Private Collections Research Articles

AMSD: The Australian Message Stick Database.

Message sticks are wooden objects once widely used in Indigenous Australia for facilitating important long-distance communications. Within this tradition an individual wishing to send a message would carve a stick and apply conventional symbols to its surface. The stick was entrusted to a messenger who carried the object into the territory of another community together with a memorised oral statement. Between the 1880s and the 1910s, settlers and international scholars took great interest in message sticks and this was reflected in efforts to document, collect and store them in museums worldwide. However, by this period, the practice was already undergoing profound changes, having been abandoned in many parts of the continent and transformed in others. While message sticks were still being used in a traditional way in Western Arnhem Land up until at least the late 1970s, today they feature in public interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations, in art production and in oral narrations. Accordingly many questions concerning the history, pragmatics and global significance of message stick communication remain unanswered. To address this we have compiled the Australian Message Stick Database, a new resource hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and The Australian National University, Canberra. It contains images and data for over 1500 individual message sticks sourced from museums, and supplemented with information derived from published and unpublished manuscripts, private collections, and from field recordings involving contemporary Indigenous consultants. For the first time, knowledge about Australian message sticks can be evaluated as a single set allowing scholars and Traditional Owners to explore previously intractable questions about their histories, meanings and purposes.

Эволюция роли библиотеки в контексте сохранения национальных языков

<p>The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of the library institution in the preservation, dissemination and development of national languages. The author attempted a retrospective, comparative, axiological analysis of changes in the image of the library in accordance with the cultural characteristics of different eras. The main attention was aimed at identifying the linguistic and cultural features of library texts. It has been revealed and substantiated that in the ancient East the library served as a sacralized archive of texts mainly in the ancient Sumerian and Assyrian languages. Linguistic texts of ancient Eastern libraries connected sacred meanings and everyday life. In antiquity, lively dialogue and the dialectical development of thought came to the fore, so the library became a place for debate. The libraries of Alexandria, Pergamon, and private collections contained scrolls in different languages, but many of them were professionally translated into Greek. In medieval culture, the library became a library of one book, the Bible, which was copied in Greek and Latin. In the late Middle Ages, books in vernacular languages appeared in libraries, which contributed to the development of the latter. In modern times, the library becomes a way of education and mass dissemination of national literary languages. In the information age, the library acquires the global features of a «universal library»; the boundaries of the virtual and real space of the library are erased. A modern library acquires many functions: it provides information to users, is a place for holding various educational events, and educational games. In modern Russia, the library institution plays a huge role in preserving the languages of the small peoples of our country. Thus, libraries in all eras play an important role in the formation, preservation, dissemination and development of national languages.</p>

Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli and the decorative arts

Abstract This article focuses on the abandoned project for a Museo d'Arte Industriale in Milan, conceived by the Associazione degli Industriali. Although the project was never accomplished, it eventually led to the creation of the Museo Artistico Municipale in 1878. At the time, the Associazione degli Industriali of which Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli was a member, was trying to establish a network of international relationships with museums and cultural institutions such as the South Kensington Museum in London, in order to emulate them in creating a modern museum where their private collections would eventually find a home. This paper sets out the cultural and artistic background in which Poldi Pezzoli and other Milanese noblemen and collectors operated, and in which they tried to transform their private and historical collections into new public museums.

