(NYTIMES) As part of the discussion over racism that followed the police killing of Mr George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, museums have asserted solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and begun to rethink and recast how they portray history. Among them is a museum dedicated to writer Jane Austen in the English village of Chawton, where she lived from 1809 until her death in 1817 at age 41.

This month, the museum, Jane Austen's House, touched a nerve when its director said that it would include details about Austen and her family's ties to the slave trade, including the fact that her father was a trustee of a sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua.