Unpacking the collection
Subtitle: networks of material and social agency in the museum
By: Sarah Byrne ... [et al.], editors
Series: One world archaeology; One world archaeology
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 342
ISBN-13: 9781441982216
Subjects: Museums; Material culture; Ethnological museums and collections; Collection management; Social aspects; Museum exhibits; Research
Description: "Museum collections are often perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind glass cases. By focusing on the dynamic histories of museum collections, new research reveals their pivotal role in shaping a wide range of social relations. Over time and across space the interactions between these artefacts and the people and institutions who made, traded, collected, researched and exhibited them have generated complex networks of material and social agency. In this innovative volume, the contributors draw on a broad range of source materials to explore the cross-cultural interactions which have created museum collections. These case studies contribute significantly to the development of new theoretical frameworks to examine broader questions of materiality, agency, and identity in the past and present. Grounded in case studies from individual objects and museum collections from North America, Europe, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Australia, this truly international volume juxtaposes historical, geographical, and cross-cultural studies. This work will be of great interest to archaeologists and anthropologists studying material culture, as well as researchers in museum studies and cultural heritage management."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Networks, agents and objects : frameworks for unpacking museum collections / Sarah Byrne ... [et al.]; title: "Suitable for decoration of halls and billiard rooms" : finding indigenous agency in historic auction and sale catalogues / Robin Torrence and Anne Clarke; title: Consuming colonialism : curio dealers' catalogues, souvenir objects and indigenous agency in Oceania / Rodney Harrison; title: Plumes, pipes and valuables : the Papuan artefact-trade in southwest New Guinea, 1845-1888 / Susan M. Davies; title: Donors, loaners, dealers and swappers : the relationship behind the English collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum / Chris Wingfield; title: The Bekom mask and the white star : the fate of others' objects at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris / Alexandra Loumpet-Galitzine; title: Agency, prestige and politics : Dutch collecting abroad and local responses / Pieter ter Keurs; title: Crafting Hopi identities at the Museum of Northern Arizona / Kelley Hays-Gilpin; title: Pathways to knowledge : research, agency and power relations in the context of collaborations between museums and source communities / Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby; title: 'Objects as ambassadors' : representing nation through museum exhibitions / Chantal Knowles; title: Seats of power and iconographies of identity in Ecuador / Colin McEwan and Maria-Isabel Silva; title: Hedley takes a holiday : collections from Kanak people in the Australian Museum / Jude Philp; title: Death, memory and collecting : creating the conditions for ancestralisation in South London households / Fiona Parrott; title: Trials and traces : A.C. Haddon's agency as museum curator / Sarah Byrne.