Vivianite oxidation is not photocatalyzed

Vivianite is a hydrous Fe(II) phosphate mineral found in anoxic environments that plays an integral role in P cycling and environmental biogeochemistry. Imbued in the vivianite literature dating as far back as 1918 is the notion that vivianite is light-sensitive and susceptible to rapid photooxidation induced entirely by solar light. However, despite an exhaustive search, to our knowledge this conventionally accepted assumption has never been directly tested, nor has the band gap ever been measured. Resolving this question of photochemical control of vivianite redox chemistry is important for performing and interpreting experiments involving vivianite reactivity with contaminants, and potentially iron and phosphate cycling in the photic zone of aquatic systems. The present study was specifically designed to address this question. Pure synthetic vivianite samples were irradiated in aqueous suspensions with a Xe lamp at conditions mimicking the solar spectrum and compared to dark controls. Particles stirred in anoxic suspensions for up to 66 days showed no detectable oxidation irrespective of light exposure, according to colorimetric Fe(II)/Fe(III) assays, micro X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. In contrast, the same experiment performed using air-equilibrated suspensions showed systematic oxidation of up to ∼80 mol% Fe(II) at 66 days, but again with no detectable light exposure effect. To test for UV reactivity, further experiments on vivianite powders under air versus N2 atmosphere were performed using a Hg lamp with a longpass filter. In contrast to oxidation in air where no effect of light was detected, after 24 h irradiation anoxically, an additional 0.8 % Fe was oxidized compared to dark controls, and after 13 days only an additional 0.3 % Fe was oxidized. The band gap of pure vivianite was measured by the Tauc method to be 3.5 eV. Contrary to previous reports, solar light has minimal impact on the oxidation of pure vivianite; any such effect would be insignificant when compared to its relatively fast oxidation by oxygen exposure. As such, light does not need to be excluded when running typical vivianite laboratory experiments. Long-term storage of natural vivianite in museums or private collections should continue protective measures given that a possible photocatalytic role of impurities cannot yet be ruled out.Nonetheless, at all depths in natural aquatic systems, including the photic zone, it appears that the primary abiotic control on the reactivity and half-life of vivianite particles would be the dissolved oxygen concentration, not light exposure.

Leonid Shvartsman: An Artistic Reading of the Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol

This article analyses little-known works by artist L. A. Shvartsman (1920–2022) based on the Petersburg Tales by N. V. Gogol. The works from private collections created in 1953–1956 did not attract the attention of researchers at the time, whereas the appeal to the characters of The Overcoat, Portrait, and Nevsky Prospekt was an important stage for Shvartsman in the formation of a personal artistic programme. His studies at the art school at the All-Union Academy of Arts (1937–1941) determined his attitude to classical art and influenced the emotional perception of St Petersburg. The atmosphere of the “thaw” contributed to the master’s appeal to the unsettled life of a “little man”, defenceless in the face of power and a rude crowd. Having achieved fame as an animation film production designer by the mid‑1950s, Shvartsman sought to build his own system of translating verbal language into visual language outside the film production system, independently solving the creative tasks set. By calling his works “illustrations”, the master did not mean a book illustration, for which it is necessary to initially think over the design and style of the publication. The artist went from full-scale sketches, developed colouristic approaches and strove for the self-sufficiency of each work, hence the noticeable easel character of his works. At the same time, they also have expressive images inherent in sketches of animated films, stylised figures, a sense of action that logically develops and is predicted. The artist approached Gogol’s text selectively, focusing on the life and characters of the heroes, on the originality of the St Petersburg environment. He is interested in the image of Akaky Akakievich, moderately funny and ridiculous, but attractive in his fixation on rewriting papers – a matter which he treats with inspiration, with full dedication. Shvartsman did not want to dramatise situations, avoided climaxes, being satisfied with fixing the temptations of life, which, in the end, would lead the characters to a sad ending. In the process of artistic reading of the Petersburg Tales, Shvartsman not only developed expressive images and compositions, but also built his own creative worldview with moral guidelines and rules.

Sir Charles Eastlake, the National Gallery and Milan: A study in connoisseurial networks

Abstract The first director of the National Gallery in London, Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), was an Italophile. His favourite Italian city was Venice, where he once thought of buying a second home. The city he knew best, having lived there for fourteen years from 1816, was Rome. However, between 1854 and 1864, Eastlake made twenty-three trips to Milan, meaning that during his decade as director of the National Gallery from 1855, he visited Milan more often than any other place. This article suggests that Milan became a crucial hub for Eastlake, as the place where he connected with individuals who played important roles in several interconnected areas. Milan was significant, first, as an area rich in private collections, offering fertile ground for the discovery of potential acquisitions and a place from where it was relatively easy to export paintings because German-speaking Austria, which occupied north Italy and the Veneto until 1866, was comparatively lax about imposing export restrictions; second, as a place where art-historical knowledge and connoisseurship could be developed; and third, as a leading centre of picture conservation and framing.

The Provenance of the Visitation Panel by Francisco Niculoso

A small tile panel created by the Italian ceramic painter Francisco Niculoso (active 1498-1529 from the private collection of Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1816-1885), king consort to Queen Maria II of Portugal (1819-1853), was in 1902 acquired by the Rijksmuseum. Although the ownership history of this Visitation panel is not fully documented, this essay provides a more comprehensive understanding of its historical narrative, by exploring the various contexts of acquisition and collecting. The panel’s journey from Lisbon to Amsterdam vividly illustrates the remarkable fluidity and permeability that defined the boundaries of art markets and museums around the turn of the twentieth century.

From Bolton to Brussels and Beyond: Two Women’s Passion for Museums and Collecting

The youngest daughter of one of the northwest of England’s largest cotton magnates, Annie Barlow, was a well-educated and passionate woman. At the time of studying English Literature and History in London in 1880 to 1882 she became involved with the newly formed Egypt Exploration Fund, and at just nineteen years old became one of the first, and youngest, Honorary Local Secretaries for Bolton and the surrounding area—a roll she held for almost sixty years up to her death in 1941. The social circles opened to her by her father and brothers included world business leaders, academics and royalty. Through lectures, exhibitions and many cups of tea, Annie proclaimed the work of the fund across the United Kingdom, while modestly keeping her own efforts unannounced. Her fundraising surpassed that of many other local secretaries and led to the amassing of the largest collection of Egyptology in a local authority museum in the UK at Bolton Museum. Her travels took her far and wide, and she too built a sizeable collection of antiquities. Her passion for history, driven by a desire for educational development and religious devotion, was transmitted to those whom she met. It was through her influence and intimate knowledge of textile production that Bolton and its first curators became a renowned center for textile analysis, with excavators sending material to Bolton to aid their interpretations. During the First World War, Annie and her family homed European refugees. Her support for one girl in particular, Raymonde Frin, became a life-long friendship. Growing up under the wing of Annie, and surrounded by private collections of ancient material, Raymonde developed a passion for archaeology. Annie’s financial legacy directly supported the development of Raymonde’s life. Eventually achieving formal archaeological qualifications, she went on to be an integral part of the newly formed UNESCO museums and monuments division, becoming its first editor for Museums International Magazine, and involved in projects to save Egyptian heritage. This paper will look at the two women, Annie and Raymonde, within the context of women collecting and museum work, and their legacy for collections, in particular Egyptology, to the current day.

Reuniting orphaned cargoes: Recovering cultural knowledge from salvaged and dispersed underwater cultural heritage in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, with Indonesia at its core, was the epicentre of the most extraordinary expansion of global trade ever witnessed along the Maritime Silk Route. But this story is incomplete because many objects of trade, and the shipwrecks from which they originated, were salvaged and dispersed without adequate archaeological recording of the details of their find-spots. This article critically assesses the prevailing legislative and ethical landscape of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) in Indonesia, delineating the underlying tensions between economic interests and scientific imperatives. Our consortium of experts and heritage authorities proposes a resolution through the 'Reuniting Orphaned Cargoes' Project, which endeavours to re-establish the connection between two notable collections of Southeast Asian ceramics situated in Indonesia and Australia, tracing them back to the shipwrecks of their origins. Archaeological science can shed new light on the cultural significance of the two collections whilst also unveiling fresh insights into this defining epoch of world history. Moreover, this approach addresses unprovenienced UCH, and opens paths to implement and refine the operational guidelines of international heritage conventions that govern it. By reconnecting relevant communities with objects of material cultural heritage that languish in institutional and private collections, this ambitious project builds capacity and utilises UCH for sustainable development in Indonesia, and across Southeast Asia. If these objectives are realised, the project will enrich our understandings of the past and secure the preservation of UCH for generations to come.

