New exhibition at Dover Museum explores disability through history

A new immersive exhibition At The End of History explores stories of disabled people from Dover’s past.  

Located at the Dover Museum and Bronze Age Boat Gallery, the exhibition has been created as part of the ‘Curating Visibility’ project and features an innovatively designed Virtual Reality (VR) headset piece that includes accessibility for visually impaired users. The piece explores a dystopian near future where only disability history collections remain. 

At The End of History has been curated by Curating Visibility Fellow, Karl Anthony Mercer, and co-produced with a community of eight disabled people from Dover and the surrounding area. 

It’s in a gallery which features three cases where the stories are all related to people with disabilities: one explores the stories of channel swimmers Bill Stein and Gertrude Ederle, while another reflects two stories from the early-to-mid 19th century, focusing on smuggler James Bushell and botanical author and illustrator Anne Pratt. The third case looks at medieval pilgrimage and the search for a cure or relief from illness or disability.  

A multi-sensory, tactile collage named ‘About Us’ jointly produced by the Dover Museum team and the co-production group is also on display. The gallery space, and pieces within, have all been carefully designed to incorporate accessibility features in a natural way – creating an experience that is enhanced for everyone. 

Curating Visibility is an England wide work placement programme, employing disabled curators to explore museum collections to ensure disability stories from history are being identified and told by people with lived experience of disability today. To do this, curators work with groups of local disabled people, exploring the stories together.  

The Curating Visibility Project is funded by Arts Council England and is part of Screen South’s Accentuate programme, which creates and delivers projects that break new ground for Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in the cultural sector. The VR piece was developed by BrightBlack – experts in immersive playable exhibitions, in collaboration with Karl Mercer, the co-producers, and consultants Harshadha Balasubramanian and Ria Patel.

The exhibition opens to the public on Monday 20 October and will be available to visit until 26 January 2026. The VR experience must be booked in advance. At other times, a video of the VR piece (a video playthrough) will be viewable in the gallery. 

Karl Mercer, Curating Visibility Fellow at Dover Museum and Bronze Age Boat Gallery, said: “It has been an honour to work with local residents to put together this innovative and groundbreaking project.  I hope that the stories we explore, and immersion offered by VR, can change people’s perceptions about disabled people – both in the past and today. 

“At The End of History challenges the idea of disabled people as figures of either pity or inspiration, as is so often the presentation. Instead, it perceives disabled heritage as innately valuable, and focuses on the universal themes, the complexity and nuance, of disabled lives and how disabled people interact with the societies around them”. 

Esther Fox, Head of the Accentuate Programme, said: “Curating Visibility is designed to ensure deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people influence all areas of museum work; from researching and uncovering collections to telling stories about disability heritage in new authentic ways. We believe disabled people have a huge amount to offer museums and Karl’s project and work has demonstrated that. At The End of History is new and thought provoking and importantly, different lived experiences, including of being blind and deaf, have driven innovation to create a piece of VR which is more meaningful and engaging for everyone.”