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 Editorial offices: 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