Colonial Museum Research Articles

Fitting the colonial museum dashboard? Civic action, curatorial agency and identity building at the Auckland Museum (1852–1929)

ABSTRACT John MacKenzie in his Museums and Empire (2010) sets out an evolutionary framework of museum development in the British settler colonies. The formation years of the Auckland Museum in New Zealand both align and misalign with this progressive imperial model. In contrast to the establishment of the first Australian museums, which were essentially state sponsored enterprises, the Auckland Museum experience of the second half of the nineteenth century is one of curatorial agency, civic action and identity building in New Zealand's second capital city. In addition, the tentative reciprocal relationships with Māori in the rapid growth of the indigenous cultural collections are a defining feature of this phase of intensive acquisition and expansion. Imperial aspirations only came with WW1 when the future Auckland Museum was re-imagined as being ‘essential to complete the equipment of men and women who are to lead the work of progressive civilisation' and a new museum architecture of Empire was conceived. Whilst referencing the prevailing museological framework for the study of early museums in British settler colonies, this article concentrates less on the theory of Empire and more on local biography, collecting impulses and archival histories of the Auckland Museum during its formative years, now one of New Zealand’s most extensive cultural assets.

From histories of museums to museum history: approaches to historicising colonial museums in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Despite their reputation for stasis and fixity, museums are about change and transformation. What can we learn from the history of New Zealand museums about the study of museum history? This article considers the lessons we can glean from New Zealand museums in the colonial period. It surveys recent theories about history, social change and museums, including historical sociology, which throw much light on this topic and open up new future paths to explore. The aim is not the compiling of an institutional history but to propose a refined analytical framework for museum history which can deal with the constant change which characterises the history of museums. It argues that we need to move beyond both the conventional idea of a linear history, and also the reliance on commemoration, in order to do ‘museum history', rather than just ‘histories of museums’. This approach is explicitly interdisciplinary, explores historical and theoretical perspectives on museums, and considers their implications for current museum practice. By historicising museums, both their internal practices and their external social relations, we may move beyond the commemorative histories of museums to develop a critical museum history. This new museum history needs to interrogate the past, not describe, commemorate and celebrate it.

The Africa Museum of Tervuren, Belgium: The Reopening of “The Last Colonial Museum in the World”, Issues on Decolonization and Repatriation

The Africa Museum in Tervuren, Brussels, reopened its doors after a closure of five years. What precisely is on view in the refurbished museum? And how do the choices made by the museum relate to wider discussions in anthropology and museology on decolonization and repatriation? In Belgium, it seems, working towards cooperation between all parties involved is far from finished.

The Museum as Rift Zone – The Construction and Representation of “East” and “Central” Africa in the (Belgian) Congo Museum/Royal Museum for Central Africa

Abstract:This article discusses how the (post)colonial museum in Tervuren helped to create an artificial separation between “East” and “Central” Africa on both sides of Lake Tanganyika, while in reality this was and still is a zone of encounter. The exclusion of the “Arab” was twofold. First, East African objects were not exhibited. Second, “Eastern” material culture that was collected in Central Africa, became represented as imported traces of “barbary,” only highlighting the “civilizing mission” of European colonization.

A Tale of Two Façades: Archaeology and the Secularization of an Islamic Past

This article examines how certain forms of preservation work to recast the past in rigid terms of secular and religious. Focusing on a series of early Islamic period sites in the Levant, collectively known as the Umayyad qusūr (sometimes referred to as “desert palaces”), this essay traces the ways in which scholars signal the realms of the secular through interpretation of architectonics and iconography. This process of secularization is then further advanced through practices of preservation and display within colonial and nationalist museum contexts on a grand scale. At stake are ethical claims about the value of religion, specifically Islam, in larger discourses of culture and civilization. The paper explores the role played by these approaches to the material past of the early Islamic world for how they perform and police the boundaries of religious and secular materiality.

Temporality and Universalism in the Contemporary Ethnographic Museum: Two Collection Presentations at the Tropenmuseum

The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam is currently in a process of making innovative changes to its displays. The museum aims to critically engage with its own past and simultaneously be an inclusive platform for reimagining the future. Especially for an ethnographic institution like the Tropenmuseum, these are complex tasks. The museum was founded in 1864 as the Koloniaal Museum (Colonial Museum) in Haarlem. In the first half of the twentieth century, the institute’s main purpose became to collect, categorize, and display products and cultures from the colonies, establishing a Dutch national identity and expressing cultural dominance and superiority over the country’s colonies. These colonial foundations still manifest themselves in the institute’s collection, as well as in the imposing architecture of the building that has housed the museum since 1923, determining the institute’s conditions of existence in the present.

