Contents

1 Caroline Turner Editorial: Tomorrow’s Museums

5 Iain McCalman Museum & Heritage Management in the New Economy

17 Dawn Casey Case Study: The National Museum of Australia

25 Elaine Heumann Gurian What is the Object of This Exercise?: A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums

37 Howard Morphy Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery

51 Paul A. Pickering Conserving the People’s History: Lessons From Manchester and Salford

59 Dorreen Mellor Arterfacts of Memory: Oral Histories in Archival Institutions

68 Future Shots: Prominent Australians Share Their Thoughts on Museums of the Future

71 Ralph Elliot Book Review: Remarkable Occurences, The National Library of Australia’s First 100 Years, 1901–2001

Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 ISSN: 1440-0669 contents 3/3/03 5:07 PM Page 1

editorial: tomorrow’s museums

CAROLINE TURNER

An aerial view of the new National Museum of Australia on Canberra’s Acton Peninsula. Source: Ashton Raggatt McDougall, Robert Peck von Hartel Trethowan. Architects in Association

t the beginning of the twenty-first with the future of museums as cultural heritage A century museums worldwide are coming institutions and are both involved in research under increasing scrutiny as public institu- projects and partnerships with museums and cul- tions. They are taking on new roles and using tural institutions, nationally and internationally. new means of communication with audiences. Museums in our contemporary globalised Two volumes of Humanities Research — this world are far more than repositories of the his- issue for 2001 and the first volume for 2002 — tory of “nations” or single national narratives. will be devoted to this subject. The Human- They reflect culture in its broadest sense and ities Research Centre and the Centre for diverse community concerns as well as Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian transnational ideas. Their mission statements National University are both vitally conerned are as much concerned with education as with

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Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

preserving objects. The move away from the The modern museum is a by-product of traditional focus on objects (artefacts, docu- social changes which saw private collections ments, books and art works) of significance to opened to public use and the creation of individuals and societies is a theme taken up national museums. The Louvre, one of the by Elaine Gurian in her seminal article in this first modern museums, is an example of a volume. More and more, however, as other museum as a national focus for bringing contributions in this volume indicate, muse- together a nation’s history in times of great ums and other heritage institutions such as social change. Its early collections embraced, libraries, have also become forums for public not only those of the former Kings, but collec- debate, broadly based classrooms, memorials tions of material from buildings, memorials, and places of mourning, sites of social interac- churches destroyed in the Revolution and tion and creative encounters, and even zones were magnificently, if controversially, aug- of spiritual experience and places for healing mented by the imperial conquests of of community trauma. Old and new technolo- Napoleon and colonial expansion. Although gies are generating new ways of seeing and ostensibly a museum devoted to all human experiencing. The new inclusiveness in many civilisation, it was ultimately the national museums of minorities, especially Indigenous museum of France. In the US, the circum- groups, and the presentation of multiple stances of the eighteenth-century revolution- perspectives and issues of controversy offer ary war against Britain necessitated preserving new directions for the future. knowledge of the nation’s birth and the Thus museums today can be seen as critical communication of “core” values, resulting in to a nation’s understanding of itself in the almost a national obsession with museums of future, of potential enormous significance to history. The national parks commemorating subaltern groups within societies and to human- nineteenth century Civil War battle sites ity as a whole. New types of museums and her- completed from the 1930s to the 1960s are an itage sites have emerged, including those, such example of national mourning and healing by as ecomuseums, which emphasise sustainable commemorating the bravery of both sides in economic development for local communities, one of the most bitter of civil war conflicts cultural tourism sites to share natural and which sometimes literally pitted brother material heritage with visitors, or “keeping against brother. What the battlefield parks places” for objects sacred to Indigenous cul- tended to ignore in this equation was the issue tures which cannot be shared with others. In of human slavery and it has been left to more some museums today the emphasis is on pre- recent US museum developments, including serving the culture of a particular group, in Afro-American museums to fill this gap. other cases it is multifocussed inclusiveness In Australia, science, history and natural and in yet other cases the concept is of envi- history museums, libraries and art galleries ronment or heritage belonging to all human developed in each of the nineteenth century beings (i.e. the debate over the destruction of colonies as part of initiatives to create a the Afghan Buddhas). A redefinition of the “civilised” society. National museums have functions of museums to include contributions been largely a product of the second half of the to cultural survival and revival of subaltern twentieth century and we lacked a national groups as well as dominant ones, poses new social history museum until the opening of the and complex questions for those charged with new Museum of Australia in March 2001. The administering these institutions. Some of these Australian War Memorial in Canberra, the critical questions are reserved for our 2002 vol- national consolidation of a deep need for ume, which also has a special focus on new memorialising the sacrifices of war was, like developments in museums in the Asia-Pacific the “Digger” memorials put in place in every region. small town after the first World War, a com-

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CAROLINE TURNER Tomorrow’s Museums

munity response to incredible trauma. Until museum and its educational authority is the opening of the new National Museum of diminished. Tomorrow’s museums will reflect, Australia, the War Memorial could indeed be one hopes, new partnerships between muse- described as the national history museum for ums, universities and other educational Australians. Interestingly this was a concept of institutions. Some partnerships, and their nation forged in international conflict, begin- scholarly and popular results, are described in ning with Gallipoli. It is still one of the most this volume, and suggest ways forward. visited museums in Australia. The new Museums in Australia today are more and National Museum is more focussed on more presenting and examining issues of con- Australia’s domestic history. troversy — two, or more, sides to a story espe- In Australia today, museums, art museums, cially that of Indigenous contacts with heritage organisations, libraries and archives Europeans. What is going on in Australian are facing considerable challenges. They may museums today may be a redefinition of be valued contributors to society, including Australian culture and society. Australian through knowledge enhancing research and museums reflect what has been occurring in cultural tourism, but they are also expected to this country for the last fifty years. Many are raise varying proportions of their own revenue developing programs which interact with very and to justify what they do in quantitative large numbers of people and many, including terms related to the national economy. They the National Museum of Australia, emphasise are also part of new attitudes to culture in this the personal stories of ordinary people. There country and must address new approaches to is more emphasis on women, on preserving the history. Iain McCalman and Dawn Casey environment, on Indigenous issues, and on discuss some of the challenges in important the rich variety of migrant experiences that go contributions to this volume, first delivered at into the make-up of our multicultural society. a major summit on Australia’s future Undoubtedly, this points to a redefinition of convened by the Academies of Humanities Australian culture and society. The widening and Social Sciences. In this volume also community involvement in museums today Howard Morphy, Paul Pickering, Doreen can, as Dawn Casey, Director of the National Mellor and Ralph Elliott, together with a Museum of Australia puts it, promote partici- variety of Australian museum professionals, pation amongst those sections of the commu- discuss critical issues for the future of museums nity “… who have typically been excluded or as well as new approaches to culture and alienated by conventional participation and history and to researching and communicating communication processes.” Nevertheless, as knowledge. we know, cultural interaction is not always on While museums have always needed to be equal terms. A new conservatism has emerged research based institutions, one controversy towards history in some museums overseas and emerging today in Australia is whether the similar pressure may be exerted here. Let us economic pressures and programming hope that the new inclusiveness in museums changes, including an emphasis on new tech- in the late twentieth and early twenty-first nology, are eroding the research base. Does it centuries does not suffer a reaction with the matter if “curators” become “content develop- subsequent return of less nuanced national ers” — probably not but if research is not done narratives which, in the process, exclude then obviously the intellectual core of the many from the story.

3 MUSEUM & HERITAGE MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW ECONOMY

an address to THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES SUMMIT 26-27 JULY 2001, Canberra

IAIN McCALMAN

Introduction: Cultural Yet the very governments that fund these Heritage — Public Good and institutions as agents of public good underval- Economic Agent ue them as agents of economic growth. Like cultural institutions more broadly, CHOs are here is no disputing that museums, art still seen predominantly as part of a worthy Tmuseums, heritage organisations, and but essentially hobbyist and elitist publicly- archives are valued highly in Australia. funded ‘welfare’ sector, or as a ‘natural’ by- However much lobby groups or governments product of human society that requires no might disagree about what constitutes worth- conscious planning or stimulation. Above all, while cultural heritage and about how that governments and economic planners have heritage should be presented, there is broad failed to appreciate CHOs as dynamic contrib- consensus about its importance to national utors to the new information-based, globally- psychic health. In a climate of diminishing influenced, knowledge economies of the state provision for public culture, we have just twenty-first century. witnessed a major investment by the Global knowledge economies are generally Commonwealth Government in a new defined by their focus on performance in three National Museum of Australia. seminal areas: education, research and devel- This kind of investment derives from a opment, and information and communica- bipartisan appreciation of the value of cultur- tions technologies. Collectively, these areas al heritage organisations as agents of public comprise the OECD-defined index for invest- good. Major cultural heritage organisations ment in knowledge. (CHOs) are seen by most governments as nec- essary to modern democracy. They enable a The Humanities and Social Sciences Summit multi-ethnic population of citizens to partici- was held at the National Museum of Australia, pate in evolving new senses of national iden- 26-27 July 2001. It was convened to provide a tity out of a diversity of experiences, values platform for public discussion on the role of and traditions. There is a realisation across the the humanities and social sciences in today’s spectrum of Australian politics — witnessed economy. The Summit was sponsored by the in the Centenary of Federation celebrations Higher Education Division of the Department around the country — that our population has of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, and differing historical heritages, and that these was convened by the Academy of the Human- heritages must be retrieved, cherished, and ities, Academy of Social Sciences, Dean of Arts, renegotiated if we are to maintain Australia as Sciences and Humanities and the Business a cohesive democracy with an appropriately Higher Education Round Table. Further info at healthy sense of civility and social respons- http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/humanities ibility.

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The Commonwealth Government’s recent longer be in a position to participate in build- innovation plan, ‘Backing Australia’s Ability’, ing this new knowledge matrix of the future. seeks to institute comprehensive and long- Our economic competitors are not making the term policies to stimulate our development as same mistake. a global knowledge economy capable of Take the relevant examples of Britain, competing in the markets of the future. Many Singapore and New Zealand, where similar of the proposals in the innovation action plan processes of policy-making for innovation are are excellent. It is impossible to underestimate under way. In the British Government’s Green the importance of stimulating new skills, ideas Paper, ‘Culture and Creativity’, stress is laid on and commercial initiatives through research ‘the key role that culture and creativity play in and development alliances between universi- the government’s educational and industrial ty, government and private industry. But why policies’. ‘Culture and Creativity’ acknowl- has this process been confined to science and edges the importance of the cultural sphere as technology? By implication CHOs are viewed a sector of the economy that continues to neither as productive industries in need of experience vigorous growth in Britain and research and development nor as sources of throughout the globe. But it also recognises intellectual innovation and experiment on that cultural research and development con- which our future competitive knowledge stitutes an essential catalyst of future innova- economy will depend. tion: ‘creative talent will be crucial to our ‘Backing Australia’s Ability’ singles out individual and national economic success in biotechnology and agribusiness as crucial the economy of the future’. nodes for research and development invest- It is a truism that a spirit of innovation and ment, but says nothing, for example, about experiment is difficult to inculcate. Otherwise encouraging the growth of cultural and social everyone would do it. Recent research in informatics in the knowledge society of the Singapore identifies the neglect of the human- future. Cultural informatics encompasses the ities as the ingredient hampering an otherwise human application of the information revolu- highly sophisticated knowledge society from tion. It is defined as the interdisciplinary study taking a lead in innovation. Investment in of information content, representation, tech- science and technology alone has failed to nology and applications, and the methods and generate the intuitive, pluralistic and multi- strategies by which information is used in dimensional modes of thinking necessary to organisations, cultures and societies. In the twenty-first-century innovation. United States, Canada and Europe, cultural Historians and economists have long informatics is a burgeoning field for govern- debated what it was that gave British society ment, university and private industry invest- the innovatory psychology to trigger the first ment. industrial revolution in the mid-eighteenth Museum and heritage management has century. Most scholars now agree that, what- been in the vanguard of developing this new ever else was involved, the open, critical spir- knowledge form. In the United States, Europe it that sprang out of Nonconformist religious and parts of Asia, CHOs are fast integrating and educational culture played a crucial role with information management systems to gen- in shaping the first industrial generation of erate both theoretical and applied innovations entrepreneurs and inventors. In short, cul- in cultural informatics. This is manifested in ture, science and technology were part of a new degree programs, expert conferences, and holistic mix, without which intellectual com- research collaborations with heritage institu- bustion would not have occurred. tions, technology industries and universities. No wonder, then, that Tony Blair asserted Australia has also achieved a great deal, but in his stunningly successful recent election without conscious investment we will soon no campaign: “For too long arts and culture have

6 IAIN McCALMAN Museum & Heritage Management in the New Economy

Portrait of Captain James Cook by John Webber (c1752-1793), oil on canvas. Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Purchased 2000 by the Commonwealth Government with the generous assistance of Robert Oatley and John Schaeffer. Photo: David Reid. stood outside the mainstream, their potential an enormous diversity of forms outside the unrecognised by government. That has to more familiar ones of museums, art museums, change, and … it will … In the twenty-first and archives, including historical theme century, we are going to see the world increas- parks, science and technology centres, house ingly influenced by innovation and creative museums, memorial and commemorative minds. Our future depends on creativity.” institutions and interpretation centres. Plenty of people visit them. The 1. Museums and Heritage organ- Australian Bureau of Statistics survey of atten- isations as Culture Industries dance at Selected Culture/Leisure Venues in April 1999, indicated that total attendance at Recognition that culture is big business, is museums is in excess of sixteen million people not new; neither is it new to point out that per year and the figure is slightly higher for art changing patterns of consumption and rising museums. Around 20 per cent of the Aust- real incomes are fostering a growth in demand ralian population aged fifteen and over had for cultural goods and services through the visited a museum at least once in the industrialised world. But it is worth reaffirm- previous year, and among these is a very high ing this basic economic case in the more percentage of school age children — the specific context of museum, art museums, and consumers and innovators of the future. heritage organisations. Tourism Attendances The figures of Australian museum atten- First we need to note that there are a lot of dance climb to between 60 and 70 per cent these cultural heritage institutions: research of when international tourists are polled, a vital- three years ago shows that there were then ly important economic indicator given that more than 1700 such public institutions across tourism is now the world’s largest industry. Australia. Moreover, these institutions took Around 700 million people travel the world

7 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 every year and economists predict that at the when he announced a ten-year plan to posi- present rate of growth this figure will reach a tion Sydney as a major intellectual and arts staggering 1.6 billion people by 2020. centre. Under Premier Kennett Victoria also Moreover, it is relevant to note that cities and embarked on an unprecedentedly high level of regions containing world heritage listings are expenditure on museums, art museums and the most popular tourist destinations. CHOs. Such cities become places where those Last year more than 600,000 people visited with the highest disposable incomes want to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, live and to raise their children. and the figures are on target to exceed that considerably this year. Similarly, official Education Industries estimates of likely attendance at the new Culture industries, particularly the muse- National Museum of Australia fell far short of um and gallery sector, play a vital educative actual attendance figures which are over role in establishing the mutual cultural under- 450,000 already (figures as at 26 July 2001). standings and connective tissues for develop- Even considered on a more modest local ing international trade and business markets. and regional scale, museum and heritage insti- Schools in Queensland have for some time tutions constitute an astonishing source of fostered the teaching of Asian languages as a actual and potential economic vitality for core part of the curriculum in order to under- communities, councils, businesses and tourist pin consumer and business relations of the bodies. Arresting the decline of the bush has future. Likewise, the Asia-Pacific Art Triennial to be among our most serious national con- at the Queensland Art Gallery has drawn many cerns. Local museum and heritage activity can thousands of Queenslanders into new under- provide additional sources of community standings and connections with modern Asian income and employment, diversify vulnerable societies and cultures. Conversely, the inter- economies, and strengthen local identity and national reputation of this Triennial exhibi- morale. tion and festival as the premier global forum of Research undertaken in 2000 on three his- modern Asian art has brought a new respect torical mining towns, Maldon in Victoria, for and understanding of Australia throughout Burra in South Australia, and Charters Towers the Asia-Pacific region. in Queensland, showed that visitors spent $102-164 each day in the towns and surround- Global and Regional Markets ing regions, adding $2-4.5 million to the Our economic competitors have shown annual gross regional product. Or, to take themselves well aware of cultural heritage another relevant example, income generated activities as agencies of long-term social diplo- in Australia last year from the sale of macy and trade development, which is why Aboriginal crafts, many of which were chan- countries such as Sweden, France, Holland, nelled through museum and heritage outlets, Portugal and Belgium are investing heavily in was in excess of $200 million. rebuilding heritage in Asia, especially South East Asia, Vietnam and East Timor. Disturbingly, Civic Infrastructure Australia’s relative disregard of the impor- Museums and heritage organisations are tance of cultural heritage diplomacy in favour also a key element of the hidden infrastructure of engagements motivated by short-term or that gives modern cities a competitive edge instant trade benefits, has produced a situation when seeking to attract international busi- where we are being sidelined from such her- nesses to locate and relocate. This is one rea- itage initiatives. A new Europe-Asia League son that Singapore funds them generously and for cultural heritage has recently been found- this presumably lay behind the thinking of ed that explicitly excludes Australia. It also New South Wales Premier Bob Carr in 1997 seems likely that the UNESCO proposal to

8 IAIN McCALMAN Museum & Heritage Management in the New Economy build a new national museum of East Timor museum and heritage professionals. It is cus- will be undertaken in cooperation with tomarily published by heritage organisations, Portugal rather than Australia. An undervalu- in collaboration with university researchers, ing of the role of heritage in rebuilding com- through the medium of scholarly presses, on- munities and nations could lead us to squander line publications, specialist journals and the the good will that has been built up through like. other forms of aid and diplomacy. Research into Communicative and 2. Cultural Heritage organisa- Learning Processes tions: Innovation and the New economy As interpreters, as well as preservers, of heritage significance, CHOs have also had to The fact that a number of CHOs in develop theoretical and applied research Australia have managed to become key sites of expertise into how these diverse audiences innovative research and development in spite experience and process heritage information of a disadvantaged funding climate highlights and images. CHOs are in the business of hav- the folly of excluding them from the enhanced ing constantly to discover and tell stories in benefits of government research and develop- ways that appeal to consumers already ment programs such as ‘Backing Australia’s schooled in sophisticated information process- Ability’. Of course, museums and heritage es. As a result CHOs have become vital com- organisations have long possessed some spe- ponents of the educational infrastructure of cialised research dimensions, but these have modern industrialised countries. By compari- grown and diversified as CHOs have moved son with most educational institutions their beyond their traditional roles as collectors, remit is also exceptionally wide. They must preservers, and custodians of material culture reach and retain audiences from the very into interpreters, teachers, and popular dis- young to the elderly, from those with tertiary seminators of diverse cultural products. qualifications to those with none at all, from those who speak English as their first language Mapping the Character and Needs of to those who do not, from international Heritage Consumers tourists wanting instant histories to specialist For a start, CHOs have had to pioneer local audiences looking for reflections of their research into the nature of museum publics. particular experiences. Proposed museum exhibitions are now sub- jected to intensive preliminary consultation Social Applications for Information Technologies and trial among cross-sections of the public, using a variety of polling techniques and com- CHOs find themselves at the forefront of parative international research data. Publicly- developing human uses for new information funded heritage organisations have to justify and multimedia technologies, particularly in their existence and measure their success the customising of software applications and through their ability to attract mass audiences the development of useful content for these within a highly competitive leisure economy. technologies. Today, the collections of muse- This has forced them to develop sophisticated um, libraries and heritage organisations are calibrations of the ethnic, age, class, gender, likely to be digital as well as material, and and religious characteristics of their potential their audiences may live thousands of miles audiences, as well as understandings of the from the physical space where the institution communicative processes needed to reach and is located. Web portals, narrow and broadband retain them. This type of research has become broadcast facilities, and video, film and print part of the body of disciplinary theory and productions have become as important as the practice that must be absorbed by modern display cabinets of old. Partnerships with

9 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 industries and university researchers to gener- The South Seas Project is funded by a ate new methods of communicating their Strategic Partnership with Industry Research stories have become commonplace. and Training grant (SPIRT) and is a collabo- ration of scholars, curators and technicians A few examples: from the ARC Special Research Centre for The Discovery Centre of the CSIRO, the Cross-Cultural Research at the ANU, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the Australian Centre for Science, Technology National Museum of Australia have collabo- and Heritage in Melbourne, and the National rated with advanced computing specialists Library of Australia. These researchers are from the Australian National University’s developing a networked hypermedia ency- Super Computer facility to develop new muse- clopaedia of ocean voyaging and cross-cultur- um applications for the virtual reality immer- al encounter in the age of Enlightenment that sion system known as ‘The Wedge’, designed at the same time disseminates via the internet and built at the ANU. The National Museum the library’s unique manuscripts, maps and collaboration, for example, has produced the visual materials on the Pacific voyages of brilliantly creative ‘kSpace’, where children Captain Cook. In the process, researchers from six to fourteen are encouraged to have had to pioneer new forms of software create cities or motor vehicles of the future. application capable of generating stable and After designing their prototypes on a series of touch screens, children can see their inven- reliable standards of documentation and of tions projected in a dazzlingly colourful 3D absorbing future data increases without dam- virtual reality theatre. This innovative project aging the overall coherence and integrity of has also been linked into national and state the project. The result will be both a highly educational curricula in a way that demon- innovatory educational product and a set of strates the dynamic integration of the cultural information tools that can be applied to a wide heritage and educational sectors. variety of other hypermedia uses.

‘kSspace’ at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: George Serras © National Museum of Australia 2001

10 IAIN McCALMAN Museum & Heritage Management in the New Economy

A systematic series of information and Powerhouse Museum to explore how youth of multimedia research and development proj- Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds evolve ects are also under way in a new Consortium their sense of identity within contemporary for Research and Information Outreach popular culture. As well as helping to counter- (CRIO), which brings together a complemen- act disabling negative values and perceptions tary synergy of museum curators, information of ethnic migrant youth, this project develops experts and researchers from the National a series of practical youth training and Museum of Australia, the Australian National employment outcomes. University, and the Australian Institute of A similar series of research and develop- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. ment heritage collaborations at the University One of the first fruits of this collaboration, an of South Australia aim to reinvigorate eco- innovative CD Rom application called People nomic and civic infrastructure in rural South of the Rivermouth, will be displayed at this Australian towns and communities. The summit. It presents complex anthropological University’s Australian Architecture Archive research into kinship patterns and customary and History Research Group are involved in a life of an aboriginal community at Maningrida series of projects with local museums and in Arnhem Land, in ways that impart vivid, heritage organisations to develop visitors cen- multi-sensual viewer understandings. Its tres and architectural innovations for Broken unique multimedia template will be used to Hill and for Aboriginal communities at develop a further range of ‘virtual exhibitions’ Warburton. They are also undertaking her- centred on the origins and development of itage surveys for the towns of Woomera, Eden spectacle, multimedia and special effects in Park and Mitcham. Europe, Australia and Asia. Cultural Researc\h Precincts Urban and Rural Civic Environments One aim of such projects is to build, in A different type of applied research project areas where cultural and civic infrastructure is is being pioneered by the Institute of Cultural relatively thin, a new type of blended cultural Research (ICR) in Sydney. Combining research precinct. This seeks to link universi- researchers and experts from the University of ties, CHOs, and tourist and other businesses so Western Sydney, the University of Technol- as to create research and entertainment con- ogy, Sydney, and the Migration Heritage sortia. Out of these institutional clusters, new Centre of New South Wales, the ICR has economic and culturally dynamic synergies are developed collaborations with a variety of cul- being generated. Research experiments and tural heritage institutions and local govern- productive economic and social outcomes are ment agencies to enrich the social life and treated as mutually interactive. Tourism stimulate the civic infrastructures of Sydney’s becomes a magnet to other activities. newer migrant communities and precincts. Decades ago, the social wastelands of One of these, undertaken with the Art London’s Financial City area in the East End Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), is and Docklands were revitalised by building a developing an exhibition of Asian religious art series of cultural and heritage institutions as and culture in close consultation with local nodes of new economic and cultural activity. migrant communities in the inner West of Goldsmiths University, the Maritime Museum Sydney. Innovative in its combination of com- at Greenwich, the Museum of London and the munity and scholarly expertise, the exhibition Barbican cultural complex now routinely join also works to attract visitors from outside con- together in a series of economically and cul- ventional museum constituencies. turally productive relationships. Tourism and A second ICR project, ‘Generate’, works its penumbra of service industries now flourish with the Migration Heritage Centre and the in the district.

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Screens from the CD-Rom application ‘People of the Rivermouth’.

12 IAIN McCALMAN Museum & Heritage Management in the New Economy

Most Australian cities have evolved such done in concert with the explosive forces of cultural research precincts quite unconscious- globalisation. ly in areas where CHOs and Universities hap- Museums, art museums and CHOs have pen to be physically contiguous, particularly long cultivated international relationships when these locations are also attractive to through their need to negotiate international tourists. Networks of cultural institutions, loans and exchanges, to repatriate or share key businesses and university research bodies clus- cultural heritage items, and to collect items of ter together around Circular Quay in Sydney, national heritage that have been dispersed along the south riverbank of Brisbane and abroad. Melbourne, along the Torrens River near the In the past decade, however, an awareness University of Adelaide and in the Freemantle of the need to develop international linkages docklands of Western Australia. for the pursuit of research has led to a much Most recent of such precincts is the Acton more systematic and integrated process of Peninsula in the ACT, where this summit is international dialogue and cooperation taking place and a national research cluster is between universities and CHOs. The linchpin being consciously developed. Here we find of this process has been the international colocated such institutions as the National Consortium of Humanities Centres and Museum of Australia, the Australian Institute Institutes (CHCI), administered from Harvard of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander University under the directorship of Professor Studies, ScreenSound Australia, the Learned Marjorie Garber. This US-based but interna- Academies of Science, the Social Sciences tionally focused organisation gathers together and the Humanities, and the ANU’s a huge network of university humanities cen- Humanities Research Centre, Centre for tres, private funding foundations and CHOs. Cross-Cultural Research, Asia Pacific School Membership includes the Getty, Smithsonian, of Economics and Management and new Field, and Huntington Museums, and the National Europe Centre. This dynamic cluster Ford, Getty and Rockefeller Foundations. The of heritage, teaching and research bodies is CHCI coordinates information exchanges, beginning to work together, on the pattern of develops joint policy initiatives, brokers the Smithsonian on the Mall in Washington national and international collaborations, and DC, to develop a series of intermeshed research lobbies government and funding bodies. and development initiatives that will generate In 1999, on the initiative of the ANU’s innovatory research, mount joint educational Humanities Research Centre, assisted by and training programs, and attract a variety of Griffith University and the Queensland Art tourist constituencies. One aim will be to Gallery, the CHCI convened its annual disseminate this research to national publics conference in Brisbane, the first time it has through electronic and broadcasting portals, gathered outside the USA. Building on the and to attract private investment capital into success of this meeting, an Australian the area so as to stimulate further innovation. Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes, has been founded to develop inter- International Research and national and national research, funding and Development Initiatives teaching collaborations between university CHOs have also shown themselves acutely and public CHOs. aware of the need to look outwards beyond Already this has produced several collabo- Australian national horizons to engage in rative global R&D projects. One of the most intellectual collaborations, exchanges and dia- ambitious will link the Humanities Research logues of an international and transnational Institute for all ten campuses of the University kind. It is a truism that the building of new of California in the USA, with James Cook knowledge economies in the future must be University, the Humanities Research Centre,

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ANU, and the National Museum of Australia. Conclusion The project ‘Peoples and Places’ proposes to In the new global, information-based, focus on urgent common problems of environ- knowledge economies of the future, the abili- mental heritage in rainforests and deserts of ty to be innovative both in generating Latin America, the United States and research and applying it for social use is more Australia. Such global collaborations and rela- important than at any other time since the tionships not only gather new sources of onset of the first industrial revolution in the expertise and funding for Australia’s nascent second half of the eighteenth century. Yet the knowledge economy, but enable us to keep in psychic and intellectual properties that gener- the forefront of the breathtaking pace of ate a creative, innovative, and critical culture change within global information environ- during times of bewildering social and techno- ments. logical change remain elusive. The governments of Britain, Singapore Integration of Science, Technology and Cultural Heritage Research and New Zealand, to take examples of clear relevance to Australia, have recently stressed s It is typical of such collaborations also, precious pioneering spirit of innovation. whether national or international, that no Australia needs it. sharp distinction is drawn between cultural, IAIN McCALMAN scientific and technological research. The above initiative, for example, has already Acknowledgements engendered linkages with the Rainforest and My thanks to Lindy Shultz, Christine Clark and Reef Cooperative Research Centre in Cairns Caroline Turner for their help in researching and and Townsville, as well as a variety of ANU preparing this paper. faculty involved in arts, computing, forestry, geology and resource management research, and, of course, with the full spectrum of scien- tific, cultural and environmental curatorial References staff of the National Museum of Australia. Agenda for the Knowledge Nation: Report of the The report of November 2000, Knowledge Nation Taskforce (Canberra: Chifley ‘Knowledge, Innovation and Creativity’, Research Centre, 2001). commissioned by the Ministry of Research Australian Bureau of Statistics, Attendance at Selected Science and Technology in New Zealand, Cultural Venues, Australia, Apr. 1999, Cat. No. 4114.0 stressed that innovation and creativity are (Canberra: ABS, 1999). complex social and cultural processes that Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Culture and cannot be achieved without close arts-science Recreation: Centenary Article - Accounting for linkages and convergences. The idea that Audiences in Australian Museums’, in Year Book Australia, 2001, (Australia Now series) (Canberra: innovation and creativity can be fostered in a ABS, 2001). society by cordoning off the cultural from the technological and scientific spheres was seen Australian Bureau of Statistics, Culture and Recreation: Museums and Art Museums, (Australia Now series) as both unrealistic and myopic. The report (Canberra: ABS, 1999). states, “One sign of this convergence is the increasing use of ‘creativity’ in scientific and Australia Council, ‘The Arts in Australia: Some Statistics’ (internet resource, 2001 - technological contexts; another is the use of http://www.ozco.gov.au/resources/snapshots/ ‘industry’ and ‘product’ in arts contexts.” statistics.html).

14 IAIN McCALMAN Museum & Heritage Management in the New Economy

‘Backing Australia’s Ability: An Innovation Action Reference Group for the Australian Academy of the Plan for the Future’, executive summary (internet Humanities, Knowing Ourselves and Others:The resource, 2001 - http://www.innovation.gov.au/iap/ Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century, Vol. 3: policy_launch/templates/brochure.doc). Reflective Essays (Canberra: Australian Research Council Discipline Research Strategies, 1998). Conference Proceedings 2000:Heritage Economics, Challenges for Heritage Conservation and Sustainable Margaret Seares, ‘National Press Club Address’ (inter- Development in the 21st Century (Canberra: Australian net resource, 2001 - http://www.ozco.gov.au/issues/ Heritage Commission, 2001). events/pressclub.html Mark Considine, et al., The Comparative Performance of Successful Tourism at Heritage Places: A Guide for Australia as a Knowledge Nation: Report to the Chifley Tourism Operators, Heritage Managers and Communities Research Centre (Canberra: Chifley Research Centre, (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 2001). 2001). David Throsby, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: The Hon. Dr D.A. Kemp, Knowledge and Innovation: A Cambridge University Press, 2001). Policy Statement on Research and Research Training C. Turner, J. Webb and R. Devenport, (eds), Beyond (Canberra: AusInfo, 1999). the Future:The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Gillian Koh and Ooi Giok Ling, State-Society Relations Contemporary Art (exhibition catalogue) (Brisbane: in Singapore (Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies and Queensland Art Gallery, 1999). Oxford University Press, 2000). Caroline Turner, (ed), Tradition and Change: Leisure and Change: Implications for Museums in the 21st Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific (Brisbane: Century (Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 2000). University of Queensland Press, 1993). National Museums: Negotiating Histories: Conference Proceedings (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2001). New Zealand. Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, ‘Knowledge, Innovation, and Creativity: Designing a Knowledge Society for a Small, Democratic Country’ (internet resource, 2000- http://www.morst.govt.nz/publications/humanz/ Humanz.htm).

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CASE STUDY: THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA

KEYNOTE ADDRESS FROM THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES SUMMIT 26-27 JULY 2001, Canberra

DAWN CASEY

oday’s case study is provided by the new The outcome is not just job creation and TNational Museum of Australia, a museum tourist income — though they do provide a which is not only a showcase for Australian significant and measurable economic return cultural and environmental history, but also a on investment — but also a profound contri- research base and centre of excellence. About bution to the evolving discussion of national 450,000 visitors have passed through the exhi- history and identity, the place of Indigenous bitions since March, but while they may spend peoples in a pluralistic settler society and the hours exploring the subject matter of Tangled aspirations of present day Australians for the Destinies or Nation or Horizons, they only see future. the surface. There is very much more going National museums are always, in part, a on behind the scenes, including collection nation building exercise and national govern- care, professional consultancies, future plan- ments are mindful of their potential impact on ning and research, which the general public public discourse. Today I also hope to show never see. And yet it is research in particular you that the government’s investment in the which underpins the content and the quality National Museum of Australia has given us a of the visitor experience as well as the broad number of other assets, many of them planned range of the Museum’s work. in advance but some arising incidentally from Why do we have museums? The tradition- the development process, which we intend to al definition describes a permanent institu- exploit for our own and the national good. tion in the service of society which acquires, But let me return to the Museum’s official conserves, researches, communicates and role as anticipated by the National Museum of exhibits material evidence of people and their Australia Act 1980. environment.1 However a more realistic ques- The functions of the Museum are: tion might be: why do we have a National * To develop and maintain a national collec- Museum of Australia — most especially now, tion of historical material; in an era of restricted Commonwealth expen- * To exhibit historical material from the diture on cultural institutions of all kinds? national historical collection; The answers are quite interesting. The * To exhibit material in written form or in obvious one, of course, is to commemorate the any other form relating to Australia or to a Centenary of Federation with an appropriate foreign country; and lasting expression of national history and * To conduct, arrange for or assist in research identity. But in addition to the chance to into matters pertaining to Australian history; and exploit that very fortunate anniversary, there * To disseminate information relating to was the realisation that funding of national Australian history and information relating cultural institutions is a sound investment. to the Museum and its functions.

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Dawn Casey walks through the Main Hall of the National Museum of Australia during its con- struction. Photo: Fairfax.

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The Museum shall use every endeavour to The diversity of specialist contributions make the most advantageous use of the was far greater than any of us expected at the national collection in the national interest.2 start and encompassed a number from the sci- So — we must collect, care for and display ences as well as the humanities. My head of heritage material, create exhibitions, research Research and Development, Dr Mike Smith, Australian history and disseminate the results. has observed that to develop just one exhibi- While based in Canberra, we must also remain tion, Tangled Destinies, we commissioned at mindful of our national obligations. And in various stages the work of an economic histo- the real world of 2001, we must do all of the rian, an archaeologist, a lexical cartographer, a above with a strictly finite set of resources: bio-geographer, a geo-morphologist and cul- human, financial and technological. tural geographer, as well as specialists in the Fortunately the Museum’s brief but intense history of natural history, the history of sci- development phase left us in March 2001 with ence, and the history of ethnography. Truly an a number of valuable assets. outstanding example of cross-cultural First and foremost is the building itself, research. which I suspect has added its own chapter of Among the Museum’s human resources I daring innovation to the history of Australian therefore include the many external advisers architecture. Our choice of the Alliancing who helped create the Museum’s content and method for its construction was also a world who in many cases have a continuing rela- first for a building project of this size. I believe tionship with us, and also of course the that Alliancing has now so successfully Museum’s staff. It takes an enormous range of demonstrated the value of an integrated team skills to run a museum, and I am pleased to say in achieving cost, time and quality targets and that we have acquired a correspondingly diverse a ‘no dispute’ culture, that it is likely to and talented staff with expertise in everything become a trend in Australia’s construction from visitor service and children’s programs to and other industries. multimedia technology and commerce. Other assets or resources which we now I mentioned technological resources as enjoy and intend to use as we plan our future another major asset which we intend to build development are as follows: people, technolo- on in the future. Based on the infrastructure gy, and partnerships. Let me tell you some- we already have and that which we intend to thing of our aspirations in the fields of acquire, in this field the sky is definitely the research, innovation and outreach and how limit. we intend to put those resources to good use in The National Museum’s recent Strategic the future. Review of Communications Technologies and One of the very great pleasures of the Information Management recognises that new Museum development process was the chance information and communication technologies to work with a number of wonderful people, offer the Museum important opportunities as expert advisers prominent in many academic an educator, a research institution and a fields — and I am pleased to recognise some of leisure venue for the general public. The use them in the audience today. Their contribu- of new communications media on-site, and tion to our great re-telling of the national the off-site distribution of museum content story not only ensured that the Museum’s through broadcasting, narrowcasting and the approach was detailed, balanced, richly Internet, can strengthen our role not just as a diverse and based on sound scholarship, but repository of artefacts but as a source of knowl- also left us with a group of good friends and edge and information for many audiences, respected colleagues whose advice we certain- including those who may never visit Acton ly hope to use in the future. Peninsula at all.

