the Caribbean as in many other areas with far higher profiles.