{"id":1473,"date":"2019-08-08T12:20:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T02:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2019-08-08T12:20:20","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T02:20:20","slug":"tristram-hunt-and-the-de-recontextualisation-of-museum-artefacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/2019\/08\/08\/tristram-hunt-and-the-de-recontextualisation-of-museum-artefacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Tristram Hunt and the de\/recontextualisation of museum artefacts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aboriginal and Torres Strait\nIslander people should be aware that this post contains images and textual\ndescriptions of deceased persons.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late June 2019, Tristram Hunt\u2014Cambridge-educated historian, British Labour\u2019s former Shadow Secretary of State for Education, and current Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum\u2014wrote a piece for The Guardian<\/em>: \u2018Should museums return their colonial artefacts?<\/a>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially\none could be forgiven for thinking Hunt might be setting up an argument for\nchange. He references Emmanuel Macron\u2019s recent commitment to restitution,\nenthusiastically recounts the \u201ccompelling\u201d scene in the Marvel film Black Panther<\/em> where Erik Killmonger\nrelieves a British museum of a Wakandan artefact, and acknowledges: \u201cThe\nV&A\u2019s collections expanded in line with the growth of the British empire,\nin its official and unofficial guise.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom\nthe beginning of my directorship,\u201d he continues, \u201cI wanted to be open and\ntransparent about that colonial past, and think carefully about how to manage\nits legacy today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But,\nover the final three paragraphs, Hunt’s small-c conservative perspective on the\nmuseum sector becomes clear. Noting that the National Heritage Act 1983\nprevents V&A trustees from de-accessioning objects \u201cunless they are exact\nreplicas or damaged beyond repair,\u201d he goes on to argue that, legislation or\nnone, such institutions somehow create a rarefied space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There remains something essentially valuable about the ability of museums to position objects beyond particular cultural or ethnic identities, curate them within a broader intellectual or aesthetic lineage, and situate them within a wider, richer framework of relationships while allowing free and open access, physically and digitally.<\/em><\/p>Tristram Hunt<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For a comprehensive critique of Hunt’s piece I recommend Sumaya Kassim’s ‘The Museum is in the Master’s House: An Open Letter to Tristram Hunt<\/a>.’ Here I want to focus specifically on museum documentation, viewed through the lens of what is perhaps Hunt’s most problematic statement: “For a museum like the V&A, to decolonise is to decontextualise.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim is logically inconsistent with the previous sentence\u2014the one extolling the value of positioning objects beyond<\/em> their cultural or ethnic context. What is more, any examination of museum artefacts online quickly reveals that, when it comes to metadata, missing context is a significant issue, and the concept of decolonisation a valuable part of the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The V&A presents itself<\/a> as “the world\u2019s leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity.” The lack of artefacts from 60,000 years of continuous and diverse cultures throughout Australia\/Sahul therefore indicates a culturally-specific conception of what constitutes art and design. The oldest items related to Australia’s First Nations people in the museum appear to be photographs from the 1860s<\/a>, the history of these objects concentrating more on Captain Thomas Edward Green and his album than on the subjects of the portraits (though at least potential communities have been identified).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sepia
Photograph of two Aboriginal children, possibly from the Gunai, Kulin or Yorta Yorta clans. Taken c. 1865 by an unknown photographer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This privileging of the colonial subject is widespread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Material collected by Alfred Cort Haddon in the Torres Strait is now at the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Despite Haddon’s reputation for acknowledging his sources, and the extensive cultural information found in the expedition’s multi-volume reports, there are many items for which the documentation only references Haddon (as collector) and local European sources like Murray Island’s John Bruce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the British Museum (BM), the documentation for head pads acquired in 1926<\/a> references “Mrs Daisy Bates” (as field collector), and the Empire Press Union (which donated the items), while the ‘ethnic name’ “Made by Aboriginal Australian” is so generic as to be almost useless. Given the pads are made from human hair\u2014a material the BM acknowledges constitutes human remains\u2014more detailed contextual information could be of great significance to living relatives from the relevant source communities (see the work of Lauren Booker, University of Technology, Sydney.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has material online collected by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen, including Churinga from Central Australia. I am not going to link to those items. As noted in Spencer and Gillen’s The Native Tribes of Central Australia<\/a><\/em> (1899):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Churinga is the name given by the Arunta natives to certain sacred objects which, on penalty of death or very severe punishment, such as blinding by means of a fire-stick, are never allowed to be seen by women or uninitiated men<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

More than a century later, AMNH has put images of these items online without reference (let alone deference) to this context. In a recent interview with Fran Kelly<\/a>, the Chief Executive Officer of AIATSIS, Craig Ritchie, spoke of how he came across secret-sacred items on display in the galleries at AMNH too, “without any kind of commentary\u00a0\u2026 anything that told the story and that stuff.” Contrary to Hunt, the free and open, digital and physical access provided to these objects is founded<\/em> on decontextualisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is easy to argue that museums have started to change, and that the examples highlighted here represent legacy documentation attached to relatively minor artefacts. But if that were the case, one would expect more iconic, heavily-researched items to reveal a different approach. Instead, we just find more of the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take the Gweagal shield<\/a>, currently held by the BM (pictured at the top of this post). No documents have been found linking the artefact to a specific collector, or to other items in the collection, nor are there any extant records in the museum regarding its acquisition or provenance. There is, however, a small nineteenth-century label on the back which has been identified<\/a> as written by traveller, collector, anthropologist, and museum volunteer James Edge-Partington. It reads: \u201cCAP.COOK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence for\nEdge-Partington\u2019s claim is not known. However, piecing together illustrations\nand contemporary accounts, many believe the shield to be one of those used by\ntwo Gweagal men who opposed Cook and his crew when they landed at Botany Bay on\n29 April 1770. The shield was presented in this historical context in the 89th\nepisode of A History of the World in 100\nObjects<\/em>, and in both the Indigenous\nAustralia: enduring civilisation<\/em> exhibition at the British Museum in London\n(2015) and the subsequent Encounters<\/em>\nexhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra (2015-2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some, like museum director and curator Nicholas Thomas<\/a>, question the shield\u2019s provenance, it has become a cultural touchstone, symbolising the violent dispossession of Aboriginal Australians by Europeans and highlighting the inextricable link between colonisation and collecting. In the words of Indigenous artist and curator Jonathan Jones<\/a>: \u201cWe do know that Australia\u2019s collection methodology started with Captain Cook stealing shields after shooting at someone. I\u2019ve always used that as a bit of a benchmark for the acquisition process of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again the museum’s documentation privileges a European perspective:<\/p>\n\n\n\n