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. One organisation that did get invol­ appropriation of Egypt, so inherently ved with the museum was a group called racist my education that I had never previ­ the Guyanese Organisation for Cultural ously thought of Egypt as part of Africa. Advancement (GOCA). They made and And yet the Greek historian Herodotus lent to the museum a banner embroidered who was in Egypt in the mid-5th century with a map of Guyana and scenes from BC described the Egyptians as «having everyday life they remembered from their black skins and woolly hair».8 The ques­ youth (Fig 4). Joyce Daniels, a member of tion of the skin colour of the Ancient GOCA, recalled: Egyptians is complex but even today too few schoolchildren know that some of We started COCA in 1976 to improve the educati­ Egypt's most powerful pharaohs and on of the children. There was no need for any many ordinary Egyptians were certainly elderly grouping then. As time went by the children black-skinned (Fig 5). Making this clear became parents, therefore the elderly contribution to both black and white children in as part of an extended family gradually diminished. London now might be one way of giving So the poor old dears were left alone. In the West back a stolen history. Indies, people took the pleasure to care for the Our history? We'd be lost without it elderly. It is a different era now, the extended fami ­ (Retired Asian Man, Croydon, 1990) 9 ly fabric is going. Some people still try to cope here, with a lot of difficulty I ca n tell you. So that's how A GOOD MUSEUM IS we picked up the elderly club. There are other day CONTENTIOUS centres and pop-ins but they don't feel welcome. And that is why we concentrated on the elderly in Questions of ownership and heritage are the community.' complex enough when dealing with recent history; they become vastly more difficult One Asian group who chose not to get when applied across millennia. I have involved instead wanted advice on setting always found the idea of communities and up their own collection of artefacts which therefore of community museums diffi­ they could use to educate young Asians cult. Communities are used to define SALLY MA C DONALD

22

Fig 5: Limestone carving (sculptor's trial piece) ofa Black rna11 from A mama, city ofAkhenate11 and Nefertiti, 1379-1361 BC. (UC 009)

«them» rather than «US» or «me». People Even in England at the age of 7 we had to start don't fall into neat categories. In Croydon covering our legs up, especially when our grand­ we tried hard to include a representative mother was around. When we went back to group of people in our displays but equal­ Pakistan when I was 9 it was even more extreme. ly we tried to avoid pigeon-holing people You are taught that you should have everything or forcing them into roles. They were covered, otherwise your dignity, your respect is individuals with belongings and stories threatened. In the first year I was there I was given more interesting than any stereotype. the chadder and the chadders just get bigger and Shanaz Aslam, a 13 year old with a British bigger as you get older and you cover more of your­ mother and Pakistani father, lent us a sel f until you're my age when you totally hide your­ woollen shawl or chadder from Pakistan se lf. After a while you begin to WANT to cover (Fig 6) . She said of it: yo urse lf. You know, it's IN THERE, without any­ body ever telling you so .

Fig 6: Shanaz Aslam in Croydon in 1994, wearing a chadder.

SALLY MACDONALD

24 Shanaz came back to England when she hood, from around 1910. She was one of was 12. I've more or less escaped from the seven sisters. She recalls: religion. But it's still going to take a while. 10 It's rare in museums to find children's We always went away for a fortnight at the end of stories told by children. Normally they are July. Always somewhere nearby like Litrlehampton. told by adults sentimental for their lost We always used to have very nice holidays and fa­ youth and illustrated with depressingly ther always used to put himself out. We younger safe objects; toys and games. The Petrie ones generally didn't see our father at any other Museum has an erotic dancing dress (Fig time. We were always up in our rooms by 6 o'clock 7), made from a net of beads, from Qau in the evening and father came back at 7. And he in Middle Egypt, which would have been didn't get home until 2 o'clock on a Saturday and worn by an 8 or 9 year old girl with not­ then he and mother slept all afternoon. On Sunday hing underneath. The dress is complete they went to church early. We all had to go at 11 with prominent breast caps and nipples, o'clock and father srayed and did the gardening. with a fringe of shells plugged to rattle Then they used to sleep all afternoon and go to when the girl moved. At a time when church in the evening and we had to go to bed. But child sexuality and paedophilia are taboo on holidays we'd go for long walks together and subjects this dress seems to cause problems we'd play cricket and ball and fly kites. Oh I used for many visitors. It is particularly proble­ to love flying kites. We used to have lovely walks matic to try to interpret it for an Egyptian across the sand dunes and look for shells. Father Muslim child in London today. was very nice. History is not a pretty thing (Black Retired Man, Croydon 1990) 11 The parasol had been her mother's idea to keep the girls looking fair. A GOOD MUSEUM TAKES ME OUT OF MYSELF Mother was quite strict. She liked us to be little bits of her really, be ladylike. You always had to do Setting up the museum in Croydon we exactly as she said. 12 were not starting entirely from scratch. We found some objects which had, in the Without that contact with a living person absence of a local museum, been given to the parasol might have had a label that the local studies library. One of these was read, «Sunshade, belonging to the Farr an early 20th century parasol which appe­ family of Thornton Heath, about 1910». ared, from a letter on the files, to have Behind that particular sunshade there's a been given to the library by two sisters whole story about how this little girl got from Croydon. They had left the area on with her parents. Using oral history decades ago but we managed to find one and contemporary comment is very com­ of them, Dorothy Farr, by now an elderly mon now in social history museums. lady living in Wolverhampton. We inter­ Clearly one can't engage with the dead in viewed her about the parasol and the the same way, but there are many ways in memories it triggered for her. They were which living people can bring ancient memories of her childhood of her child- things alive. In the Petrie Museum is a cyl- D EAD OR ALI VE - SOM E Q UEST IO NS AB OUT OBJ EC T S AN D P EOP L E

