Crushing Burdens of Material Culture

Abstract

The illegal trade in endangered species stands as one of the great shames of our age. Alongside human trafficking and the drug trade, these practices operate in the shadows of civil society, permissioned by the affluent as a supply chain practice that profiteers on loss and human suffering. The guest editors of this issue approached our journal two years ago with the vision for focusing on the persistent trade in elephant ivory and how museums can be part of a productive dialogue that can ensure the survival of elephants. We were pleased to see this effort use material culture and history as a call to action for the entire sector. It's now been twenty-one years since I was a curator for the Lilah Callen Holden Elephant Museum, a micro-museum at the Oregon Zoo dedicated to the history of elephants. That zoo was renowned as the home of the first surviving elephant birth in a zoo in 1962. Now, as editor of this journal, I'm once again reading about the global debate surrounding the international ban on elephant ivory and museum management of the assets that represent our material culture. Today, the Oregon Zoo has closed the Holden museum, but during its revival in the mid-1990s, we mounted an exhibition to celebrate the lore of elephant entanglement in human culture, and to examine the plight of the species as its habitats were being destroyed and lives taken to support an illegal but flourishing trade in ivory. While our mission was noble, the community passion about elephants led to a collection most notable for the volume of elephant eared tea cosies and US election ephemera accessioned into the collection to appease donors before a collections policy was developed. We were also the recipients of an enormous collection in confiscated ivory given to us in trust by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Customs for use in our education programs. The government had entrusted our museum to dissuade the public from buying ivory products while traveling abroad. The ivory trinkets we held represented a range of commodities, from cheap souvenirs to elaborately carved full tusks depicting life in the African sub-continent where elephants are found. As a curator, however, it was clear that none of this stuff was museum worthy. Its provenance was suspect, most of the craftsmanship lacked distinction. The vast majority smacked of a rough assembly line production of souvenirs that could have likely been better manufactured in cast resin. We had become guardians of more tchotchkes than could be used for any educational purpose and likely would have been discarded by any interior designer given the chance to fix up someone's curio cabinet. These were not art; they were cheap mass-produced impulse items. They did not speak to the story of society through our material culture other than demonstrating how affluent cultures seek to redeem their guilt by representing cultural history as savage and primitive. Elephant ivory trinkets crushed as part of a public program to draw attention to the illegal ivory trade, June 19, 2015. Photo Julie Larsen Maher courtesy WCS. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] We hope this issue will advance the professional dialogue around how we display the products from art history. These articles and reviews give context to ivory not only as an object grounded in the disciplines of art, history, and scientific research, but also on a continuum that directly links these objects through cultural, historical, archival, and conservation perspectives to the moral challenges we face as a planet witnessing the sixth great extinction. Museums have an obligation to reconsider the role ivory plays in their collections and exhibits in the face of this global issue. The ivory crisis provides an unprecedented opportunity for museums; few materials have been so universal in their scope and relevance. In many museums, the collection includes ivory products that have historical, artistic, and educational significance that museums might wish to protect. The story of the object, whether ornamented with elephant ivory or fully made from the material, puts museums in a position to activate dialogue about our moral responsibility to safeguard future global biodiversity. Museums have an obligation to reconsider the role ivory plays in their collections and exhibits in the face of this global issue. We hope this issue of Curator provides scholars with an essential grounding in contemporary approaches and look forward to how others will build on this scholarly work.