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in the Main Hall, and a number of interactive multimedia exhibits and databases throughout the public spaces. When it is not being used for conferences, this Visions Theatre also runs a digital video program based on historic film footage. The Museum’s web site provides another medium through which virtual visi- tors can explore our collections, exhibitions and multimedia resources and more is being added as the web site evolves and expands. In the next few years we intend to main- tain a leading position in information and communication technology by continuing to invest in technology infrastructure on Acton Peninsula and dramatically increasing our outreach potential. These are some of the outcomes we hope to see:

* Targeted technology — that is, services intended specifically for some of our priori- ty audiences. These would include school students up to Year 12, who frequently have good classroom access to information tech- nologies and are keen to exploit any inter-

Image of the programmable Optiwave Screen esting sources which can deliver curricu- in ‘kSpace’ at the National Museum of lum needs. Then there are adult Internet Australia. Photo: George Serras © National Museum users who like to browse for information or of Australia 2001 entertainment options and on-line shop- ping, and subject specialists who want Our challenge in the next years will there- access to our collections or databases. fore be to use information communication * Broadcasting — we aim to carry out web- technologies effectively to create and main- casting immediately, and after further tain a position in the very competitive infor- development explore other broadcast mation market. We will use these technolo- media to create innovative, specialist pro- gies to extend our professional practice across gramming, perhaps in co-production with the spectrum: research of all kinds, collections suitable partners. acquisition and management; the interpreta- * Collections management — we intend to tion of objects and historic events for different acquire an industry standard digital collec- audiences, the presentation of knowledge in tions management system which can com- interesting and user-friendly ways, and the bine acquisition, treatment, storage and capacity to support and illustrate debates exhibition records, images and intellectual about contemporary issues. property information for all items in the We are already well placed to meet these National Historical Collection. challenges. If you have seen the rest of the * Digitisation — the continuing large scale museum you will know that we have a rotating creation of digital copies of collection items audio-visual theatre called ‘Circa’, a three- or exhibition support material, particularly dimensional animation sequence downstairs those in which the museum has intellectu- in ‘kSpace’, a programmable Optiwave screen al property.

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* Central media repository — an integrated central repository to include all digital images, audio and video sequences which will have many uses, including off-site delivery of Museum programs. * e-Business — the capacity to deliver online retail facilities in order to enjoy the benefits of efficiency, public profile and income gen- eration. * Collection support strategies — the acquisi- tion of digital images, audio and video to support or complement the interpretation and historical significance of key collection items. The historic video footage associat- ed with the ABC broadcast van is an obvi- ous example.

In addition to acquiring and managing its own technology applications, the Museum has already been involved in a number of creative business partnerships whose work can be seen throughout the exhibition areas. The amazing welcome space leading into the Gallery of First Australians in which life- size dancers appear on the walls, and the pro- The ‘big map’ at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: George Serras © National Museum of gram reacts to the footprints of visitors passing Australia 2001 through the space, was created in collabora- tion with the CSIRO and of course the per- formers, Bangarra Dance Theatre. ‘kSpace’, an installation which encourages examples of what is possible in a museum con- young people to design a city and transport text when you merge the power of technology system of the future in which their own faces with the power of the human imagination. appear, was devised in collaboration with Another partnership about to be exploited ANU computer specialists. for a variety of useful outcomes is a three-way The electronic ‘big map’ of Australia on relationship between the Museum, the which visitors can call up a variety of interac- Murray-Darling Basin Commission and tive programs was developed in collaboration Charles Sturt University. with CDP Media and Massive Interactive of Picture this: an innovative collaboration Sydney. between a major natural resource manage- We call these ‘muscle media’ — powerful ment organisation, the Museum, and the media — and their impact on visitors can be Centre for Rural Social Research at Charles seen on any day of the week. They are Sturt University, in which each of the partners immensely attractive, and crowds usually maintains parallel goals, while involving rural gather to see the programs run through their communities in a number of associated pro- paces or to take their turn in ‘driving’ the grams and voluntary initiatives. interactive controls. And of course they have Among many other outcomes, this project also become showpieces for our business part- intends to consider a number of essential ners, who are now able to point to them as questions:

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* How can community participation in natu- So — what now lies ahead for the ral and cultural resource initiatives be acti- Museum? What are our aspirations for the vated and maintained? future? * How can such participation be made mean- In brief: ingful to the participants themselves? *To continue to delight and inform our * How can the diversity of the communities on-site visitors; within the Murray-Darling Basin be recog- *To build and exploit our influence as a nised, valued and reflected in such partici- major interpreter of Australian history; pation? *To maximise the use of information tech- * How can participation be promoted amongst nologies for the use of specialist off-site those sections of the community who have audiences; typically been excluded or alienated by *To become an acknowledged lead player in conventional participation and communi- the knowledge economy; cation processes? *To better manage heritage collections; and * How can the power imbalances and the lim- *To continue developing our skills base both itations of articulation and social skills be internally and through strategic alliances. overcome? I have already mentioned our commitment The National Museum and the Murray- to work with evolving new technologies, to Darling Basin Commission share an agenda develop the potential of assets such as our for increasing public participation in their Broadcast Studio and our web site. The respective programs — natural resource man- Museum development process included the agement and the preservation and communi- installation and testing of a sophisticated cation of Australian history. The research technical infrastructure based on multimedia. expertise of the Centre for Rural Social That infrastructure now supports interactive Research in social research, rural communities multimedia programs throughout the and participation will then be required to Museum, but it is only a beginning. answer the key questions. Most importantly, Although we have developed highly suc- this project recognises that the goal of activat- cessful schools programs here on Acton ing communities and individuals to support Peninsula, we now hope to reach out with our natural resource management involves an webcasts to all classrooms with Internet engagement with local cultural heritage — it access, or children working at home with their cannot be imposed from outside. That is parents. We want any Internet user to feel where the notion of a partnership becomes so encouraged to explore our online resources particularly appealing — the need for organis- and take away whatever they need in terms of ers to draw on expertise and experience across information, research materials or perhaps just very different fields. entertainment. Our ambition is to be known I find the potential of this project particu- as a reliable and authoritative source for any larly exciting — and once again, I would like enquirer, whether their need is images to to point out that it is only possible now that a accompany a school project or in-depth infor- cultural institution with the very wide ranging mation contributing to a research paper or interests of the National Museum exists to thesis. provide an essential link in such partnerships. We are also a member of the Consortium Government investment in a museum has for Research and Information Outreach set up given rise to the potential for a variety of by the ANU. The Consortium involves the research and development projects of endur- humanities, social science and environmental ing value. science sectors of the ANU and brings togeth- er in a formal relationship leading multimedia

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researchers to enhance the use of digital com- high visitor satisfaction levels, and I am munication technologies by cultural institu- confident that we can sustain this very posi- tions. Our physical proximity to the ANU tive trend. and its Centre for Cross-Cultural Research As many of you know, it took successive makes the proposed sharing of facilities, infra- Australian governments a very long time to structure and even staff particularly easy. proceed from the Pigott Report of 1975 to the Our chief ambition for the future is to establishing Act of 1980 and finally the built make the National Museum a familiar and Museum of 2001. It will now be our duty as valued part of Australia’s cultural landscape. I well as our pleasure to prove that such a major believe that the Museum’s influence will grow, investment of public resources was well made, in the sense that our innovative way of and will lead on to public benefits both presenting history will be considered worthy foreseeable and not yet guessed at, well into of imitation. We have positioned ourselves a the future. little differently from other museums and are DAWN CASEY already recognised for a popular and unusual approach to social and natural history, based on sound scholarship. This means challenges ahead as we try to stay competitive in a Endnotes market already well supplied with leisure 1 Paraphrased from the International Council of choices in general, and quality museums in Museums definition (see http://www.icom.org) particular. However we have started out with 2 Paraphrased from Section 6 (see http://www.austlii. gratifyingly large visitor numbers and very edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/nmoaa1980297/)

23 WHAT IS THE object OF THIS EXERCISE? A MEANDERING EXPLORATION OF THE MANY MEANINGS OF OBJECTS IN MUSEUMS

ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN

“ hy did the Serbs and Croats shell each of history has something central to do with the Wother’s historic sites when they had so spirit, will, pride, identity, and civility of little ammunition and these were not military people, and that destroying such material may targets?” I routinely ask my museum-studies lead to forgetting, broken spirits, and docility. graduate students this question when I lecture. This same understanding is what motivates “To break their spirit”, is always the instanta- cultural and ethnic communities to create neous answer. Museums, historic sites, and their own museums in order to tell their other institutions of memory, I would contend, stories, in their own way, to themselves and to are the tangible evidence of the spirit of a others. civilised society. And while the proponents of Yet neither the museum profession nor its museums have long asserted that museums add sibling workers in the other storehouses of col- to the quality of life, they have not understood lective memory (archives, libraries, concert (as the graduate students did when confronted halls, and so forth), makes (nor, I would con- by the example of war) how profound and tend, understands) the case clearly about its even central that ‘quality’ was. institution’s connectedness to the soul of civic Similar examples reveal the relationship life. In cities under duress you can hear the between museums and ‘spirit’ in sharp detail. case being made better by mayors and gover- Why did the Russians proclaim, one day after nors. Dennis Archer, the mayor of Detroit, the Russian revolution had succeeded, that all said recently while being interviewed on the historic monuments were to be protected even radio, ‘Detroit, in order to be a great city, though they most often represented the hated needs to protect its great art museum, the czar and the church? Why did Hitler and Detroit Institute of Art.’ It was Archer and his Stalin establish lists of acceptable and predecessor, Coleman Young, who champi- unacceptable art and then install shows in oned and underwrote the latest incarnation of museums to proclaim them while sending the Detroit’s Museum of African American formerly acclaimed, now forbidden, art to History. And it was Teddy Kolik, the fabled storage? Why did the Nazis stockpile Jewish former mayor of Jerusalem, who was the chief material and force interned curators to proponent of the creation of the Israel catalogue and accession it, intending to create Museum (and who placed one of his two a museum to the eradicated Jews? Why, when offices within the building). Mayors know why I was in the rural mountains of the museums are important. Citizens, implicitly, Philippines, was I taken to hidden closets that do too. A recent survey in Detroit asked peo- served as museums, curated by tribal members, ple to rate the importance of institutions to holding the material of the tribe’s immediate their city and then tell which they had visited. past, secreted from the dealers who were offer- The Museum of African American History ing great sums for the same material? was listed very high on the important list and In adversity it is understood, by antago- much lower on the “I have visited” list. People nists and protagonists alike, that the evidence do not have to use the Museum in order to

25 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 assert its importance or feel that their tax dol- brilliant play, are necessary but alone are not lars are being well spent in its support. sufficient. This essay points out something The people who work in museums have that we have always known intuitively: that collectively struggled over the proper defini- the larger issues revolve around the stories tion and role of their institutions. Their strug- museums tell and the way they tell them. gle has been, in part, to differentiate museums When parsed carefully, the objects, in their from other near relatives — the other store- tangibility, provide a variety of stakeholders houses of collective memory. The resulting with an opportunity to debate the meaning definitions have often centred on things — on and control of their memories. It is the owner- objects and their permissible uses. I believe ship of the story, rather than the object itself, the debate has missed the essential meaning that the dispute has been all about. (the soul, if you will) of the institution that is This essay suggests what museums are not the museum. (or not exactly) and, therefore, continues the dialogue about what museums are and what OBJECTS ARE NOT THE HEART OF THE MUSEUM makes them important, so important that people in extremis fight over them. The following discussion will attempt to capture that soul by throwing light on the WHAT IS AN OBJECT? shifting role of museum objects over time. It will show how elusive objects are, even as they “Ah, but we have the real thing”, museum remain the central element embedded within professionals used to say when touting the all definitions of museums. This essay will also uniqueness of their occupation. When I began postulate that the definition of a ‘museum in museum work, in the late 1960s and early object’ and the associated practices of acquisi- 1970s, the definition of museums always con- tion, preservation, care, display, study, and tained reference to the object as the pivot interpretation have always been fluid and around which we justified our other activities.1 have become more so recently. Objects did Although there were always other parts of the not provide the definitional bedrock in the definition, our security nonetheless lay in past, although museum staff thought they did. owning objects. With it came our privileged I will show that museums may not need them responsibility for the attendant acquisition, its any longer to justify their work. preservation, safety, display, study, and inter- But if the essence of a museum is not to be pretation. We were like priests and the muse- found in its objects, then where? I propose ums our reliquaries. that the answer is in being a place that stores The definition of objects was easy. They memories and presents and organises meaning were the real stuff. Words were used like in some sensory form. It is both the physicali- ‘unique’, ‘authentic’, ‘original’, ‘genuine’, ty of a place and the memories and stories told ‘actual’. The things that were collected had therein that are important. Further, I propose significance and were within the natural, cul- that these two essential ingredients — place tural, or aesthetic history of the known world. and remembrances are not exclusive to muse- Of course, real had more than one mean- ums. And, finally, I contend that the blurring ing. It often meant ‘one-of-a-kind’, but it also of the distinctions between these institutions meant ‘an example of’. Thus, artworks were of memory and other seemingly separate insti- one-of-a-kind, but eighteenth-century farm tutions (like shopping malls and attractions) is implements may have been examples. Things a positive, rather than negative, development. made by hand were unique, but manufactured Not meaning to denigrate the immense items became examples. In the natural history importance of museum objects and their care, world, almost all specimens were examples but I am postulating that they, like props in a had specificity as to location found. Yet some