indrical pottery object with holes in the sides (UC 16773). One end is solid, the other end is missing. It was excavated by Petrie in the town of Kahun which was a pyramid builders' town inhabited for nineteen years only (1897 - 1878 BC) by workers building the pyramid of King Senusret II. When the pyramid was com­ plete the town was deserted and (unlike the pyramids, tombs and temples) was not thought worth robbing. Petrie found this object in the town rubbish dump. He thought it was a chicken coop. Someone recently travelling in North Africa saw a very similar object still in use - it was a rat-trap. A replica has now been made and the object can be understood in a new context; Petrie had noticed evidence of rats in the holes in the walls of the wor­ kers' housing. While many aspects of life change beyond recognition in only a few decades, others survive; in this case for nearly 4000 years. People explain things and things explain people. What is it that underlies our fascination with the past? .. .It is the love of life (W M F Petrie, 1904) 13

A GOOD MUSEUM JS A PLACE TO LEARN The Petrie Museum has very few visitors for a central London museum with highly appealing subject matter. But it has a tra­ dition of access and hands-on study that most museums lack. It was set up as a tea­ ching collection and it is expected that visitors will need to hold, to draw, to pho-

Fig 7: Girl 's bead-net dancing dress exct11Jt1ted in Qt111 i11 Middle Egypt, 2400 BC (UC 17743). SALLY MACDON A LD

26 tograph objects. Catalogues, stores and want to share them in this way. But if we displays are in the same area so researchers can develop proper systems for sharing can see and study anything they wish to both the objects and the information that by appointment. Analysis, including comes from people's contact with them, destructive analysis, is accepted as a means we have huge potential for increasing rese­ of study and regularly takes place. The arch and understanding and for develo­ collections are there to be not just visited ping skills. but used. Researchers working at the Every fragment of the products of the past Petrie have analysed anything from anci­ is concrete history (WM F Petrie, 1893) 14 ent bread loaves, the pigments used in That's the whole idea of museums, you faience, the contents of jars. should investigate and discover (Family This should be an exciting cyclical pro­ Museum Goer, Croydon, 1990) 15 cess in which information is taken from Our museums are ghastly charnel houses of the objects, assessed, interpreted, and murdered evidence (W M F Petrie, 1904) 16 returned to be added to the store of infor­ mation on which future research may A GOOD MUSEUM JS draw. But often it is not. Researchers may BRIGHT, FUNNY, INSPIRING forget or omit to send their findings back to the museum at all. And there are pro­ As a museum professional, as someone blems associated with this academic envi­ who is skilled in reading objects, it is very ronment, where original ideas and publi­ hard to accept that others may not find cations are worth money; whole subjects them appealing. In Croydon we carried are sometimes «kept» for individuals who out research to see how visitors used the may never deliver the goods. Academics displays; which exhibits attracted them earn more points for publishing in peer­ and held their attention. The early (pre refereed journals than they do from pro­ 1918) displays were the hardest for most ducing popular books or TV programmes. of our visitors, partly because they contai­ Without a financial impetus it can take ned less familiar objects but also because years for new research to become properly they were less colourful, more old. These public. things are an acquired taste. There was no It seems to me that there is great poten­ doubt about which object people liked tial for museums to develop in this area by best; it was a red «bubble car», made by a offering real access to the public. English Croydon firm in the early 1960s. It is primary schools now have to have a daily bright, cheeky, shiny, round, tactile. The «literacy hour» for all pupils but we are bubble car equivalent in an archaeological not teaching children or adults how to museum would have to be something big read objects. I think this is because to real­ and gold, which stands out from the mass ly read objects you have to be able to of small brown things that constitute the touch them and smell them - just looking main body of the collection. A recent (and at them in a case is nothing like the same unusually honest) visitor to the Petrie experience - and museums (like children) Museum just looked around, sighed with are too possessive about their objects to tiredness and said to me, «If only it was a DE AD OR ALIVE - SOME QUESTIONS ABO U T OBJ ECTS AND P EO PL E

