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- Convenors:
-
Caroline Cornish
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
Catherine Nichols (Loyola University Chicago)
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- Stream:
- Archives and Museums
- Sessions:
- Thursday 17 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This session considers the role of transatlantic mobilities - of people, objects and ideas - in anthropological museum contexts in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Approaching the museum as a site of convergence, it considers practices of collecting, knowledge production and dissemination.
Long Abstract:
Museums have been conceptualized as relational, "multi-sited, multi-authored, emergent entities" (Gosden and Larsen 2007). They are both sites and contexts where objects, people, and ideas converge and transverse. Museums, and their close relatives, worlds' fairs, may be considered the primary sites for the collection of anthropological objects, and for knowledge production and dissemination in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. The same period saw the rise of transatlantic exchanges between North America and Europe, through the embodied mobility of anthropologists, anthropological objects, texts, and displays.
This session focuses on transatlantic mobilities that characterize the convergences of objects, people, and ideas occurring in anthropological museum contexts, as well as those influenced by museum institutions. Proposals for papers which address a range of themes are welcomed, of which some examples are: technological, economic and geopolitical contingencies; the practices and mechanisms of mobility; transatlantic social networks; spatial, cognitive, aesthetic, material and affective dimensions of knowledge transfer; object biographies; exchange agents and local relations; audience reception; actors and institutions; the limits of mobility; the legacy of museum anthropology and anthropological museums. Key questions might include: to what extent did international museums shape local practices of anthropological collecting and knowledge production? What was the nature of the connections between individual museums and their agents in a transatlantic context? How do these formations continue to impact museum and disciplinary practice?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 17 September, 2020, -Brooke Penaloza-Patzak (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
Bringing considerations from natural history to bear on the transnational institutionalization of anthropology, this paper explores the development and spread of the geographic provinces concept via, among others, correspondence, museum-based collections training, and object exchanges.
Paper long abstract:
In 1886 Adolf Bastian, first director of the Royal Ethnological Museum in Berlin, published Zur Lehre von den Geographischen Provinzen (on the doctrine of geographic provinces). Therein he argued that geographic provinces, which he defined as comprising the transformative interplay between mental milieu (resulting from, for example historical migration) and physical environment (topographic, climatic, etc.), should serve as the basic unit of anthropological analysis. That same year, Bastian's museum re-opened in a dedicated building. Physically and conceptually freed from the general collections, and therewith the ostensible constraints of natural history, the museum provided favorable conditions for the large-scale realization of geographic provinces as an organizing principle for display. By the early 1890s, geographic provinces had become the customary unit of anthropological analysis and display throughout the German speaking lands and much of continental Europe, and by no later than 1900 had likewise gained traction in the United Kingdom and United States of America. Bringing considerations from the earth sciences and natural history to bear on transnational tensions in the institutionalization of anthropology, this paper explores the early development and spread of the geographic provinces concept via publications, correspondence, museum-based training in and work with ethnographic collections, and object exchanges.
Catherine Nichols (Loyola University Chicago)
Paper short abstract:
As specimen exchange between French museums and the Smithsonian Institution increased in the nineteenth century, this paper consider the role of exchange agent John Durand, whose letters allow for a more nuanced understanding of the contexts of anthropological specimen mobilities via exchange.
Paper long abstract:
As natural and cultural objects flooded into the US National Museum (USNM) over the latter half of the nineteenth century, Smithsonian Institution administrators implemented a system of specimen exchange, especially with European museums, in order to diversify and refine their collections. Transatlantic exchange negotiations were oftentimes conducted through epistolary means, and delayed post resulted in communication lags. Forwarding agents in major European cities were instrumental to the success of publications exchange but these agents functioned more as centralized clearinghouses for national scientific establishments, specializing in international shipping and local distribution. The Smithsonian developed a relationship with art critic John Durand, who spent much of his later life in Paris, and worked on behalf of the Smithsonian to negotiate exchanges in France.
This paper considers the relationship between Durand and Smithsonian administrators, particularly USNM Director George Brown Goode. Exchange correspondence ranges from 1883 to 1896 and addresses the broad internal dynamics of Smithsonian collecting and exchange priorities, as well logistical, personal, and financial particularities. These letters offer a richness of historical detail so often omitted from official exchange correspondence, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the contexts of anthropological specimen mobilities via exchange in the late nineteenth century. This relationship also reveals internal dynamics at the USNM within the anthropology department, as Goode's influence in exchanges and collections development was gradually leveled with that of ethnology curator Otis Mason. Durand's role in exchanges calls attention to the role of intermediaries and acts of brokerage within transatlantic museum exchange networks.