식민지 박물관의 역사 만들기 : 조선총독부박물관 상설전시의 변천

This study reconstructed the change of the permanent exhibitions of the Museum of Japanese Government-General of Korea and examined how the colonial museum represented the history through the display. <BR> First, new research material, 『Joseonseohwagogimulmoglog(The List of Paintings and Calligraphic works and Antiques in Joseon)』 that could restore the first permanent exhibition in 1915 and the exhibitions until 1918 was introduced. In the first permanent exhibition of 1915 when the museum opened, the exhibits were displayed according to the material of the artifacts and a history reference gallery was established with a new concept. As the excavated artifacts were increased, the ancient history gallery was installed in 1921, and finally the exhibition according to period division of colonial history was completed in 1926.<BR> It has undergone a gradational and dynamic process based on the accumulation of colonial history studies by Japanese scholars and the expansion of the museum collections. In this process, the representation of colonialism through the display by the colonial museum has been advanced more sophisticatedly. In addition, the exhibitions of the Museum of Japanese Government-General of Korea established the gallery of historical reference in 1915 and the exhibitions according to historical periods in 1921 and 1926 under the influence of the Tokyo Imperial Museum in Japan.<BR> In the exhibitions, the colonial museum was constantly pursuing the representation of the colonial view of history to make the colonial people aware of the heteronomy and the backwardness of the history of Joseon.

L’artiste contemporain dans les musées d’ethnographie ou la « promesse » d’un commissariat engagé

For over three decades, ethnographic museums have been engaged in a process of redefining both their missions and their collections. Forced to reinvent themselves, as well as develop exhibition strategies in response to post-colonial theory, many of these museums have adopted a self-critical attitude and invited artists to intervene in their collections. What do such practices reveal ? When artists turn their attention to the collecting, archiving, and exhibition practices of colonial museums, does it follow that their approach is more engaged ? By considering the first exhibitions of this kind, while also tracing the evolution of this phenomenon since the 1980s, this paper seeks to respond to these questions. It also strives to understand the specific nature of critical curating as it is practiced in museums that are, more than any others, loci for identity politics.

For Science, Salvage, and State: Papua New Guinea’s Earliest Colonial Museums

ABSTRACTIn recent years, growing attention has been paid to the complex relationship between museums, collecting and colonialism in the Southwest Pacific. This paper contributes to this wider body of research by presenting a baseline study of Papua New Guinea’s two earliest museums: an Economic Museum built in 1907 and an Anthropology Museum initiated in 1907, but not built until 1914. Both museums were financed and run by government departments within the newly established Australian Territory of Papua. Both were imbricated in contemporary colonial agendas aimed at mapping, classifying and, ultimately, exploiting the natural and human resources of the colony. However, their histories also reveal significant differences in the personal and political agendas of their respective founders, Miles ‘Staniforth’ Smith and Hubert Murray, who in 1907 were in direct competition for the position of inaugural lieutenant-governor of the Territory. In the internecine rivalries of the day their respective museums provided each of them with a platform to publically demonstrate his aptitude and vision for governing the new colony.

The Colonial Museum of Marseille

The Colonial Museum of Marseille

A palace as legacy: The former French colonial museum – perspectives from the inside

The Musée des Colonies was founded in 1931 in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, built for the Colonial Exhibition in Paris. Over the century, the lasting nature of the architecture has stood in counterpoint to the changing orientations of the museum as an institution, from arts to immigration. To what extent does the building continue to bear the stamp of its origins? Is a reversal of colonial material culture possible? This ethnography provides accounts of institutional discourses and employees’ memories collected by the authors, who have been conducting fieldwork on the site for 15 years. In focusing on permanent material culture (the building housing the museum) rather than on the circulation and changing status of collections, the authors provide an original take on colonial remains in France. They also set milestones on the specificities of permanency and monumentality in material culture approaches.

The Genealogy of Colonial Plunder and Erasure – Israel's Control over Palestinian Archives

ABSTRACTThe essay discusses one characteristic of colonial archives – how the ruling state plunders/loots the colonized’ archives and treasures and controls them in its colonial archives - erasing them from the public sphere by repressive means, censors and restricts their exposure and use, alters their original identity, regulates their contents and subjugates them to colonizer’s laws, rules and terminology. It focuses on two archives plundered by Israel in Beirut in 1980s: the Palestine Research Center and archive of Palestinian films. The essay continues my earlier research on Palestinian visual (and other) archives taken as booty or looted by pre-state Jewish military organizations and soldiers or civilians in the first half of the twentieth century, especially during the Nakba (the Palestinian catastrophe, 1948), and later by Israel’s military bodies. It analyzes the plunder itself while focusing on the power relations reflected toward the hybrid gazes of the colonizer and the colonized and discusses colonial features of military archives holding and controlling seized materials. While colonial museums have been largely discussed, and also archives holding colonial history, this is one of the first essays to discuss features of colonial archives holding plundered archives/material.

