Museums: A Visual Anthropology

257 Pages·2012·1.97 MB·English

by  Mary Bouquet

MuseuMs
Key Texts in the Anthropology of Visual and Material Culture
Editor: Marcus Banks
Key Texts in the Anthropology of Visual and Material Culture is an innovative series of acces-
sible texts designed for students. Each volume concisely introduces and analyses core topics
in the study of visual anthropology and material culture from a distinctively anthropological
perspective.
Titles in this series include:
Cinema: A Visual Anthropology
Museums: A Visual Anthropology
MuseuMs
A Visual Anthropology
Mary Bouquet
London • New York
English edition
First published in 2012 by
Berg
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50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Mary Bouquet 2012
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of
Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84520 811 0 (Cloth)
978 1 84520 812 7 (Paper)
e-ISBN 978 0 85785 211 3 (institution)
978 0 85785 212 0 (individual)
www.bergpublishers.com
For Henk
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Museums in the Twenty-first Century 11
Introduction 12
Sites and Websites: Teylers Museum 13
www.teylersmuseum.nl 14
From Private Collection to Public Museum 19
Evergetic and Donor Museums 22
Teyler’s Portrait 25
Visiting Teyler’s Foundation House 28
Conclusion 30
Key Concepts 31
Exercises 31
Further Reading 32
2 Stretching the National Museum 33
Introduction 34
Collections: The Visible and the Invisible 37
The Exhibitionary Complex 44
Internationalization 50
Conclusion 60
Key Concepts 60
Exercises 61
Further Reading 61
3 A History of Ethnographic Museums 63
Introduction 63
The First Public Ethnographic Museum in Copenhagen 67
Ethnographica and the Nineteenth-century Exhibitionary Complex 72
Classification: Geographical, Material, Functional and
Typological Ways of Ordering Ethnographic Collections 77
Aesthetic and Experiential Considerations Involved in Exhibiting
Ethnographica 81
Conclusion 89
Key Concepts 91
Exercises 91
Further Reading 92
4 The Ethnography of Museums 93
Introduction 93
Ethnographic Fieldwork 94
Ethnographic Museums and the Ethnography of Museums 96
The Ethnography of Museums: Points of Departure 98
Paradise: An Ethnography of Collection-making 100
‘Food for Thought’: An Ethnography of Exhibition-making
at the Science Museum, London 104
‘Making the Walls Speak’: An Ethnography of Guided-tour
Encounters in Two Israeli Settlement Museums 110
Conclusion 114
Key Concepts 116
Exercises 117
Further Reading 117
5 Practices of Object Display 119
Introduction 120
Objectification: Typologies 123
Life Groups 126
The Inhabited Room 128
Modernism 131
Ethnography and Modernisms 136
Renovation 140
Conclusion 148
Key Concepts 149
Exercises 149
Further Reading 150
6 Object and Image Repatriation 151
Introduction 151
Repatriation of Human Remains 153
Repatriation of Objects 161
Visual Repatriation 171
Conclusion 177
Key Concepts 178
Exercises 178
Further Reading 179
Afterword: Teylers Revisited 181
Notes 189
Bibliography 209
Index 223
cont ents vii
List of iLLustrAtions
Cover illustration: El Lissitzky (1890, Potsjinok–1941, Schodnia), New Man (2009),
3D model after designs and a print by El Lissitzky from 1923, constructed by Henry
Milner, collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Figure i.1 A dvertisement for the Natural History Museum on the London Under-
ground, October 2009. p. 2
Figure 1.1 The front door to Teyler’s eighteenth-century dwelling house, Haarlem,
the Netherlands, with the sign directing visitors to the museum and
library entrance around the corner. p. 11
Figure 1.2 The nineteenth-century entrance to Teylers Museum, Haarlem. p. 16
Figure 1.3 A trolley emerges from the Foundation House into the Oval Room,
May 2008. p. 28
Figure 1.4 The directors of Teyler’s Foundation, May 2006, in front of Wybrand
Hendriks’s group portrait of the directors of Teyler’s Foundation in
1789. p. 29
Figure 2.1 Jean Nouvel’s rendering of the exterior for the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
p. 33
Figure 2.2 Banner with Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God on the main façade of
the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, late 2008. p. 33
Figure 2.3 Rijksmuseum Schiphol Amsterdam—‘the first museum in the world to
have an annexe in an airport and . . . the first airport to have a museum
in its terminal.’ p. 57
Figure 2.4 Simon Starling dropping one of the three replicas of Artus Quellinus’s
Atlas sketch in the atrium of the Rijksmuseum’s Ateliergebouw, 18 April
2008. p. 59
Figure 3.1 A number of Albert Eckhout’s ethnographic portraits in the ‘Peoples of
the Earth’ exhibition at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen.
p. 63
Figure 3.2 The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London, 1851. p. 73
Figure 3.3 Interior of the Pitt Rivers Museum, taken from the Upper Gallery look-
ing west towards the entrance from the University Museum. p. 79
Figure 3.4 I ndigenous guard of honour at the main entrance to the Dundo Museum,
Angola, awaiting the Portuguese president’s arrival, in 1954. p. 87
Figure 4.1 P hotograph of the Yimar headmask from the Oporto collection.
p. 97
Figure 4.2 Zacharias and Wik calculating the distribution of pork at O’Hanlon’s
leaving party. p. 103
Figure 4.3 Sharon Macdonald in the in-store bakery on the opening day of ‘Food
for Thought’ at the Science Museum, London. p. 109
Figure 4.4 A pioneer’s tent in the Yifat Museum. p. 112
Figure 5.1 Donations on display at the British Museum. p. 120
Figure 5.2 Typological series of boomerangs, from Australia, India and Africa,
published by Pitt Rivers. p. 123
Figure 5.3 Performance of a Hamat’sa, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago,
1893. p. 126
Figure 5.4 The Hindeloopen Room with mannequins. p. 128
Figure 5.5 Northwest Coast Indian Gallery of the American Museum of Natural
History in 1943. p. 132
Figure 5.6 Expressionist and Exotic Art Gallery, showing contemporary painting
and tribal art exhibited together in 1915 at the Karl Ernst Osthaus Mu-
seum in Hagen, later the Folkwang Museum, Essen. p. 134
Figure 6.1 V iew of part of the exhibition ‘Raub und Restitution’, showing the
installation with Lovis Corinth’s portrait of Walther Silberstein, at the
Jewish Museum Berlin, 2008. p. 151
Figure 6.2 George Langdon (standing right), the president of the American Mu-
seum of Natural History, presents a framed print of George Hunt’s 1904
photograph of the Whalers’ Shrine to Mowachaht/Muchalat chiefs and
council spokesperson Larry Andrews (left). In the foreground, museum
director Bill Moynihan (left) is seated next to Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal
Council president George Watt. p. 166
Figure 6.3 The replica G’psgolox Pole presented to the Swedish National Mu-
seum of Ethnography as part of the exchange to retrieve the original
G’psgolox Pole, 2011. p. 170
Figure A.1 Teylers Museum, the Oval Room, May 2011. p. 181
list o f illustr at io ns ix