26 ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN What is the Object of this Exercise? could also be unique — the last passenger private and corporate collections that were pigeon or the last dodo bird. Objects from considered by museum professionals to be dif- both categories, unique and example, were ferent and outside the field, separated suppos- accessioned into the collections. Museums edly by an underlying purpose. A legal distinc- owned the objects and took on the responsibili- tion of ‘not-for-profit’ was considered an ty of preserving, studying, and displaying them. essential part of the definition of a museum. It Yet even within these seemingly easy cate- was clear that while objects formed the neces- gories there were variations. In asserting sary foundation upon which the definition of a uniqueness (as in made-by-hand), specific museum might rest, they were not sufficient in authorship was associated with some objects, themselves. such as paintings, but not with others, most especially utilitarian works whose makers were CAN NON-COLLECTING INSTITUTIONS BE MUSEUMS? often unknown. Some unique works were thought of as ‘art’ and some as ‘craft’; with The Accreditation Commission of the some notable exceptions, art was individu- AAM next sought to determine if places that alised as to maker but craft was not. This prac- resembled collections-based museums but did tice, which is now changing, made it possible not hold collections (i.e. places like not-for- to do research and mount shows of the work of profit galleries and cultural centres) were, for particular artists in some, but not all, cultures. purposes of accreditation, also museums. In 1978, they decided that, in some instances, WHAT ARE COLLECTIONS? galleries could be considered museums In the early 1970s the American because, like museums, they cared for, Association of Museums (AAM) established displayed, and preserved objects even though an Accreditation Commission. As its mem- they did not own them. Ownership, therefore, bers deliberated, they discussed whether in some instances, no longer defined groups of living things could be called collec- museums. tions and whether institutions that so ‘collect- There was also the conundrum brought to ed’ should be classified as museums. the profession by science centres and chil- Heretofore, ‘museums’ were conserving things dren’s museums, mostly of the mid-twentieth that had never been, or now were no longer, century. Earlier in the century, these places alive. The field debated if the living things in had collected and displayed objects, but by botanical gardens, fish in aquaria, or animals mid-century children’s museums and science in zoos were ‘collections’; if so, were those centres were proliferating and creating new institutions, de facto, museums? It was decided public experiences, using exhibition material that, yes, at least for funding and accreditation that was built specifically for the purpose and purposes, they were museums, and the living omitting collections’ objects altogether. How things they cared for were likewise to be were these ‘purpose-built’ objects to be consid- regarded as collections, and hence objects.2 ered? They were three-dimensional, often Yet there were other institutional reposito- unique, many times extremely well made, but ries that cared for, protected, preserved, and they had no cognates in the outside world. taught about ‘objects’ but were not called Much of this exhibit material was built to museums nor necessarily treated by museums demonstrate the activity and function of the as siblings. Archives and libraries, especially ‘real’ (and now inactive) machinery sitting rare-book collections, were considered related beside it. but not siblings even though some museum The Adler Planetarium, applying to the collections contain the identical materials. AAM for accreditation, also caused the AAM There were also commercial galleries and to reconsider the definition of a museum. The

27 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 planetarium’s object was a machine that pro- parts of Charles and Ray Eames’s exhibit jected stars onto a ceiling. If institutions relied Mathematica: A World of Numbers and Beyond. on such ‘objects’, were these places museums? Dioramas were often built for a museum Had the profession inadvertently crafted a def- exhibition hall in order to put objects (mostly inition of objects that was restricted to those animals) in context. These display techniques, things that were created elsewhere and were which were considered a craft at the time they then transported to museums? That was not were created, were occasionally of such beau- the case in art museums that commissioned ty, and displayed artistic conventions of real- site-specific work. Certainly the murals of the ism (and seeming realism) so special, that depression period applied directly to museum today the original dioramas themselves have walls were accessionable works of art—an easy become ‘objects’, and many are subject to call! Portability, then, did not define objects. preservation, accession, and special display. In 1978, the Accreditation Commission of The definition of objects suitable for collec- the AAM, citing these three different types of tions has, therefore, expanded to include, in non-collections-based institutions (art cen- special cases, material built for the museum itself. tres, science and technology centres, and WHAT IS REAL? IS THE EXPERIENCE THE OBJECT? planetariums), wrote specific language for each type of museum and, by amending its In the nineteenth century, some museums definition of collections for each group, had and displayed sculptural plaster castings declared these types of organisations to be ... and studies. The Louvre and other museums museums! They elaborated: ‘The existence of had rooms devoted to copies of famous sculp- collections and supporting exhibitions is con- tures that the museum did not own. The orig- sidered desirable, but their absence is not dis- inals either remained in situ or were held by abling...’.3 In response, many museums set others. People came to see, study, and paint about creating more than one set of rules — these reproductions. They were treated with one for accessioned objects, and another for the respect accorded the real thing. For a long exhibitions material — and began to under- time, museums and their publics have felt that stand that the handleable material they used though there were differences between the in their classes (their teaching collections) should ‘original’ and reproductions, both had a place be governed by a different set of criteria as well. within their walls. Nevertheless, there were often no easy dis- Similarly, reconstructed skeletons of tinctions between the handleablity of teach- dinosaurs have long appeared in museums. ing collections’ objects and those others They usually are a combination of the bones of deserving preservation. The Boston Children’s the species owned by the museums plus the Museum loan boxes, for example, created in casting of the missing bones from the same the 1960s, contained easy-to-obtain material species owned by someone else. Sometimes about Northeast Native Americans. But by museums point out which part is real and the 1980s, the remaining material was retired which is cast, but often they do not. ‘Real’, from the loan boxes and accessioned into the therefore, takes on new meaning. Curators collections because it was no longer obtain- recognise that the experience of seeing the able and had become rare and valuable. whole skeleton is more ‘real’, and certainly Even purpose-built ‘environments’ have, more informative, than seeing only the in cases such as the synagogue models in the authentic, unattached bones that do not add Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, become up to a complete or understandable image. so intriguing or are of such craftsmanship that Likewise, multiples or limited editions they, decades later, become collections’ were always considered ‘real’ as long as the objects themselves. So, too, have the exhibi- intention of the artist was respected. Thus, the tions created by distinguished artists, such as fact that Rodin and many others authorised

28 ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN What is the Object of this Exercise? the multiple production of some pieces did not then depends not upon the object itself but on seem to make each one any less real or less an associated story that may render one of unique. The creation of additional, though them unique or important. still limited, copies, using the same etching The objects present in the death camps of plates, but after the death of the artist, caused the Holocaust were, in the main, created for more problems. But often, while acknowledg- use elsewhere. There is nothing unique in the ing the facts of the edition, such works also physicality of a bowl that comes from hung in museums and, if the quality was good, Auschwitz-Birkenau. These bowls could have were accessioned into their collections. been purchased in shops that sold cheap table- ware all over Germany at the time. However, IS THE IMAGE THE OBJECT? when the visitor reads the label that says the bowl comes from Auschwitz, the viewer, The twentieth century’s invention of new knowing something about the Holocaust, technologies has made multiples the norm and transfers meaning to the object. Since there is made determining what is real and what that nothing aside from the label that makes the means much more difficult. While original bowl distinctive, it is not the bowl itself but its prints of movies, for example, exist, it is the associated history that forms importance for moving image that the public thinks of as the the visitor. object rather than the master print of film.

Questions of authenticity revolve around sub- DOES THE CULTURAL CONTEXT MAKE THE sequent manipulation of the image (e.g. OBJECT? colonisation, cutting, or cropping) rather than the contents of any particular canister. As Foucault and many others have writ- Printed editions with identical multiples ten, objects lose their meaning without the are considered originals, and become more viewer’s knowledge and acceptance of under- valuable, if signed; unsigned editions are con- lying aesthetic or cultural values. Without sidered less ‘real’ and certainly less valuable. In such knowledge, an object’s reification even such cases one could say that the signature, within its own society cannot be understood. rather than the image, becomes the object. Often the discomfort of novice visitors to art Photographs printed by the photographer may museums has to do with their lack of under- be considered more real than those using the standing of the cultural aesthetics that the art same negative but printed by someone else. on display either challenges or affirms. With the invention of digital technology, By accessioning or displaying objects, the many identical images can be reproduced at creators of museums exhibitions are creating will without recourse to any negative at all. So or enhancing these objects’ value. Further, the notion of authenticity (meaning singular- society’s acceptance of the value of museums ity or uniqueness) becomes problematic as themselves likewise transfers value to their images indistinguishable from those in muse- objects. When museums receive gifts or ums are easily available outside the museum. It bequests from a major donor’s holdings, they is the artist’s sensibility that produced the are inheriting — and then passing on — a set image. It is the image itself, therefore, that is of value judgments from someone who is the object. essentially hidden from the visitor’s view. A particular aesthetic pervades such museums IS THE STORY THE OBJECT? because of the collections they house and the collectors who gave the objects in the first place. Of the utilitarian objects of the twentieth This issue of values determining choice century, most are manufactured in huge quan- comes into sharper focus when museums begin tities and therefore could be termed ‘exam- acquiring or presenting collections from cul- ples’. Which of these objects to collect often tures whose aesthetic might be different.

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When installing a show of African material in vation of the discarded material. So it goes for an American art museum, should the curator most peoples during their most impoverished show pieces based on the values inherent in historical periods. Accordingly, their museums the producing culture (i.e., focusing on the must choose among a narrow band of choices objects that attain special aesthetic value within — do not tell that part of their history, recre- that culture), or should the curator pick ate the artefacts and environments, or use objects that appeal more to the aesthetic of his interpretative techniques that do not rely on or her own culture? This question, the source material evidence. of much debate, arises when museums attempt The Museum of the Diaspora in Israel, to diversify their holdings to include works struggling with this issue more than twenty- created by a foreign (or even an assimilated) five years ago, decided to tell the complete culture quite different from that which pro- story of five thousand years of Jewish migra- duced the majority of their holdings. For tion without using a single authentic artefact. example, the selection of which African or It elected to create tableaux that reproduced Latino art to accession or show has to do not physical surroundings in an illustrative man- with authenticity but with quality. The notion ner based on scholarly research into pictorial of quality has been sharply debated between and written documentation of all kinds. The the scholar within the museum and the peo- museum did so because its collection could not ples representing the culture of the maker. So accurately or comprehensively tell the story, the question becomes: who selects the objects and a presentation of settings that appeared and by what criteria? ‘like new’ honoured the history of Jewish In material created by Indigenous artists, the migration more than an assortment of haphaz- native community itself sometimes disagrees ard authentic artefacts showing their age and internally as to whether the material is native or wear. The experience, wholly fabricated but belongs to a modern tradition that crosses three-dimensional, became the object. It pre- cultural boundary lines. Some within the sented a good public experience, many argued, native population also argue about the but still did not qualify as a ‘museum’. birthright of the artist; blood quantum, tradi- Ultimately, this total re-creation was accepted tional upbringing, and knowledge of the lan- as a highly distinguished museum. The guage sometimes have considerable bearing on Museum of the Diaspora also presented whether artists and their creations are consid- movies, photos, and recordings in a publicly ered native. In such cases, the decision about accessible form, arguing that a comprehensive what is quality work that should be housed in presentation required material that was non- a museum may have little to do with the artefactual. object itself and more to do with the The U.S. African-American and Native genealogy of the producer. American communities have suggested, in the same vein, that their primary cultural trans- WHAT IF YOUR STORY HAS NO OBJECTS OR mission is accomplished through oral lan- DOES NOT NEED THEM? IS THE ABSENCE OF OBJECTS THE OBJECT? guage, dance, and song — vehicles that are ephemeral. Their central artefacts, or objects, Most collections were created by wealthy if you will, are not dimensional at all, and people who acquired things of interest and museums that wish to transmit the accuracy of value to themselves. The everyday objects of such cultures, or display historical periods for non-valued or subjugated peoples were usually which material evidence is not available, must not collected. Often the people in the lowest learn to employ more diverse material. It may economic strata could hardly wait to exchange be the performance that is the object, for their objects for those that were more valued, example. And the performance space might giving no thought, at the time, to the preser- need to be indistinguishable from the exhibit

