Thank you - Outcomes - Project implications - Forthcoming events - Support - Programme
An interdisciplinary workshop
for the discussion of 18th and 19th century museums and collecting
Friday 9 July 2004
At the University of East Anglia
11am – 5pm
Organised by the Sainsbury Research Unit and the Polynesian Visual Arts Project
This workshop was organised under the aegis of the Polynesian Visual Arts Project, which focuses on interpretations and understandings of material objects collected from or made in Polynesia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, the Workshop was deliberately much wider in scope, and helped to give a context on research into historical and particularly ‘ethnographic’ collections.
Thank you to everyone who came to this Workshop, and especially warm thanks to the people who presented such rich and diverse papers.
The discussions that were triggered by them were also very interesting and showed that there is great potential for joining up approaches, topics and debates that are prevailing in a variety of different disciplines. Some outcomes and ways forward from this event might be summarised as follows:
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There is a potential for a larger conference event, or at least a session within a conference, that focuses on trends in collecting and museum histories from a multitude of disciplinary angles. Some discussions are going on with the National Maritime Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum to see if the Project can be involved in a conference they are organising for 2005 on collecting and empire.
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Joining research on collections from a variety of disciplines means that researchers can bring new perspectives on areas that might be usually covered by one discipline. For example, a researcher who studies bones from an anthropological viewpoint, and a historian of science who studies anatomical museum collections, may be able to shed new light on each others’ work.
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The workshop emphasised the increasing use of a wide range of sources, and revealed that our expertise in different areas can be utilised to help each other. Sources include textual and visual archives and publications, as well as material objects, architecture and oral history.
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The workshop also saw some curators express an increased desire to facilitate research into the political, historical and cultural contexts of their collections. By seeing that similar stories and trends are prevalent in other areas and institutions, one curator told me that he is now very keen to find a way to investigate the history of his museum further.
Polynesian Project implications
In terms of the specific Polynesian focus of the project, the Workshop also asks us to think carefully about the following issues:
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how far the collecting of information on Polynesian collections (and material culture) has progressed
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whether the original brief of the Polynesian project might be modified in the light of experience to date, including an analysis of potential new assistance from others, whatever their discipline, and whether they are working in museums or not
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whether conferences on specific artefacts/problems actually help forward research
Thanks to the supporters of the Polynesian Visual Arts Project, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), the Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU), and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
This was the programme for Interdisciplinary workshop:
Arrival and coffee (provided): West Mezzanine, SCVA
Introduction – Helen Southwood
1: Religion and nature
Chair: Clare Haynes, UEA
Nature, artefacts and religion: the London Missionary Society's Museum.
Sujit Sivasundaram, University of Cambridge
Ethnological showbusiness, collecting people and the natural history of man
in the mid-nineteenth century
Sadiah Qureshi, University of Cambridge
With time for discussion: how does religion influence the collection and display of objects?
Lunch (provided): West Mezzanine, SCVA
2: Manipulating natural and artificial objects
Chair: Steven Hooper, UEA
Beyond the boundaries of the Museum: some thoughts on the early history
of the cranial collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Frances Larson, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
Hooked on teeth: getting to grips with whaletooth pendants
Les Jessop, Hancock Museum, Newcastle
With time for discussion: how are of categories in museums and collections created?
Tea (provided): West Mezzanine, SCVA
3: Science and antiquaries
Chair: Helen Southwood, UEA
Old brass or historical objects?: attitudes towards the collecting of scientific instruments in the mid-nineteenth century.'
Anastasia Filippoupoliti, University of Leicester
"Miscellaneous items on the wall of the museum" - the collections of
Alexander Thomson, a 19th-century landowner in Aberdeen.
Anne Taylor, University of Cambridge
With time for discussion: what can an interdisciplinary approach do for us?
Supported by: Sainsbury Research Unit, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) and the University of East Anglia (UEA)