Conceptualising Intanigble Heritage in the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam: The Layla and Majnun story as a case study

The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, was founded as a colonial museum in the 19th century in which experts ('outsiders') presented their view of other cultures. In the 20th century the Netherlands became a multicultural society. As a result, the museum had to redefine its function in society. In an attempt to rethink the relation between the content of its exhibitions and its audience, the Tropenmuseum refurbished all the museum galleries between 1990 and 2008. During the refurbishment the museum started to experiment with intangible heritage for which the story of Layla and Majnun was chosen as a case study. The museum collected four separate contemporary cultural expressions of the story, accompanied by audiovisual recordings of performances. The experiment was so succesful that it functioned as a catalyst for the final refurbished gallery, entitled Travelling Tales, which is entirely devoted to intangible heritage. Based on research into the Layla and Majnun collection, I argue that the voices and views of the artists mirror the manifold perspectives that people have to various forms of intangible and tangible culture. The presentation of this multitude of views in the exhibition reflects the complexity of identification processes and therefore goes beyond notions of 'self' and 'other'. In this respect, the Tropenmuseum functions as a forum where various opinions meet and as a space for intercultural encounters.

Botany, GIS and archives combine to assess the provenance of historical Kakapo study-skins stuffed with New Zealand bryophytes

Museum specimens are a portal to the past, offering unique opportunities for improving knowledge of endangered species and the practices of past scientists. The Macleay Museum holds twelve Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus) skins received in 1877 from Sir James Hector of the New Zealand Colonial Museum. Unfortunately beyond this, the provenance of the Macleay Kakapo is unknown, limiting their value. Somewhat unusually, the 140 year-old skins are stuffed with bryophytes. Here we attempt to resolve where the Macleay Kakapo were collected by synthesising distributional data for the mosses and liverworts with which the Kakapo are stuffed with archival evidence. We developed the hypothesis that Dr Hector himself may have collected the birds in Fiordland. Our study demonstrates that through careful examination, ornithologists can learn more about specimen history, and potentially solve the common unknown provenance problem of 19th Century museum bird specimens.

Contemporary Artists on Colonial Museums.

Ethnological museums are not only where objects from primitive societies are exhibited, but also creators of categories, parameters and models of behaviour and understanding of the world in relation to such societies. The objects collected in colonial expeditions slowly began a process of reformulation in the twentieth century, which was the century of contemporary art museums and the aestheticization of objects to which we nowadays refer as «primitive art». Ethnological museums held great appeal for artists throughout the twentieth century. Firstly, it was there that the avant-garde got to know and came to appreciate the works of primitive art which would have such an influence on the formulation of Modernism. Later, ethnological museums prompted artists to reflect upon and develop the principles on the basis of which western society has confronted the Other, the relationship between western culture and non-western cultures. That is the case of Hannah Hoch, Candida Hofer and Bertrand Lavier.

Sydney Street West: a first place for science in Wellington

ABSTRACTThe Colonial Museum accommodated geological work and a small Colonial Laboratory adjacent was used for analytical chemistry in Sydney Street West from 1865. A larger Colonial Laboratory was built in 1905, from which activities soon expanded into the neighbouring ‘Vaccine Station’ and ‘Museum House’. The establishment of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in 1926 and the extension of Bowen Street in the 1930s prompted the acquisition of residential properties built by Walter Godfrey Mantell (the son of scientist and politician Walter Baldock Durrant Mantell) and other neighbouring houses for scientific purposes. DSIR divisions decamped in the 1950s and 1960s, and the buildings were demolished, replaced by high-rise offices and a motorway overbridge.

Book review: &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;James Hector. Explorer, Scientist, Leader&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;

