Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa (Reviewed)

Posted today to Museum Anthropology Review is an examination of Steven C. Durbin's book
Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa. The reviewer is C. Kurt Dewhurst, the Director of the Michigan State University Museum and a scholar-practitioner actively collaborating with museum professionals in contemporary South Africa. Find the review here. This is the 23rd contribution to Museum Anthropology Review and the first focused specifically on an African topic.

International Journal of Cultural Property's Online Forum

The Museum Anthropology editoiral office has just recieved this announcement from the good folks at the International Journal of Cultural Property, which has initiated an companion forum, online. Erin Thompson writes:

I am the moderator for the online forum of the International Journal of Cultural Property (Cambridge University Press) at http://www.culturalproperty.org/forum/

I would like to invite you to register at our forum and use it as a source of cultural heritage news and events information as well as a place to express your opinions about cultural heritage issues such as art theft, repatriation, relations between source nations and collectors/ museums, illicit excavations, and the use of
digitalization to increase access to cultural heritage.

One more welcome addition to our field's online resources. Thanks too all those working to build new digital infrastructure.

Classic Hopi and Zuni Kachina Figures

Offerred today on Museum Anthropology Review is a review of the book Classic Hopi and Zuni Kachina Figures by Barton Wright. The reviewers are Dorothy Washburn and Emory Sekaquaptewa and they use the opportunity of this review to intervene and correct what they identify as a number of longstanding and widespread misunderstandings surrounding the carved figures known to the world as kachinas. I am confident that everyone concerned with Native American arts from the Southwest, including, curators, scholars, collectors, and dealers will have an interest in consulting their review. Find it here.

Mana Tuturu (Discussed)

While speaking of Museum Anthropology Review, I would note that a recent review of the book Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights by David Delgado Shorter (the reviewer) has been attracting considerable attention and has recieved several extended comments, including one by the book's author Barry Barclay. Find out what the discussion is about here.

Markets and Cultural Voices (Reviewed)

The latest contribution to Museum Anthropology Review is an assessment of Markets and Cultural Voices: Liverty vs. Power in the Lives of Mexican Amate Painters by Tyler Cowen. This review has been contributed by Alan R. Sandstrom, who has, himself, written on the paper arts of indigenous Mexico. Find Professor Sandstrom's review here.

Announcing Publication of Gradhiva No. 5

The musée du quai Branly is pleased to announce publication of the latest issue of its scholarly journal Gradhiva. The full announcement follows. Any fully bilingual reader of the journal willing to translate or summarize the MQB press release would be providing a valuable service to our community of readers. Such a reworking can be submitted as a comment to this posting. Thank you to Sophie Leclercq and to her colleagues for their support of Museum Anthropology, Museum Anthropology Review and the Museum Anthropology weblog.

Gradhiva n°5 – printemps 2007
Dossier « Sismographie des terreurs »

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l'Europe et le monde occidental peinent à regarder l'événement monstrueux que fut le génocide. Mais depuis quelques décennies, la tendance tend à s'inverser. Une injonction s'impose : « Plus jamais ça ! » À côté de la lente prise de conscience de l'Holocauste, d'autres conflits et d’autres violences extrêmes sont requalifiés de « génocides ». De proche en proche, des « lieux de mémoire » sont aménagés sur le site du « crime » ou exposés dans les musées. Cette politique de la mémoire invite aux cultes mémoriaux, religieux ou civils. Manière d'arracher une image au désastre ; manière aussi de rendre justice aux victimes ; manière enfin de donner à voir la violence et l'abjection de l’Événement, sans toujours parvenir à le rendre intelligible. Aujourd’hui, l’omniprésence d’un passé que l’on décline en termes de commémoration, de compassion, de repentance ou de réparation, remplit et déborde ces lieux de mémoire. Le souvenir du passé est désormais devenu un enjeu des relations internationales ainsi qu’un instrument des nationalismes et de la « gouvernance globale ». Ce dossier est complété d’une étude sur un programme de l’Unesco de l’après-guerre consacré au racisme.

Sommaire

DOSSIER « Sismographie des terreurs »
Coordonné et présenté par Jackie Assayag

Jackie Assayag Le spectre des génocides. Traumatisme, muséographie et violences extrêmes

Sophie Wahnich Transmettre l’effroi, penser la terreur. Les musées d’une Europe déchirée

Catherine Coquio « Envoyer les fantômes au musée ? » Critique du « kitsch concentrationnaire » par deux écrivains rescapés : Ruth Klüger, Imre Kertész

Didier Fassin « Ce qui s’est vraiment passé ». L’expérience du musée de l’Apartheid

Célestin Kanimba Misago Les instruments de la mémoire. Génocide et traumatisme au Rwanda

Reesa Greenberg La représentation muséale des génocides. Guérison ou traumatisme réactualisé ?

Jean-Louis Margolin L’histoire brouillée. Musées et mémoriaux du génocide cambodgien

Elisabeth Gessat-Anstett Résister à l’outrage. Un musée de l’institution concentrationnaire soviétique

Tzvetan Todorov Germaine Tillion face à l’extrême

ETUDES ET ESSAIS

Chloé Maurel « La question des races ». Le programme de l’Unesco

CHRONIQUES SCIENTIFIQUES

Exposition

Note critique et comptes rendus

N°5 - 144 pages, 65 ill., 18 € – abonnement pour 2 n° avec frais de port : 42 € ISBN : 978-2-915133-55-4

Comité de rédaction : Emma Aubin-Boltanski, Carmen Bernand, Marc Chemillier, Brigitte Derlon, Nelia Dias, Daniel Fabre, Serge Gruzinski, Bertrand Hell, Deborah Kapchan, Frédéric Keck, Yves Le Fur, Landry-Wilfrid Miampika, Anne-Christine Taylor.

Directeur de la publication : Stéphane Martin

Rédacteur en chef : Françoise Zonabend & Erwan Dianteill

Secrétaire de rédaction : Sophie Leclercq

Rédaction de Gradhiva
Département de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement - musée du quai Branly, 222, rue de l’Université - 75343 Paris cedex 07 tél. : 01-56-61-71-10 - fax. : 01-56-61-71-42 - gradhiva@quaibranly.fr

Revue publiée avec le soutien du Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique et de l’école des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales

Mary Douglas and Material Culture Studies

In recognition of her recent passing, Daniel Miller has offered a rich and valuable assessment of Mary Douglas' work, especially her important contributions to material culture studies. Find his essay on the Material World blog here.

Museum Anthropology: From the Beginning

Readers of the blog and of Museum Anthropology Review will have noticed a recent slowing of editorial activity. The end of the semester at Indiana University brought about a flury of work obligations as well as the need to catch-up on overdue non-editorial matters. The normal flow of activity will soon begin to resume. In the meantime, I can note our most recent revew and share some good journal news vis-a-vis AnthroSource.

A couple of days ago, a new book review, by Joanna Cohan Scherer was published on Museum Anthropology Review. Readers will find her review of Peoples of the Plateau: The Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse, 1898-1915 by Steven Grafe here. Thanks go to Joanna for this contribution--the 20th published in Museum Anthropology Review.

I am pleased to report that I discovered today that the full run of back issues of Museum Anthropology are now accessible in AnthroSource. Special thanks to Candace Greene for her work rounding up the missing early issues and to her colleagues in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History for making them available for scanning. I have only begun to dip into the earliest issues, which I have never before had a chance to study, but it is clear that they are a key resource for understanding the history of our field and of the Council. While there will be, as with the materials previously posted into AS, bugs to find and (somehow) clean up, it is a great thing for the field to have digital access to the journal's thirty years of content. Find Museum Anthropology in AS at: http://www.anthrosource.net/loi/mua

Collections Research and the Web: Reflections on a Successful [Half-] Day's Work at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Editor's Note: I am pleased to share a guest weblog post by Alison Petch, who is both Museum Registrar and Researcher on the ESRC-funded project "The Other Within: The Anthropology of Englishness" at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford. As noted here previously, Alison recently authored a paper on the role of Notes and Queries in the history of museum anthropology that appeared in the most recent issue of Museum Anthropology. Thanks to Alison for this reflection, which I found to be an encouraging dispatch from the front lines of collections research.

Collections Research and the Web: Reflections on a Successful [Half-] Day's Work at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Alison Petch

On Tuesday 1 May 2007 I resumed work on a research database that I am compiling (which will ultimately be available online at the "The Other Within" website, here).

There are approximately 350 named companies and manufacturers associated with English objects in our collections. On that day I was trying to find out if there was any information on the web about a gunmaker from Oxford called Nicholes. The Museum previously only knew his surname, no other information, this information having come from the accession book entry:
Accession Book Entry - F. C. WOODFORDE, Esq. Market Drayton, Salop. May [1911]. - Pair of flint-lock pistols by Nicholes of Oxford, with steel wrench for turning the barrels. [1911.15.1]

A search for Nicholes in Google led me to one of my favourite sites: http://www.headington.org.uk/, which is expertly compiled by Stephanie Jenkins in her spare time and contains much valuable information. In this case, John Nicholes (and his father of the same name), as well as being gunsmiths, were both mayors of Oxford (see here for the site that I actually located the information on).

So I had discovered that the firearms were much older than we had thought. Then I noticed on the same site that there is a reference to the famous Parson Woodforde visiting the site and mentioning it in his diary: Parson Woodforde visited Nicholes’s gunshop when an undergraduate in Oxford, and wrote on 29 June 1763: “For a Pocket Pistol, alias a Dram Bottle, to carry in one’s Pocket, it being necessary on a Journey or so—at Nicholl’s, 0. 1. 0.”

So I googled James Woodforde and found both the wikipedia entry, which says when he was at Oxford and also the Parson Woodforde Society. Both of these sites contained much useful information.

I had already noted that the donor was called F.C. Woodforde, and had previously thought it likely that his full name was Francis Cardew Woodforde, so I got the Chairman of the Society's address and emailed him. Martin Brayne is an expert on James Woodforde and the Woodforde family, and he was kind enough to email by return and provide even more information about Francis Cardew Woodforde and the Woodforde connections. Within 2 hours I had found out it was more than likely that our firearms were owned by James Woodforde, passed to FCW and thence to us.

And all this before lunch! This kind of research would have previously taken much time to complete, would have relied upon my following up the Woodforde name similarity, reading all of the journals on the off-chance of a Woodforde connection to Nicholes being mentioned and then being able to tie in Francis Cardew to his ancestor.

The joy that webpages compiled by experts bring to researchers is not often acknowledged. I happened to be in correspondence with Jason, Museum Anthropology's editor and told him how much I had appreciated the way the web had facilitated my research, and enabled me to contact and gain knowleddge from so many experts and he encouraged me to write this piece for the Museum Anthropology blog. The more we use the web and, particularly, the more we add information to the web, the better the information will be and the more we will all gain - imagine what such investigations might be like in 100 years time.

This blog post is dedicated to Stephanie Jenkins and Martin Brayne without whose work and help I would not have had such a successful outcome.