The Collector's Unconscious: Innocence and Culpability in Field Research

Abstract

During February of 1987 the National Museum of Mali in Bamako and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA began a collaborative project to study and document social institutions that support weaving and associated technologies in Mali, and to collect examples of locally-produced textiles for each of the two museums. Claude Daniel Ardouin, Director of the National Museum of Mali until 1987, defined a textiles collection project as part of what he conceived to be the National Museum's mandate to protect Mali's cultural heritage, a heritage in which the production of textiles plays a significant role. Ardouin quite literally reinvented Mali's National Museum as an actively archival institution, believing it to be essential and instrumental in conserving the country's rich artistic traditions. Toward this end, in 1986 Ardouin and Philip L. Ravenhill, then Director of the West African Museums Project, began discussions with Doran H. Ross, Deputy Director of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, about collaborative, long-term research. Resources and expenses would be shared, resulting in a mutually enriching collaboration.Early 1987 marked the first field season of the partnership that developed out of that early meeting. By 1991, under the joint auspices of Ross and Samuel Sidibe, present Director of the National Museum of Mali, the collaboration had completed the projected five field seasons of textiles documentation and collection covering five regions of Mali. This paper addresses some practical aspects of this extended, institutionally sponsored, collaborative fieldwork. It also discusses the collaborative project under the sometimes harsh light of postcolonial self-examination.