This book is by a prominent New Zealand geologist and science historian about one of the leading 19th century scientists, James Hector (1834–1907). His influence on New Zealand’s science in the second half of the century was so dominant that one science historian called this period “Hector hegemony”. But contrary to his contemporary, the German-born scientist Julius Haast, the full story of Hector’s achievements for New Zealand’s science had never been told and his name survived mainly in connection with the Hector dolphin, an endangered endemic species that he was the first to describe. But as of now, Nathan’s book will fill this gap. This is a well written, aptly designed and richly illustrated chronological biography of Hector’s life and work. It is remarkable how many details were unearthed from a large number of archives and libraries and especially from the letters Hector exchanged with friends and colleagues, mostly with Julius Haast, director of the Canterbury Museum at Christchurch, and Joseph Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, UK; Nathan had previously edited the correspondence of Hector and Haast and a bibliography of Hector’s publications prior to the book under review (Nathan et al., 2012, 2015). James Hector was born in Edinburgh; he graduated from his home university in 1856 as a doctor of medicine and developed a strong interest in geology, biology and tramping. Consequently, his first involvement in a major scientific exploration led him to Western Canada, where he joined an expedition into the Canadian Rockies with the aim of finding a suitable pass for the railway to connect the western Prairies with the Pacific. The pass discovered by this expedition is still in use; its name “Kicking Horse Pass” recalls an incident which almost cost Hector his life. His reputation as a keen and successful explorer reached the distant colony of New Zealand. In the 1860s, the Otago Provincial Council at Dunedin initiated a geological survey of the province with the aim of detecting new mineral and coal deposits and a suitable route linking the province of Otago to the remote west coast. Hector was appointed as government scientist and arrived in Dunedin in 1862. After an effective exploration on land and sea he served as one of the curators for the New Zealand Exhibition in Dunedin in 1865. In the same year, he arrived in Wellington as a government employee. Nathan’s book marks the 150th anniversary of Hector’s appointment as New Zealand’s first government scientist, the year when the seat of government was moved from Auckland to Wellington. From this year on, Hector was the great organiser of New Zealand’s science. At first he was involved in the foundation of a colonial museum, the forerunner of Te Papa, which is now New Zealand’s National Museum; he organised the central New Zealand Institute, which included the publication of the annual and influential Transactions and Proceedings. He masterminded the first comprehensive New Zealand Geological Survey (now GNS Science), which resulted in the publication of the first Geological Map of New Zealand. Hector also became the conductor and supervisor of the Colonial Botanical Gardens, the Colonial Observatory and was director of the meteorological stations. He used the expanding telegraph network to establish a nationwide recording system for the location and intensity of earthquakes. Hector was a foundation member of the Council and Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, and he was knighted in 1887. All these and a number of various other achievements are the topic of separate chapters in Nathan’s book, and they underline the outstanding importance of a scientist whom a newspaper once called “a man who knows everything” (p. 12).

Historiography and Museography in the Colonial Museum of Bogotá (1999-2012)

&lt;p&gt;The Colonial Museum of Bogotá was recently closed due to a series of works of restoration in the building and a complete renewal of its curatorship. This fact invites us to look over the work that has been done before, articularly because during the last decade this institution became a research center where historians, conservators, and artists worked together. When one went through each of the exhibition rooms that were opened to the public between 2005 and 2012, it was evident how different historiographical perspectives had influenced the way in which the art works were classified and exhibited. The diverse points of view of Colombian historians to colonial art and culture during the last ten years have determined changes in the curatorial processes that one should examine in order to better understand the historiographical perspectives that were dominant during those years. Not only could we take a journey from iconography to anthropology, but we could also see the tensions between social history, cultural history, and postcolonial studies that have taken place in the museum. This produces an interesting phenomenon: the exhibition space was transformed into a thinking space. With this in mind, the following article has two main purposes: First, to present different historiographical approaches and their influence on Museography during those years; and second, to explain how curatorship has become a medium to criticize different discourses around both colonial art and culture in Colombia.&lt;/p&gt;

Colonial museums in the US (un)translated

This paper examines the role of museums in the creation of anglophone stories in the USA, and how the (non-)translation of signs contributes to create a narrative of exclusion vis-à-vis other groups, notably native Americans, the Spanish, and the French. Particular attention is paid to open-air museums that preserve old buildings and areas reminiscent of the colonial past. The analysis will rely on the concept of ‘knower,’ a term referring to those in charge of selecting and arranging the information that accompanies the exhibits, and ‘propaganda,’ as used by Stanard in his study of the official discourse used to justify the Belgian empire. The article also draws on Kress and van Leeuwen's model for the analysis of multimodal texts.

Australian Museums, Aboriginal Skeletal Remains, and the Imagining of Human Evolutionary History, c. 1860-1914

Much has been written about how progress to nationhood in British colonial settler societies was imagined to depend on safeguarding the biological integrity of an evolutionarily advanced citizenry. There is also a growing body of scholarship on how the collecting and exhibition of indigenous ethnological material and bodily remains by colonial museums underscored the evolutionary distance between indigenes and settlers. This article explores in contextual detail several Australian museums between 1860 and 1914, in particular the Australian Museum in Sydney, the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, and the Victorian Museum in Melbourne, in which the collecting, interpretation and exhibition of the Aboriginal Australian bodily dead by staff and associated scientists served to imagine human evolutionary history.