Exhibiting Agendas: Anthropology at the Redpath Museum (1882-99)

Abstract

Abstract: McGill University's Redpath Museum is considered here for its significance as a site of Canadian scientific endearour and a natural history museum of national importance, which devoted a small but prominent gallery to displays of archaeological and ethnological objects. A closer examination of collections and museological practice at the Redpath Museum during the closing decades of the 19th century may serve to illuminate factors influencing the advent of professional anthropology in Canada, typically submerged in the wake of presentist interpretations of the discipline's past.Resume: Nous analysons ici le musee Redpath de l'universite McGill en fonction de sa place comme lieu d'un effort scientifique canadien et comme musee d'histoire naturelie d'importance mondiale, puisqu'il a consacre une galerie exigue mais importante a l'exposition d'objets archeologiques et ethnologiques. Un examen attentif des collections et de la pratique museologique au musee Redpath durant les dernieres decades du XIXe siecle peut servir a faire ressortir les facteurs qui ont influence l'emergence de l'anthropologie professionnelle au Canada, essentiellement souraise a la mode des interpretations > du passe de la discipline.IntroductionJohn William Dawson (1820-99), geologist and prominent Canadian educator, was responsible for the natural history collections and displays at the Redpath Museum. He also had an interest in prehistory and devoted a small exhibit area (92.9 m[Symbol Not Transcribed]) to displays of cultural material (Redpath Museum, 1882; 1885). Although Dawson's involvement in the development of Canadian anthropology was tangential at best, his influence on scientific education in Victorian Canada was great, as was his belief in the pedagogical value of museums.(f.2)In later years, cultural materials at the Redpath were combined with other McGill collections including artifacts from the Montreal Natural History Society rounded in 1827. The university established a separate Ethnological Museum in 1926, but this museum was closed in the 1940s and most of its contents were put into storage. The Redpath resumed its status as a teaching and research museum in 1970 and all of McGill's non-Canadian ethnology collections were incorporated into the Redpath's holdings. At the same time, the McCord Museum became the depository for the university's First Nations collections and those relating to Canada's domestic history. The Redpath's Ethnology collections now comprise close to 17 000 ethnological and archaeological objects with particular concentrations from central Africa, Oceania and ancient Egypt. For a detailed discussion of the history of the collection, see Lawson (1994: 21-40).The Redpath Museum is considered here for its significance as a site of Canadian scientific endeavour and a natural history museum of national importance, which devoted a small but prominent gallery to displays of archaeological and ethnological objects. A closer examination of collections and museological practice at the Redpath Museum may serve to illuminate factors influencing the advent of professional anthropology in Canada, typically submerged in the wake of presentist interpretations of the discipline's past.As a natural history museum, the Redpath's historical connection to the development of anthropology is significant. Nationalistic ventures and economic expansion in the 19th century facilitated Western contact with a variety of unfamiliar regions and peoples and brought museums forth as centres for public entertainment and education. The same historical processes were responsible for the emergence of anthropology as a distinct discipline from its natural science roots (see Gruber, 1970 and Stocking, 1987). Museums were the showcases of Victorian science and anthropologists were anxious to share in the prestige accorded the popular museum sciences of zoology, botany, and geology (Van Keuren, 1989: 32). …