30 ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN What is the Object of this Exercise? hall. As museums struggle to do this, one request now is more common and often begins to see videos of ceremonies and hear accommodated. For example, at the end of audio chanting. Such techniques, formerly the 1980s, the Dog Soldiers of the Northern thought of as augmentation rather than core Cheyenne requested their pipe, which the interpretation, have increasingly taken on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural role and function previously played by collec- History holds, and used it in their ceremonies, tion objects. after which it was returned to the museum. Even in museums like Cleveland’s Rock Now, native museums and, less commonly, and Roll Hall of Fame or the soon-to-be- some general museums that hold native mate- opened Experience Music Project, it is the rial accept objects into their collections with sound and performance of the artists that is the express understanding that they will be the artefact much more than the stationary loaned out and used when needed. The notion guitar that, say, Jimi Hendrix once used. of a museum as a storehouse in perpetuity has, Indeed, musical instrument archives at the in these instances, evolved into the museum Boston Museum of Fine Arts and other places as a revolving loan warehouse. A long-stand- have long struggled with the proper presenta- ing and easily understood example predates tion of their ‘artefacts’. ‘Silent musical instru- this relatively new development. The Crown ments’ approaches an oxymoron. Jewels of the British monarchy, which are dis- played in the Tower of London, are worn by HOW IS THE OBJECT TO BE PRESERVED? IS THE the monarch when he or she is crowned. And OBJECT TO BE USED? so it has been for many centuries. The museum, in accepting an object for its WHOSE RULES ARE USED FOR OBJECT CARE? collection, takes on the responsibility for its care. In doing so, collections managers follow There are other fundamental rules of col- rules organised for the safety and long-term lections that are successfully being challenged preservation of the objects. Climate control, worldwide by native people’s involvement. access restrictions, and security systems are all Collections care has been predicated on the issues of concern to those who care for objects. basic notion that objects are inanimate. Institutions devoted to music or performance Though some objects were once alive, they transform the notion of collections and cer- now are no longer, and most had never been tainly the notion of preservation, because alive. Thus, collections-care policies proceed- while it is true that most things are preserved ed from the assumption that objects should be better when left alone, some musical instru- preserved in the best manner possible, avoid- ments are not among them. They are pre- ing decay from elements, exposure, and use. served better if played, and so, for example at Protective coverings and storage cases were the Smithsonian’s Museum of American designed to do just that. Extremes in the expo- History, they are. sure to light and temperature, and all manner Likewise, many native people have suc- of pest infestation, were to be avoided. But cessfully argued that accessioned material when the museum was recognised to be nei- should be used in the continuance of ceremo- ther the only nor the absolute arbiter of its ny and tradition. Artefacts, rather than being material holdings, accommodation to the relinquished to isolated preservation (and los- beliefs of the producers of the materials or ing their usefulness), are stored in trust wait- their descendants became necessary. ing for the time when they must again be used. These beliefs often included a lack of dis- In the 1980s, when native people from a spe- tinction between animate and inanimate. cific clan or group asked for an object to be Thus, spirits, mana, fields of power, and life loaned for a short-term use, this was a radical sources could live within an object regardless notion for most natural history museums. That of the material from which it was made. And

31 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 that being so, the care for these living things, varied that countries forge treaties to try to it was argued, is, and should be, quite different determine which items of their patrimony from the care of dead or never alive things. So, should be returned. Similarly, museums in for example, bubble wrap, while an excellent countries like New Zealand, Canada, and protector of objects, does not allow for breath- Australia have developed accords that, in ing or ‘singing and dancing at night’. Those some cases, give dual ownership to collections. working with native populations in good faith Museums and the native populations then have come to respect native understanding of jointly control the presentation, care, and their own objects and now provide for the even return of the objects, or museums give appropriate life of the object. Some objects ownership to the native populations, who, in need to be fed, some need to be protected from turn, allow the museum to hold the objects in their enemies, some need to be isolated from trust. Ownership has developed a complex menstruating women. Collections are no meaning. longer under the absolute province of the pro- fessional caregivers. Storage facilities that IF I OWN IT CAN I HAVE IT BACK, PLEASE? accommodate the native understanding of Some of this blurring of ownership began their objects require new architectural designs with native people maintaining that some that allow for ceremony for some and isolation items should not be in the hands of museums from the curious for others. regardless of their history. That this would be

WHO OWNS THE COLLECTIONS? claimed for human remains held in collections was easy to understand. Almost all cultures do This change in collections use and care something ceremonial and intentional with alters the notion of the museum as owner of its the remains of their people, which, in almost collections and opens the door to multiple def- all instances, does not include leaving bodies initions of ownership. These new definitions for study in boxes on shelves. So when native have far-reaching implications. If tribal com- people started to call for the return of their munities can determine the use, presentation, ancestors’ remains, there was an intuitive and care of objects ‘owned’ by museums, can understanding of the problem in most circles. the descendants of an artist? Can the victims This, however, did not make it any easier for or perpetrators of a war event? In the recent the paleontologists and forensic curators Smithsonian National Museum of Air and whose life work had centred on the access to Space Enola Gay exhibition controversy, it these bones, nor for the museum-goer whose was the veterans who flew the plane and their favorite museum memories had to do with World War II associates who ultimately con- shrunken heads, mummies, or prehistoric trolled the access to, presentation of, and human remains. The arguments that emanat- interpretation of the object. Ownership or ed from both sides were understandable and legal title to an object does not convey the difficult to reconcile. It was a clear clash of simple, more absolute meaning it did when I world views and belief systems. To the curators began in the museum field. it seemed that removal of human remains The notion that if you buy something from within museum collections would result in the a person who controlled it in the past, then it unwarranted triumph of cultural tradition and is yours to do with as you wish is clearly under emotionalism over scientific objectivity and redefinition in a number of fields. What con- the advancement of knowledge. stitutes clear title? Under what rules does As it turned out, the Native American stolen material need to be returned? What is Grave Protection and Repatriation Act stolen, in any case? Do the Holocaust victims’ (NAGPRA)4 made clear that Native paintings and the Elgin Marbles have any- American tribes had rights to the return of thing in common? The issue is so complex and their sacred material and to their ancestors’

32 ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN What is the Object of this Exercise? remains and associated grave goods, regardless ceremony appropriate. So too went records of of the method by which museums had its age and material composition, at variance acquired the material. However, the emptying with beliefs held by the Maori people. But if, of collections into native communities, as pre- as the Maori believe, spirit or mana migrates dicted by the most fearful, did not happen. from one piece to its replacement (rendering Rather, museums and native communities, the successor indistinguishable from its more working together in good faith, moved into an ancient equivalent), then what relevance is easier and more collegial relationship, as the fact that dates or materials are at variance? between equals. In most cases, the objects The object’s cultural essence is as old as they say. returned are carefully chosen and returned Similarly, when restoration of landmarks with due solemnity. Some tribes have chosen includes the replacement of their elements (as to allow some forensic samples to be saved, or is routinely the case in Japanese shrines), the studied prior to reburial, and some have rein- landmark is said to be dated from its inception terred their ancestors in ways that could allow even though no material part of it remains for future study should the native community from that time. That does not upset us. So wish it. even something so seemingly rational and his- NAGPRA struck a new balance between torical as dating is up for interpretation. the world view of most museums and their staff (which endorsed a rational and scientific THE OBJECT IS OFF-LIMITS. IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS model of discourse and allowed for access to as much information as could be gathered) and Museums, even in their earliest incarna- the spiritual interests of traditional native tions as cabinets of curiosities, were available peoples. A variety of museum practices were to all interested eyes or at least to those all- broadened, and visitors began to see the inter- owed to have access by the owners of the cab- pretation of exhibitions changed to include inets. In fact, part and parcel of conquest and multiple side-by-side explanations of the same subjugation was the access to interesting bits objects. For example, Wolves, an exhibition of the subjugated. This assumption that every- created by the Science Museum of Minnesota, thing was fair game held currency for a long presented scientific data, native stories, con- time. Though the notion of secret and sacred servation and hunting controversies, and was also understood (for example, no one but physiological information together in an the faithful could enter Mecca), this concept evenhanded way. An argument for multiple did not attach to museums nor to the holdings interpretations began to be heard in natural thereof. If a museum owned it, the visitors history museums whose comfort level in the could see it if the curator/staff wished them to. past had not permitted the inclusion of spiri- So it came as a surprise to some curators that tual information in formats other than anthro- contemporary native peoples began to make pological myth. demands on museums to return not only human remains but material that was sacred and once HOW OLD IS AN OBJECT? secret. Accommodations negotiated between The scientific dating of artefacts used in the museums and the native people sometimes religious practices often holds little relevance led to agreements to leave the material in the to the believers. When an object such as the museum but to limit viewing access. Thenotion Shroud of Turin, for example, is carbon dated that one people, the museum curators, would and shown to be insufficiently old, the prob- voluntarily limit their own and others’ access to lem of writing its museum label becomes com- material owned by museums came initially as a plex. An object held in Te Papa, the Museum shock to the museum system. But under the of New Zealand, was returned to an iwi (tribe) leadership of sympathetic museum and native that requested it, with all the solemnity and people and, further, under the force of NAG-

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Te Marae, Courtesy Te Papa, Museum of New Zealand.

PRA, museums began to understand that all materi- view in museum settings, but that too may al was not to be made available to all interested change. For example, in Jewish tradition, parties. Torahs once desecrated are supposed to be dis- It was the beginning of the ‘It is none of posed of by burial in a prescribed manner. Yet your business’ concept of museum objects. It some of these are available for view, most held that the people most intimately notably at the United State Holocaust concerned with and related to the material Memorial Museum. There may come a time could determine the access to that material. In when such artefacts are petitioned to be many cultures sacred ceremonies are open to removed for burial even though the statement all, and the objects in use are available for they make is powerful.

34 ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN What is the Object of this Exercise?

WHO SAYS ALL OBJECTS NEED TO BE PRESERVED from another source, and what is embedded in Ownership is not always an issue; some- cultural tradition. times it is the preservation of the object itself In some ways, it is because of this parallel that needs examination. Museums have felt contemporary inquiry into the ‘vocabulary’ of their most fundamental responsibility extend- objects that I can inquire into the object’s ed to the preservation of the object, yet in changing role in the definition of museums. returning human remains to the earth, arte- WHAT ARE MUSEUMS IF THEY ARE LESS OBJECT- facts are being intentionally destroyed. That BASED? was difficult to reconcile for those trained in preservation. Even more difficult was the Museum staff intuitively understand that belief that not all things made by hand were museums are important — an understanding intended to be preserved; perhaps some should that the public shares. However, especially for be allowed to be destroyed. The Zuni war gods the public, this understanding does not always preserved by museums were returned to the revolve around the objects, though objects Zuni tribe when it was successfully proven that are, like props, essential to most museums’ these could only have been stolen from grave purposes: making an implicit thesis visible and sites. But even more difficult was the Zuni’s tangible. The nature of the thesis can range assertion that these objects were created to from explanation of the past to advocacy for a accompany the dead, and that preservation of contemporary viewpoint to indication of pos- them was therefore anathema. The war gods sible future directions — in each case through a were returned to the Zuni, who watched over medium that presents a story in sensory form. the gradual decay of these objects as they Museums will remain responsible for the returned to the earth. In effect, the Zuni were care of the objects they house and collect, but entitled to destroy the objects that the muse- the notion of responsibility will be, and has ums had so carefully preserved. already been, broadened to include shared The notion of preservation has, therefore, ownership, appropriate use, and, potentially, also been blurred. Museum personnel began to removal and return. wrestle with the notion that all people do not The foundational definition of museums hold preservation of all objects as a universal will, in the long run, I believe, arise not from good. The Tibetan Lamas who create exquisite objects, but from ‘place’ and ‘storytelling in sand paintings only to destroy them later tangible sensory form’, where citizenry can would certainly understand this. congregate in a spirit of cross-generational inclusivity and inquiry into the memory of our THE OBJECT SPEAKS past, a forum for our present, and aspirations for our future. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowl- Coming back to definitions, the current defi- edge the power of some objects to speak nition of museums used by the Accreditation directly to the visitor, for example, in the sen- Program of the AAM encompasses all muse- sual pleasure brought about by viewing unique ums and no longer separates them by cate- original objects of spectacular beauty. But the gories. Museums, in this definition, “... present notion that objects, per se, can communicate regularly scheduled programs and exhibits that directly and meaningfully is under much use and interpret objects for the public accord- scrutiny. The academicians of material cul- ing to accepted standards; have a formal and ture, anthropology, history, and other fields are appropriate program of documentation, care, engaged in parsing the ways in which humans and use of collections and/or tangible objects ...”5 decode objects in order to figure out what For the visitor, it is the experience of information is intrinsic to the object itself, simultaneously being in a social and often what requires associated knowledge gleaned celebratory space while focusing on a multi-