Caroline Cornish (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
Philadelphia Commercial Museum enjoyed international prominence in its heyday(1893-1926) but in 2020 awareness of it is low even in its native city. This paper considers museum objects exchanged between the Museum and Kew Gardens as vestiges of the Museum's transactions with European institutions.
Paper long abstract:
The Philadelphia Commercial Museum has been described as 'a commercial empire given material form' (Stephen Conn). Arising out of the 1893 World's Columbia Exhibition in Chicago, it was envisioned by its founder, William Wilson, as a national resource for the furtherance of international trade. As such it formed part of a movement towards commercial or trade museums which was evident in Europe from the 1840s, including Kew's Museum of Economic Botany (1847-1987) in London. Opening its doors to the public in 1897 the Philadelphia Commercial Museum enjoyed international prominence until Wilson's death in 1926. Thereafter it fell into decline - a number of factors can be identified - and its buildings were razed in 1994.
Sources for the Museum are to be found in the photographic record, archives in Philadelphia and abroad, and in the residual objects, which can be located in collections on both sides of the Atlantic. This paper uses the case of objects exchanged between Kew and Philadelphia to interrogate the nature of transatlantic museum transactions in the late 19th and early 20th century and to examine the differing ways trade was both represented and promoted within and beyond the space of the museum.
Christopher Martin
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores transatlantic connections at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery to demonstrate how local museums shaped wider collecting practices and affected knowledge production on a local, national, and international scale.
Paper long abstract:
Networks of transatlantic knowledge production have been dominated by national and international museums, whose acquisition and display of ethnological objects drives public perceptions of Indigenous lifeways and worldviews. Parallel to these narratives are the quieter, often overlooked dialogues between local museums, their agents, and diverse stakeholders; influenced by but not beholden to the practices of large institutions. By focusing on the biographies of a collection of Pacific Northwest American objects at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, this paper explores how a local Antiquarian Society was responsible for the formation of a unique collection that influenced, and was influenced by, transatlantic knowledge production. It argues that local relations in the Pacific Northwest during the late eighteenth century directly affected subsequent engagements, siting the Perth Museum at the centre of anthropological collecting in the region. With individual relationships underpinning all collecting endeavours, from planned assemblages to ad-hoc collections, local museums can serve as both a microcosm of international museum practices and a subversion of expected narratives. The Perth Museum's changing relationship with Pacific Northwest collections from the early eighteenth to late twentieth century demonstrates how agents involved in the lives of these objects created a unique foundation of knowledge that continues to impact how the museum operates today. Exploring the narrative divergences in this collection allows for a greater appreciation of the influence of collecting on actors in Perth and Canada alike, and observe how individual biographies affect the mechanisms of knowledge production in museum spaces.
Paula Mota Santos (Universidade Fernando Pessoa and Universidade de Lisboa, Centro de Administração de Políticas Públicas ISCSPuniversidade de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
The core transatlantic mobility under analysis are the osteological remains of the first African sla-ves in Portuguese soil, discovered in 2009, and the way the museum-like practices relate to them in two exhibitions: one in 2010 and the other in 2016. Questions on the role of representation has in not only speaking, but in doing will be addressed.
Paper long abstract:
Lagos is a city on the southern coast of Portugal that played a major role in the early stages of the country’s maritime expansion and ensuing colonial empire. It was to Lagos that the first Por-tuguese ships carrying African slaves arrived. Today, Lagos is a major international tourist center to which visitors are drawn by its surrounding coastline. In 2009, as a result of the continuous in-crease in tourism, a car park was built on the outer perimeter of the old city walls. During the construction, the remains what proved to be over 100 African slaves dated to the fif-teenth/sixteenth century were found. This presentation analyses the non-memorialization of the actual burial site and contrasts it with the 2010 and the 2017 exhibitions on the archaeological finds (the first) and on slavery (the second) organized by the Lagos City Council.
The core transatlantic mobility under analysis are the osteological remains of the African individu-als who died as slaves in Portuguese soil and the way the museum-like practices differently rela-te to them in the two exhibitions: by putting them on actual display in 2010, to have their electro-nic image being part of the multimedia game-like forms of the visitor accessing knowledge in 2016. Questions on the changes in the museum-like practices in these two exhibitions and the role of representation has in not only speaking, but in doing will be addressed.