Whispering Shelves - Revisiting the Salar Jung Museum Library at Hyderabad in India

Libraries have always been about book collections, connections through knowledge dissemination and knowledge preservation. Since libraries are of different kinds, it would be interesting to know how a library which is an integral part of a national level museum in India, the Salar Jung Museum at Hyderabad, under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, is serving society over 70 years. This article traces the birth and growth of an iconic library set up by royals, the Salar Jungs, prime ministers from the erstwhile Nizam rule of Hyderabad State (1724 – 1948 A. D) in the Deccan region of India. It also examines how the library has gone from being a private collection to a public library to a ‘special’ library accessible to the public, been a gift to the society it serves and continues into the 21st century.

Distribution of the invasive ambrosia beetle Xyleborinus attenuatus Blandford, 1894 (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) in the Czech Republic (Central Europe)

Abstract In Europe, Xyleborinus attenuatus Blandford is considered an invasive bark beetle native to East Asia. We used the results of many local surveys and data from private and museum collections to get information on the distribution and abundance of X. attenuatus Blandford in the Czech Republic. The ambrosia beetle X. attenuatus Blandford is probably widespread throughout the territory of the Czech Republic, from the lowlands to the mountains, and has one generation per year in Central Europe. The flight activity lasts from mid-March to May, F1 adults emerge in August and September and overwinter in wood or in the ground under an infested tree. X. attenuatus Blandford predominantly occupies soft deciduous trees and so far there economic damage have not been reported yet. However, X. attenuatus Blandford is a vector of ambrosia fungi Ambrosiella spp. and Raffaelea spp., and therefore this ambrosia beetle should be monitored.

Evolving An African Postcolonial Condition: Cultural Property Restitution, Cinematic Independence, Globalized NGO Compassion, and Grappling with an Elite Corruption Complex

The empire-building phase of the European powers in Africa, which spanned several centuries, had its climax at the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, where the colonizers carved up and allocated the African continent among themselves as their respective colonial projects. They would subsequently invade virtually all of the continent based on this arbitrary partitioning—which, among other things, created Africa’s colonial condition. Mention must be made of the fact that uncountable numbers of artworks and artefacts were looted by the invaders from various parts of Africa during those invasions and the de facto occupations that ensued. These looted treasures were scattered all over Europe and elsewhere in museums and private collections, where they currently remain largely unaccounted for.

Women and Law in Seventeenth-Century Mughal India

Abstract This article examines a collection of notary documents referred to as the ‘Cambay Documents’. The ‘Cambay Documents’ is a collection of around fifty documents, registered between the second half of the seventeenth to the first half of the eighteenth century. These documents were acquired by the National Archives of India from a private collection and are now in the Oriental Section of the National Archives of India, New Delhi. We explored these documents to situate the legal position of women in Mughal India. These documents are of immense importance as they are related to the practice of law rather than theory. There is a dearth of such documents in modern repositories and archives, due to the absence of any centralized archives in Mughal India.

An Alternative Approach to Municipalization: The Transition of Human Waste Disposal in Hangzhou, 1900s-1940s

Urban reforms in modern China included the municipalization of human waste disposal, which played a crucial role. However, previous studies often equated municipalization with nationalization and monopolization. This study examines Hangzhou, a major city in the Yangtze Delta, where the human waste industry was well established, and analyzes the structural changes in human waste disposal from the 1900s to the 1940s. In the 1910s, the municipality attempted to nationalize and monopolize the human waste industry but was met with resistance and ultimately failed. Nevertheless, the reform successfully introduced a new model of human waste disposal, which involved government supervision and the participation of private collectors, and this model became popular after a compromise was reached. Beyond financial gains, the transition was also shaped by various underlying structural factors.