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sensory experience that makes a museum Endnotes effective. Virtual experiences in the privacy of 1 ‘For the purposes of the accreditation program of the one’s home may be enlightening but, I think, AAM, a museum is defined as an organized and per- are not part of the civilising experience that manent non-profit institution, essentially educational museums provide. It is the very materiality of or aesthetic in purpose, with professional staff, which the building, the importance of the architec- owns and utilizes tangible objects, cares for them, ture, and the prominence that cities give to and exhibits them to the public on some regular schedule.’ American Association of Museums, museum location that together make for the Museum Accreditation: Professional Standards august place that museums hold. Congregant (Washington, D.C.: American Association of space will, I believe, remain a necessary Museums, 1973), p. 8. ingredient of the museum’s work. 2 ‘ ... owns and utilizes tangible things animate and The objects that today’s museums respon- inanimate.’ Museum Accreditation: Professional sibly care for, protect, and cherish will remain Standards, p. 9. central to their presentations. But the defini- 3 An art centre ‘utilizes borrowed art objects, cares for tion of ‘objectness’ will be broad and allow for them and maintains responsibility to their owners ... every possible method of storymaking. These [its] primary function is to plan and carry out exhibi- more broadly defined objects range from hard tions.’ American Association of Museums, Museum Accreditation: Professional Standards, p.12. A science evidence to mere props and ephemera. I hope and technology centre ‘. . . maintains and utilizes I have shown that objects are certainly not exhibits and/or objects for the presentation and exclusively real nor even necessarily ‘tangible’ interpretation of scientific and technological knowl- (even though the AAM uses that word). For it edge.... These serve primarily as tools for communi- is the story told, the message given, and the cating what is known of the subject matter. . . .’ American Association of Museums, Museum ability of social groups to experience it togeth- Accreditation: Professional Standards, p. 12. A plane- er that provide the essential ingredients of tarium’s ‘. . . principal function is to provide educa- making a museum important. tional information on astronomy and related sciences Museums are social-service providers (not through lectures and demonstrations.’ American always by doing direct social-service work, Association of Museums, Museum Accreditation ... , p. 11. though many do that), because they are spaces belonging to the citizenry at large, expounding 4 Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation on ideas that inform and stir the population to Act (25 U.S.C. 3002). contemplate and occasionally to act. 5 American Association of Museums, A Higher Museums are not unique in their work. Standard: The Museum Accreditation Handbook Rather, they share a common purpose with a (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1997), p. 20. host of other institutions. We need museums and their siblings because we need collective history set in congregant locations in order to remain civilised. Societies build these institu- tions because they authenticate the social contract. They are collective evidence that we were here. ELAINE HEUMANN GURIAN

This paper first appeared in Daedalus, ‘America’s Museums’ issue, Vol 128, No. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 163-183. Reproduced by permission.

36 seeing aboriginal art in the gallery

HOWARD MORPHY

Ramingining Artists, The Aboriginal Memorial 1987-88. Natural pigments on wood, heights from 40 cm to 327 cm. Collection: National Gallery of Australia. Reproduced by kind permission.

Introduction for keeping all this art out? However, rather ne of the great embarrassments than attributing blame, it is much more inter- Oconfronting the art world in the post- esting to analyse the historical process of its colonial context is the recent history of the inclusion. The excluded objects became differ- exclusion of much of the world’s ‘artistic’ ent after they were included not because their production from the hallowed walls of the fine very inclusion magically changed their status, art galleries of the West (Sally Price’s ‘civilised but because the fact of their inclusion reflects places’).1 One might ask: how was it that it changes in Western conceptions of what art is. was excluded for so long and who is to blame The process of inclusion has involved three

37 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 significant factors: the critique of the concept the Australian case anthropologists have of ‘primitive art’, an associated change in con- played a major role in the process of including ceptions of what can be called ‘art’, and an Aboriginal art within the same generic cate- increased understanding of art as a commodi- gory as other people’s art, and there is evi- ty. Those factors have operated in conjunction dence that anthropologists have played a sim- with global political and economic processes ilar role elsewhere. This is not to argue that all which in some contexts have empowered the anthropologists were participants in the agency of Indigenous artists. In this paper I process. For much of the twentieth century will outline my theoretical argument and then anthropology neglected art. Non-Western art apply it briefly to the Australian context, and material culture were associated with reflecting on the history of the inclusion of ethnographic museums and some museum Aboriginal art in galleries of fine art and the curators were indeed unsympathetic to the significance of that change in the discourse categorisation of objects in their collections as over Aboriginal art. art objects. I would argue, however, that their The anthropology of art seems at times to position was often motivated by a desire to have been squeezed between — and distorted increase the understanding of the significance by — two myths: the myth adhered to by the to the producers of the objects in their collec- art market, and by some art curators, that tions. Many museum curators and anthropolo- somehow an anthropological approach to gists viewed the inclusion of non-European Indigenous art created its otherness and sepa- objects in the art category as a license for mis- rated it from Western art works; and the interpretation, through the imposition of uni- anthropological myth that classifying works as versalistic aesthetic concepts and in the cre- ‘art’ imposed a Western categorisation upon ation of difference at the level of meaning and them. These myths have a number of contin- significance. uing echoes in practice: for example the ‘Primitive art’ was viewed by modernist emphasis in art galleries on displaying works as critics and connoisseurs as formally dynamic, art, with the minimum of information lest it expressive, challenging and incorporable provide a distraction to the viewer, contrast- within the Western canon; as to its meaning it ing with the greater concern with information explored the primeval depths of human spiri- in ethnographic museums. This opposition has tuality and sexuality. It was this demeaning been reinforced at times by disciplinary battles and ill-informed categorisation of objects as over public spaces, by Indigenous and ethnic ‘primitive art’ that alienated anthropologists politics, and by the desire to be on the right from the art connoisseurs and signified the gulf side of the colonial/post-colonial divide. In between their discourses.2 It is ironic, yet part it has been maintained by the desire of inevitable, that for many years anthropologists the disciplines involved to emphasise their and connoisseurs of Indigenous art found distinctiveness in order to maintain their sep- themselves on opposite sides of the art/artefact arate identities and sources of funding. This divide. The recent challenge mounted to the motivation to maintain a structural division category of primitive art by anthropologists provides a clue to the ahistorical nature of the and art historians, such as Coote, Shelton, debate and the ever-present desire to lay Errington, Philips, Marcus and Myers, Price blame for an unacceptable history on a rival: and Vogel3 has allowed museum anthropolo- the art gallery can feel threatened by the gists to reincorporate the concept of art ethnographic museum, the anthropologist by within their theoretical discourse and may the art historian. foreshadow a bridging of the divide between The myth concerning the role of the the anthropological and art worlds. anthropologists in the creation of otherness of Part of the process of incorporating art primitive art has no historical basis. Indeed in within the theoretical discourse of anthropol-

38 HOWARD MORPHY Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery ogy is the development of definitions that are itive art’ paradigm in bringing art back into cross-cultural and that distance the concept anthropology. Graburn puts this succinctly from its Western historical baggage. An exam- when he writes: ple of such a definition is one I produced myself: art objects are ‘objects having seman- We now realise that practically all the tic and/or aesthetic properties that are used for objects in our ethnographic collections presentational or representational purposes’.4 I were acquired in politically complex multi- am not concerned at this stage to defend this cultural colonial situations. Furthermore particular definition. Any cross-cultural we can state unequivocally that unless we definition of art, just as in the case of a cross- include the socio-political context of pro- cultural definition of religion, magic, gender duction and exchange in our analyses we or kinship, is part of a discourse that shifts the will have failed in our interpretation and term in the direction of broad applicability understanding.6 while still maintaining connections to its previous place in academic discourse. The To this I would only add a corollary: that recent history of the world biases epistemolo- material culture — however it enters the dis- gy towards Western definitions, but the chal- course of art — is an important source of evi- lenge of anthropology is in part to separate dence, for anthropologists, to better under- concepts from a particular past, as for example, stand the social conditions and historical in anthropological definitions of religion interactions of the time of their production. which have moved away from Christianity without excluding it. Cross-cultural defini- Art or ethnography a false opposition tions are as much concerned with time as with Aboriginal art is included today in the space: hence a cross-cultural conceptualisa- collections of every major art gallery and art tion of art must allow the analyst to museum in Australia, and is one of the world’s encompass the fact that conceptions of art most visible art forms. Its inclusion within the have changed in the last 400 years of Western category of fine art is no longer challenged in art practice and history as much as they differ Australia, though elsewhere in the world this cross-culturally. As a consequence the sets of can still be the subject of controversy.7 It is objects that get included under the rubric art easy to forget how recently this process of change continually over time. inclusion happened. Aboriginal art was barely However in relegating Western based recognised as a significant art form until the definitions of art to their place in a typology of 1950s and it was not until the 1980s that it possible definitions, it would clearly be naïve began to enter the collections of most to neglect the impact that Western cultures — Australian galleries, or gain widespread recog- and their definitions — have had on global nition as a significant dimension of Australian processes in recent centuries. The material art.8 However it is also important not to over- culture of Indigenous societies has been state the lateness of its arrival on the world changed as they have been incorporated with- stage. In 1964 Ronald Berndt was able to in wider global processes. However those write: processes of articulation and transformation are highly complex — both the incorporated Australian Aboriginal art is becoming bet- and the incorporators are changed thereby.5 ter known these days, or at least more Changing definitions of art are a microcosm of widely known, than ever before. Once it these larger processes. The increased under- was relegated to the ethnological section standing of the role of the commoditisation of a museum, and treated along with the and trade of material culture, including art, artifacts and material culture of other non- has been a partner to the critique of the ‘prim- literate peoples. Now it is not unusual to

39 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

find such things as Aboriginal bark paint- phrasing it ‘crudely’, arguing in effect that ings taking place alongside European and anthropologists have failed to recognise the other examples of aesthetic expression. cross-cultural nature of art, Maloon oversim- And because they rub shoulders with all plifies the issues involved. forms of art, irrespective of cultural origin, It could indeed of course be argued that the inference is that they are being evalu- certain Western definitions of art themselves ated in more general terms: that there is are inherently cross-cultural since they posit not only wider appreciation of Aboriginal universals in human aesthetic appreciation. endeavour in this respect, but that it is, Clearly such a view lies behind Tuckson’s posi- almost imperceptibly, taking its place in tion as summarised by Maloon.14 He argues the world of art. ... Fifteen years ago few of that: us would have envisaged this meteoric rise in popularity, within Australia and over- [Aboriginal] artists make their paintings seas.9 with pleasure and imagination and intu- ition. They put their feeling into what It is often said that Aboriginal art first they do. They exercise skill and ingenuity entered an Australian gallery of fine art in in their use of materials; they are consider- 1959, with the acquisition by the Art Gallery ate of the ways their works are organised of New South Wales (AGNSW) of major and elaborated and are sensitive to the works from the Tiwi artists of Melville and resulting aesthetic effect. Bark paintings Bathurst Islands and the Yolngu artists of and other Aboriginal artefacts are not Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land. While ethnographic curiosities, but genuine this is an oversimplified account, nevertheless works of art. Furthermore, when non- this gift remains a significant and perhaps, in Aboriginal people respond to bark paint- hindsight, even transforming event. The ings as art, they are prone to recognise ‘the works were acquired by Tony Tuckson, Deputy underlying spirit of the imagery’ (in Director at the AGNSW in association with Tuckson’s revealing phrase).15 Stuart Scougall, an orthopaedic surgeon with a passion for Aboriginal art.10 One of the ways In countering Maloon’s/Tuckson’s16 thesis in which this event has been interpreted is as it is necessary to isolate two strands of argu- shattering the anthropological paradigm. For ment that are only loosely interconnected. example the curator Terence Maloon puts this The first is an essentialist view that associates position clearly when he states of Tony art with individual creativity, technical facili- Tuckson: ‘In the role of Aboriginal art expert ty, and aesthetic sensibility. The second is he had to take an opposing position to the masked by the phrase that bark paintings ‘are anthropologists who to put it crudely, general- not ethnographic curiosities’. I will address ly argued for the radical dissimilarity of all these issues by first stepping back in time to things traditionally Aboriginal to all things the debate between Tuckson and Ronald traditionally European’.11 According to Berndt that is the initial reference point of Maloon this enabled Tuckson to lay the foun- Maloon’s argument. The debate occurs in the dation ‘for the earliest public collection to be pages of Berndt’s edited book Australian acquired for aesthetic rather than ethnograph- Aboriginal Art which was published to accom- ic reasons’.12 Maloon here echoes Tuckson pany an exhibition of the same name curated who wrote: ‘Appreciation of Aboriginal art by Tuckson. A ‘reading between the lines’ has widened immeasurably because the gener- reveals that the book reflects a heated al public and the artist have been given a exchange between the two over how greater opportunity to see it as art, not as part Aboriginal art should be exhibited, appreciat- of an ethnological collection.’13 However in ed, and understood.17

