Dead Or Alive - Some Questions About Objects and People

N O RDI S K MU SEO LOGI 199 8 •2, S . 1 7-28 DEAD OR ALIVE - SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT OBJECTS AND PEOPLE Sally MacDonald This paper is about a few objects in two museums I know. One - my last place ofwork - was what might be called a social history or community history museum in Croydon just outside London. The other - where I have worked for the last six months - is a museum ofEgyptian archaeology in a university in central London. In most parts of Britain, archaeology and social history (in the museum context at any rate) are distinct disciplines with their own specialist groups, networks and methods. I am still trying to come to terms with very different types ofobjects, terminologies and ways ofthinking and to work out whether there are approaches I can bring from one environment to the othet: I find it challenging to juxtapose objects from the two museums - some ofthem separated by nearly 5 000 years - and to think about the questions and issues they raise for me now. WHAT JS A GOOD MUSEUM? colleagues commissioned qualitative mar ket research to try to ascertain what peo In Croydon I had the opportunity to set ple might want from a museum there. 2 We up a new museum service almost from asked non-visitors as well as visitors and scratch.1 It was a museum mainly for local one of the remarkable findings was that people funded by local government and it there was little difference in the way they opened in 1995. Croydon is both a sub felt: all groups found museums boring; urb of London and an urban centre in its visitors simply possessed a sense of duty own right; it has over 300,000 inhabitants that non-visitors lacked. But once freed to of whom around 20% are of African, imagine what a good museum might be Caribbean or Asian origin. The centre of like they were energised (Fig 1). 3 It may be the town is full of skyscrapers and big that these ideas would not apply elsewhe roads and as a result the people who live re, but I have used these points, and quo there and visit do not connect it with his tes from Croydon people, as the frame tory. In setting up the museum I and my work of this paper. SALLY MA C DO NA LD 18 A GOOD MUSEUM *changes *is about me * takes me out of myself * is contentious * is a place to learn * is bright, funny, inspiring * is about the future as well as the past Fig. I: What a good 11111seu111 might be like. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeo understand and therefore wanted to work logy was set up 1913 as a teaching collec on. In 1913 University College London tion for Egyptology students at University bought Petrie's collection and it is today College London. It contains mainly items part of the Institute of Archaeology at excavated in Egypt by the extraordinary UCL. Its primary purpose has always been archaeologist William Matthew Flinders as a teaching and research collection for Petrie (1853-1942), often described as the students but it has enormous potential as founder of scientific archaeology. Petrie a study collection for the general public. excavated in Egypt most years from 1880 Research is still needed into the attitudes of to 1925; he had to obtain the permission Londoners - particularly those of Egyp of the Egyptian authorities to dig each site tians and other Africans - to Egyptian but was thereafter left very much to do as archaeology, but it is clear that the subject he wished. The finds from each dig were of Ancient Egypt has an almost universal divided: some things were kept in Egypt appeal. and what Petrie was allowed to export was then offered to those institutions and CAN A MUSEUM BREAK individuals who had funded the excavati AWAY FROM ITS PAST? ons. He kept for himself a collection of smaller things that illustrated everyday life In Croydon we had very little space but in Ancient Egypt, the things that no-one we wanted to make the displays very rich; else wanted, the things he did not himself we decided each object should have a DEAD OR ALIVE - SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT OBJECTS AND PEOPLE Fig 2: Lock ofhair 19 belonging to Eva Smith, of Croydon; in the mid 1920s for the first ti111e she had her hair cut into a fashio nably short bob. Her daughter lent the hair to be displayed in Lifetimes. Fig 3: Woman '.r hair and section ofscalp takm from a to111b in Gurob, 18th or 19th dynasty; 1567-1200 BC (UC 30139) I I I strong local provenance and story. Our wing and copying related photographs, method of collecting from people in photographing and documenting potenti Croydon was a very personal and intense al exhibits. In the eventual displays, each 4 one ; we visited the people who offered us object was linked to a story on a multime objects, interviewing them on subjects dia programme in order that it could be relating to the potential exhibits, borro- presented in a rich context. But the SALLY MA C DO N ALD 20 objects were always the focus; we only permanent collections. Petrie had crawled ever chose exhibits we felt were meaning half-naked at night along semi-submerged ful and powerful. One woman, a Mrs tunnels inside pyramids thousands of Cheetham, lent us a length of hair (Fig 2); years old. He knew that decay was a natu in the 1920s her mother (now dead) had ral process and could see museums as a her long hair cut for the first time into a fairly recent phenomenon. fashionably short bob. The hair was preci When we interviewed people in Croy ous - it was part, after all, of her mother's don about museums, no-one spoke natu body - but because the museum collected rally about preservation: they wanted in a collaborative and personal way Mrs change and movement. Because of this, Cheetham was consulted over all aspects and because we were unsure whether the of its display and presentation. She could museum would be successful or not, we ensure that her mother's memory was trea borrowed rather than acquired objects for ted with respect. the displays. People lent us things for five This courtesy was not afforded to the years after which they had the option to anonymous woman whose hair is now renew or to terminate the loan. One lady shown in the Petrie Museum (Fig 3). This lent us a commode that her mother had hair, and a section of scalp, was excavated used in her house in Croydon around by Petrie from a tomb of the 18th or 19th 1895. She decided not to renew the loan Dynasty (1567-1200 BC) at Gurob. Even as she is getting older and would like to the most careful, the most organised use the commode herself now. This con archaeology is inevitably a kind of viola cept is very much that of the ecomuseum tion because it takes place without con - it is not new. But many of my museum sent. To date there have been no formal colleagues still find it shocking. In Britain, demands for restitution of objects from in order to be registered, a museum must the collection, but I feel there is a need to own or intend to acquire substantial per look at ways in which things can be shared manent collections. The museum world in and given back in other ways. general lays far too much emphasis on owning and not nearly enough on sharing A GOOD MUSEUM CHANGES or giving. Too many curators still regard the collections as their own. The material A museum is only a temporary place. There excavated by Petrie is now in at least 20 is not one storehouse in the world that has public collections worldwide - there is lasted a couple of thousand years. (W M F great potential for re-assembling material Petrie, 1904)5 from specific sites, now dispersed. Doing Say every six months you could change the this kind of thing will require a substantial theme (white teenager in Croydon, 1990)6 shift of attitude and resources. But the Petrie was an extraordinarily perceptive alternative is too static, too dull, too was man and a century later many of his ideas teful. still seem quite radical. For instance, many of my contemporaries believe that museums are permanent institutions, with DE AD OR ALIVE - SOME QUE S TIONS ABOUT OBJE CT S AND PEOPL E A GOOD MUSEUM IS ABOUT ME about their culture. Many Black and Asian 21 people were not used to seeing themselves In Croydon we tried to create an inclusive represented positively in museums and did museum, where people of different racial not trust us to do it properly. and cultural backgrounds could see If I think back to when I studied themselves represented. Not surprisingly, Ancient Egypt at school I am sure that no we found it hard to convince Black and one ever suggested to me that the Asian people we were serious about this. Egyptians were anything other than whi The feeling was particularly strong among te-skinned; Cleopatra was Elizabeth older people, who had dealt with the Taylor. It was quite a shock to me when in racism they encountered in Britain by for my late twenties I first encountered people ming their own self-help groups. They who saw Egyptian history as part of regarded their history as precious and dis African history; so effective had been the tinct.

Load more