Theory versus practice in the duplicate selections from the British New Guinea Official collection

Abstract

Reconstructing the concepts and methods used to select objects from the British New Guinea Official collection at the Queensland Museum for exchange with other museums exposes intriguing differences between theory and practice that shed light on how ethnographic material was valued at this specific time and place. The large scale of the Official collection coupled with a lack of storage space had a major effect on how Charles de Vis, curator at the Queensland Museum, identified supposedly ‘duplicate’ material for distribution to the British Museum, the Queensland Museum and two additional museums in the Australian colonies. Although his relationships with curators at two of the museums probably had a minor influence on his selections, the bulk of the objects was chosen from categories with the largest number of specimens. Multiple copies of undecorated forms that de Vis had registered sequentially were also targeted, especially in cases where the original uses by the source communities were obscure to the curator. Although the concept of ‘uniqueness,’ probably influenced by concepts derived from biological taxonomy, guided how de Vis made his choices, the logistical demands of curating such a large collection had the most impact on the duplicate selection.