Gender inequalities across ethnicities in primary care cancer referrals: scoping review protocol.

Early cancer diagnosis is associated with improved mortality and morbidity; however, studies indicate that women and individuals from ethnic minorities experience longer times to diagnosis and worse prognosis compared to their counterparts for various cancers. In countries with a gatekeeper healthcare system, such as UK, most suspected cancer referrals are initiated in primary care. To understand the extent of evidence available on the relationship between primary care cancer referral pathways and cancer outcomes in relation to gender across different ethnic groups. This will identify research gaps and enable development of strategies to ease potential inequalities in cancer diagnosis. A scoping review based on the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. PRISMA-ScR will be used. Electronic databases and private collections of the team members will be searched for studies. Two independent reviewers will carry out the study selection and data extraction. Based on participants, concept and context framework, this review will consider studies after year 2000 that explored the relationship between gender, across various ethnic groups, and cancer outcomes following primary care cancer referral in countries with gatekeeper healthcare systems (UK, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland and Norway). Results will be presented as a narrative analysis. The results are expected to provide an overview of the discrepancies in primary care cancer referrals based on gender across ethnic groups, which will be crucial to define an appropriate range of strategies to ease any inequalities in primary healthcare cancer diagnosis. OPEN SCIENCE FRAMEWORK PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: https://osf.io/jvtxb.

New Contributions Regarding the Barniz de Pasto Collection at the Museo de América, Madrid

This article describes the objects in the barniz de Pasto collection at the Museo de América, Madrid. The barniz de Pasto technique will be described, as well as the historical documentary sources that have previously discussed this varnish. The article will also mention the historical reasons why Spain is the European country in which the greatest number of objects decorated with varnish have been found, in both religious and private collections. The main body of the article discusses all the barniz de Pasto objects held in the Museum collection, focuses on the history of their arrival at the Museum, and investigates their possible origin, with the help of ample photographs. The final section examines the Museum’s three most recent acquisitions, completed in the second half of 2022, in detail.

Presence as Absence: The Homely and the Unhomely in Jewish Photography under Nazism

This article traces the change in practice and the transition of meaning in the photographs taken in Jewish homes in Germany under the Nazi regime. It draws on the ontological duality of absence and presence embedded in the medium of photography to analyze examples of such photographs selected from numerous archival and private collections, discerning a move away from the practice of interior photography as a tool of social affirmation in the late Weimar Republic toward its attestation of absence and loss shortly before emigration from Germany. Employing the Freudian term uncanny in its original spatial connotation as “unhomely,” the analysis contextualizes the latent presence of the inhabitants in images of vacant interiors through a discussion of the historical change in the domestic life of Jews in the face of the increasing Nazification of the public space. Focusing on the commemorative and mnemonic function of the photos, the article concludes by addressing their constitutive role in personal narratives as a private lieu de mémoire and as the generator of future postmemories.

First report of saffron latent virus in Crocus sativus from Hungary.