bit more colourful». Especially where the start a corrupt and fraudulent organi­ 27 objects cannot be handled, giving them sation. In 1892 the society collapsed, visual appeal and richness - whether many ordinary Croydon people losing through lighting, props or other means of their life savings. Balfour escaped but was backgound colour - is really important. caught and sentenced to 14 years' hard You've got to have fantasy ifyou want peo­ labour. On back of the plank it says, ple to go (Family Museum Goer, Croydon, This bloody thief] Balfour is now in the 1990)'7 court in London May 1895. And fuck them a LL. A GOOD MUSEUM IS ABOUT The builders that found this piece of THE FUTURE AS WELL AS THE PAST wood were so intrigued by the use of the word «fuck» that they came to museum Museums are boring - they should have the staff to ask about it. This unofficial and future (Asian Teenager, Croydon, 1990) 18 irreverent message spoke directly from I want to end by mentioning the future builder to builder across a century. - which is something most museums deal Museums talk about their mission to pre­ with very badly or not at all. Most of the serve material evidence in such a clinical things excavated in Egypt were in some way, but rarely think about what this way intended as a message to the future. means, that museums should be messages Usually (when dealing with tombs and to the future; potent, troubling, funny. temples) these were messages to the gods, My message is: work out what your messa­ since intercepted by humans. One of my ge is and rediscover the magic of burial favourite museum objects ever is a small, and discovery. brown and distinctly unappealing-looking wooden plank found in Croydon during the refurbishment, in 1994, of the town hall, which had been built a century earli­ er. It was found during the demolition of FOOTNOTES a staircase in the basement - it had been used as part of the shuttering into which I. MacDonald, S, 1998. Croydon - What History?, concrete had been poured - and had obvi­ in Making City Histories in Mweums, London: ously been put there by a builder for futu­ Routledge (forthcoming). re builders to find. On one side is inscri­ 2. MacDonald, S, 1992. Your place or Mine? Are bed, Museums Just fo r People Like Us?, Social History This town ha!L in Croydon is the first Cumtors j oumal, volume 19, pp21-27. Society job that was ever built in Croydon 3. This summary is distilled from three separate and may it not be the Last Amen. pi eces of research: C roydon Coll ege, 1990. The town hall was built with money put Market Research for Croydon Museum, unpublis­ up by a new building society called The hed; Fisher, S, 1990. Bringing History and the Liberator, set up by Croydon's first mayor, Arts to a New Audience: Qualitative Research for Jabez Balfour. Many people put their the London Borough of Croydon, unpublished; savings into the society which was from Fisher, S, 1993. Qualitative Research to Determine SALLY MACDONALD

28 an Exhibitions Programme for CroJ1don Museum Sa/Ly MacDonald has studied Latin, Archaeology and Service, 1993 unpublished. Copies of these reports Ancient History and over the past 15 )'ears held a may be obtained from Croydon Museum Service. variety ofmuseum jobs. In 1989 she moved to 4. Fussell, A, 1992. Politics with a small "P": Croydon to set up a museum service fi'om scratch - Collecting with that personal touch, Conference Lifetimes, a museum about Croydon people, an exhi­ Paper, The Politics of Collecting, Walsall, unpu­ bitions and education programme and a heritage ser­ blished. Fussel, A, 1997. Make 'em laugh, make vice. For six months she has been Manager ofthe 'em cry'. Collecting for Lifetimes, - the interacti­ Petrie Museum ofEgyptian Archaeology at University ve museum about Croydon people. Nordisk College London. Museologi 1997/1 p 39-56. Adr: Petrie M11seu111, University College London, 5. Petrie, WM F, 1904. Methods and Aims in Gower Street, London WC1 E 6BT, UK Archaeology, London: Macmillan, p 180. Fax: +44-1715042886 6. Fisher, S, 1990, op cir. 7. Lifetimes multimedia displays, 1995. 8. Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, about 430 BC, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, London, Penguin (revised 1996) p 121. 9. Fisher, S, 1990, op cir. 10. Lifetimes multimedia displays, 1995. 11. Fisher, S, 1990, op cir. 12. Lifetimes multimedia displays 1995. 13. Petrie, WM F, 1904. op cir, pl92. 14. Petrie, WM F, 1904, op cit, p8 l. 15. S Fisher 1990, op cir. 16. Petrie, WM F, 1893. Introductory Lecture at University College London 14 January 1893, quoted in Janssen, R, The First 100 Years: Egyptology at University College London 1892- 1992, London: University College London, pp98-102. 17. Fisher, S, 1990, op cit. 18. Fisher, S, 1990, op cit.