In early April of 2018 we sampled asymptomatic autumn flowering Crocus plants (Fig. S1.) in a private collection in Hajdú-Bihar county, Hungary. From each species (Cr. kotschyanus subsp. kotschyanus, Cr. sativus, Cr. speciosus) 200 mg leaf sample was collected from 5 neighboring shoot, which were treated as one sample. ELISA tests were carried out in duplicates using potyvirus-specific MAb PTY1 antibodies (Jordan and Hammond 1991) on the samples (Agdia, Elkhart, IN, USA). A sample was considered positive if the absorbance was at least three times greater than that of the negative control. Only one sample tested positive; the absorbance values of Cr. sativus leaves were 0.013 and 0.014, while the negative controls were 0.002 and 0.003, respectively. The samples were further tested by RT-PCR for potyviruses (Salamon and Palkovics 2005), tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) (Nemes and Salánki 2020) and nepovirus subgroup A (Digiaro et al. 2007). Total nucleic acid was extracted with the phenol-chloroform method of White and Kaper (1989), and reverse transcription was carried out with Maxima H Minus First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Vilnius, Lithuania) using random hexamer primer. The samples were negative for TSWV and nepovirus subgroup A, but a single PCR product of ~ 1700 nucleotide (nt) was amplified with potyvirus specific primers and cloned into pGEM®-T Easy vector (Promega, Madison, WI, USA). The 1726 nt long insert sequence, including the complete coat protein region was determined and deposited in the NCBI GenBank database (Accession No: OR425160). Digestion of the original PCR products with restriction enzyme SacI yielded only the predicted restriction fragments (364 / 1362 bp), indicating the presence of only a single potyvirus in the infected sample. BLASTn analysis of the CP cistron revealed the highest nt identities to saffron latent virus (SaLV) Iranian isolates (GenBank AccNo.: MN990394 - 85.44%, MN990415 - 85.39% and RefSeq: NC_036802 - 84.05%). For phylogenetic analyses MEGA11 (Tamura et al. 2021) was used. The resulting Maximum Likelihood tree (Fig. S2) showed that all Iranian SaLV isolates grouped together, while the Hungarian isolate is on an adjacent branch, separate from other virus species, and supported with 100% bootstrap values. From these results, it appears that the Hungarian isolate has been separated from the Iranian clade, and has evolved separately as a distinct lineage. We were unable to fulfill Koch's postulates as all available Crocus sativus plants were infected with SaLV. Latent potyvirus infection of Crocus species, by bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV), iris mild mosaic virus (IMMV), iris severe mosaic virus (ISMV) and turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) has been reported by Grilli Caiola and Faoro (2011). SaLV was first reported from Iran (Parizad et al. 2017), but to our knowledge has never been reported from Europe or from any current EPPO member state. Since Crocus species can be asymptomatic virus reservoirs, it is important that any certification scheme for production should require laboratory tests to prove the health of the plants; or advise growers to keep possible high value susceptible crops such as breeding material and nuclear stocks at a distance from crocuses to mitigate virus transmission between stocks. It is also advisable to grow infected lots far from healthy stocks and protected wild hosts. To our knowledge, this is the first report of SaLV from Hungary and from Europe.

Between the Lines: Toward a Recontextualized Archaeological Practice through Dialogues between Fieldwork and Archival Research

ABSTRACT Archival material from archaeological fieldwork contained in private and public collections has long been the object of study within various archaeological contexts. Often, however, such material is used as a backdrop or as anecdotal information and not as a point of departure. In this special issue, contributions focus on a variety of ways in which archival material and other kinds of legacy data can usefully be integrated into or provide the ground for archaeological projects and archaeological research, including preparations of new projects or for gaining a deeper understanding of ongoing projects or past projects. Modern developments, conflicts, wars, and the recent pandemic, have all accentuated the need for the curation of archival material and legacy data to an even higher degree than hitherto suspected and revealed that such material often holds information just as crucial to the project as archaeological raw data directly from the ground.

Pentingnya Konservasi Preventif Pada Benda-Benda Koleksi di Museum Kasunanan Keraton Surakarta

Surakarta Kasunanan Palace Museum is a private museum which contains the Palace's private collections. Many of them are now damaged, dusty, and even destroyed by age. Preventive conservation is used to prevent and minimize damage to museum collections. This research aims to discuss damage to museum collections and preventive conservation management that has been taking place at the Surakarta Kasunanan Palace Museum. Method used in this research is descriptive with kualitatif aproach method with interviews, observation and literature studies to collect data and use simple analysis. The results found that many collections in the Surakarta Kasunanan Palace Museum were unkempt and dusty. The preventive conservation carried out so far has only been less than optimal in terms of cleaning. The lack of available resources is also a factor in preventing preventive conservation efforts from running well.