40 HOWARD MORPHY Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery

Tuckson certainly believed that there is archaeologist, and anthropologist’ and in the something universal about the character of art examples that he analyses does indeed use objects that makes it possible to evaluate them ethnographic data. in isolation from their cultural and social In essence Berndt is arguing that although background. He wrote: [there is] “an underly- it is possible to appreciate works purely on the ing unifying quality in art that resides in a basis of form, this appreciation is only partial, visual sense of balance and proportion, but and is biased towards the values of the viewing also an underlying spirit of their imagery ... culture. Following from this I would argue that [makes it possible] for us to appreciate visual while people can thus obviously appreciate art without any knowledge of its meaning and any work of art through the lens of their own original purpose”,18 (emphasis in the original). culture’s aesthetics, just as they can appreciate In a weak sense there is nothing unremarkable the aesthetic properties of found objects, they about this position. It is undeniably the case must realise that this is precisely what they are that ‘Western art appreciators’ can make aes- doing. They must not be under the illusion thetic judgments about works they know that they are experiencing the work as a mem- nothing about; the question remains who is ber of the producing culture would. The fail- included in the ‘us’, and are there differences ure to provide the background knowledge nec- in the bases of ‘our’ evaluations? Berndt writ- essary to interpret the object in relation to the ing in the same book acknowledged that producers culture can then be challenged both Tuckson was at least partially right: that the on moral grounds and on the grounds that it appreciation of the aesthetics of Aboriginal impoverishes the interpretation. art did attract the attention of the viewer: The counter-argument to this challenge is “however, we have attempted to go a little far- covered by Maloon’s statement that bark ther — to cross over the limits of our own paintings ‘are not ethnographic curiosities’. cultural frontiers, and to see something of the While he provides no explanation of what he broader significance of Aboriginal art”.19 But means, his underlying premise is that, as works Berndt thought that Tuckson pushed the argu- of art, they should not be positioned solely or ment just a little too far: even primarily as sources of information about the way of life of another culture. From this Tuckson’s contention is based on the uni- perspective art is a celebration of common versality of all art, irrespective of prove- humanity, and too much context distracts the nance. It is important for us to know here viewer. Indeed he suggests that the ‘spirituali- exactly what this means. The cultural ty’ that lies behind Aboriginal art is best background is not, here seriously taken revealed when it is viewed as art. This second into account; the function or use of the suggestion poses the greatest challenge to an object or painting, even the identity of the anthropological perspective on art, since it artist, may be completely unknown. ... Its deems irrelevant the particular cultural mean- decorative qualities, its design, its treat- ings associated with objects. The anthropolog- ment its overall appeal, are what matters; ical perspective would not deny that the we like its lines its curves its sense of bold- search for human universals and for categories ness, its balance and so forth. We are eval- that can be applied cross-culturally is perfect- uating it in our own idiom, within a ly compatible with a recognition of cultural climate of our own aesthetic traditions.20 difference. But the recognition of cultural dif- ference requires that those categories be dis- While Berndt probably accurately assesses tanced from particular Western cultural the core of Tuckson’s position, Tuckson21 assumptions. Maloon’s/Tuckson’s universals acknowledged the importance of what he are in fact not universals at all but the expres- referred to as the ‘work of the ethnologist, sion of values of a particular (and indeed today

41 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

Interestingly if we adopt a universalistic aesthetic perspective it is difficult to under- stand why the art world was so tardy in recog- nising the value of Aboriginal art — a value which appears to lie in its formal appearance unmediated by cultural knowledge. It seems unjust to attribute to anthropologists a signifi- cant role in the failure to recognise its univer- sal attributes unless of course their attention to meaning was too much of a distraction. It was Australian artists and curators who so sin- gularly failed to draw attention (to paraphrase Maloon) to the ‘[exercise of] skill and ingenu- ity in their use of materials; [or the fact that] they are considerate of the ways their works are organised and elaborated and are sensitive to the resulting aesthetic effect.’ Indeed Margaret Preston,23 one of the few Euro- Australian artists who showed an interest in Aboriginal art until the 1950s, wrote at times as if the simple asymmetric geometry that she found so vital is almost the accidental product of a simple mind and faulty technique! She later modified her view. By way of contrast Cover photograph of ˆThe Adelaide Review, No. 23, 986, illustrating the curator’s intention to exhibit the toas as art. praise that issued from the pen of the anthro- pologist Baldwin Spencer foreshadowed Tuckson’s own (a fact that Tuckson clearly unrepresentative) European art world. The acknowledges): debates that raged over Rubin’s Primitivism exhibition generated similar debates in which Today I found a native who, apparently, it was argued that key assumptions of the ide- had nothing better to do than to sit quiet- ology underlying European modernism alien- ly in the camp evidently enjoying himself ated the art from the societies that produced ... he held [his brush] like a civilised artist it. Bernhard Lüthi, for example, wrote: ... he did the line work, often very fine and regular, with much the same freedom and Rubin’s love of modernism is based on the precision as a Japanese or Chinese artist fact that it took Western art beyond the doing his most beautiful wash-work with mere level of illustration. When Rubin his brush.24 notes that African, Oceanic or Indian arti- sans are not illustrating but conceptualis- However from Tuckson’s point of view ing, he evidently feels he is praising them Spencer’s involvement with Aboriginal art for their modernity. In doing so he alto- may have symbolised the very problem that he gether undercuts their reality system. By was trying to address. While Spencer was able denying that tribal canons of representa- to see the aesthetic dimension of Aboriginal tion actually represent anything, he is in art and responded to it in terms of universal effect denying that their view of the world characteristics of form, the paintings in his is real.22 charge remained in the National Museum, and absent from the walls of the National

42 HOWARD MORPHY Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery

Gallery of Victoria. The paintings were part of er must also have some access to its history a comprehensive ethnographic collection and significance. Nigel Lendon has shown which included material culture objects in that, in viewing eastern Arnhem Land bark general, and thus the art was lost in the paintings, knowledge of the social and cultur- ethnography. It was not seen by others as art al background of the works enhances the because of where it was housed and how it was viewer’s appreciation of them: exhibited. The theory of a universal aesthetic is inter- The interpretation of these paintings may twined with a theory of viewing that opposes be compared to how the viewer might the art gallery to the museum. In this theory understand Western religious or political works of art should be allowed to speak for art, or the world of allegory. In that case themselves. Thus they need their own space we expect both the viewer and the artist for contemplation, and though their meaning to bring to the exchange a prior knowl- and impact will be affected by their relation- edge of the social and mythic space of the ship to adjacent works, and to the hang as a narrative, or at least a recognition of the whole, it is desirable that the act of viewing wider reality to which the image refers.25 should take place in space as uncluttered as possible by supplementary information. While Yet it is also undeniable that understand- the density of hangs varies, as does the amount ing the form of the paintings can provide deep of information provided, these broad princi- insights into culture and cognition. ples apply in art galleries around the world. Seeing a work as art is also quite compati- Museums, on the other hand, are often ble with seeing it as something else, and view- defined in opposition to art galleries as places ing an object in isolation does not of itself where objects are contextualised by informa- make it into an art object. However placing tion, by accompanying interpretative materi- objects in isolation, as in an art gallery, or in als, by dioramas, and by being seen in associa- sets, as in ethnographic displays, has at times tion with other objects. I think that it is desir- created the space for discourse over whether able to distinguish the Western concept of something is or is not an art object. And ‘seeing things’ as art from the presumption of a because art has been so inextricably intercon- universalistic aesthetic and indeed to separate nected with the market, the dialogue has been ‘seeing things’ as isolated or decontextualised entangled both in an economic and in a objects from ‘seeing things’ as art. cultural value-creation process. The South The real problem with Maloon’s/ Tuckson’s Australian Museum’s exhibition in 1986 ‘Art position, apart from its circularity, is that and Land’, provides an excellent example of Western viewers come to an art gallery already the discourse over Aboriginal art as art. It also laden with information and experience that illustrates just how challenging Tuckson’s can be applied to already familiar works of action was, nearly twenty-five years earlier, European art. This information will have been when he installed Aboriginal art for the first acquired from seeing works in quite different time in the AGNSW. ‘Art and Land’ was an contexts: not only the gallery walls, but also in exhibition of toas from the Lake Eyre region of publications and films, as reproductions, and Central Australia. Toas were direction signs so on. It is a conceit of a particularly narrow that marked where people had gone but they band of Western art theory and practice that were also engaging and diverse minimalist the appreciation and production of art has sculptural forms. On this occasion anthropol- nothing to do with knowledge of its particular ogist Peter Sutton and historian Philip Jones art history. For Indigenous art to be seen on decided to exhibit the objects not as ethnog- equal terms with Western art it requires more raphy but as art, by the simple expedient of than the right to an isolated space. The view- giving them their own space in a well lit

43 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 display with a minimum of accompanying because it existed in temporary form as body information. The protagonist who took them painting, sand sculpture, or ceremonial con- to task was an art historian, Donald Brooke, struction. While museum collections were who argued that the way they were displayed crowded with Australian weapons, Aboriginal in itself was a form of appropriation, since it cultures seemed to have produced few figura- contradicted the intention of the producers.26 tive carvings or masks, the items that had Although adopting a different and, on the gripped the imagination of sectors of the surface, opposite position from Tuckson, European art world. However this perception Brooke too appears to have been bound by the may have been reinforced by the evolutionist’s categories of his own culture. The acceptance eye. Aborigines as hunters and gatherers were of art works into the Western gallery context seen to represent the lower rungs of the evolu- is not simply a belated recognition of their tionary ladder. Fine art, thought to be a char- universal attributes. It can be a far more acteristic of high civilisation, was not antici- radical step that challenges the Western pated and hence remained unseen. It may also category itself and shifts the definition of art: be the case that, in formal terms, much exhibiting toas as art was part of that process. Aboriginal art fell outside the kinds of things That is why the inclusion of non-European art included within the nineteenth century continues to generate such opposition: it inventory of types of art. For example a toa insists on a different kind of art history that comprising a hunk of pubic hair stuck into a threatens to disrupt pre-existing values. At the ball of white clay on the top of a pointed stick same time Jones and Sutton provided, through was unlikely to have been acceptable as a work the accompanying book,27 and in the debates of art in Victorian-era Australia. Much that surrounded the exhibition, more contex- Aboriginal art could however more easily find tual information on toas than had been avail- its place in the later slots created by conceptu- able until then. As Luke Taylor pointed out in al art, minimalism, performance art and even reviewing the debate the error is in the abstract expressionism. While almost by defi- polarisation of views: in seeing works either as nition ‘primitive art’ provided something of a art or ethnography. challenge to existing categories, there were few Aboriginal artworks that did not pose a Our theory of art should not divorce the major challenge. Interestingly, in focusing on analysis of aesthetic forms from a consider- bark painting Maloon has chosen works that ation of social context; the form of the are most analogous to a fairly standard work is a crystalisation of those values. Western art form — that of pictorial represen- Rather we should investigate the cultural tation. setting of the artist’s aesthetic experience While anthropologists may have been and how this relates to the form of the complicit in the nineteenth century in con- works and also address the ways such artis- tributing to the image of hunter-gatherer soci- tic forms engender aesthetic responses in ety as representative of a pre-art, primitive members of other cultures who view the level of social organisation, they were also at works.28 the forefront of the challenge to such a view. Indeed it was anthropologists in association A short history of inclusion with a few artists and curators who, before If Aboriginal art had its advocates, such as World War II, pushed for the recognition of Baldwin Spencer and Margaret Preston, early Aboriginal art, and who, in the case of on, how was it that it remained neglected by Leonard Adam and Ronald and Catherine the Western art world for so long? There is no Berndt were the first to attribute works to simple explanation. Much Aboriginal art was known individuals. And according to uncollectable either because it was secret or Maloon29 it was at an exhibition organised by

44 HOWARD MORPHY Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery

value to those works made before the influ- ence of European colonisation. In particular there was a tendency to reject art produced for sale. As Ruth Philips writes of Native American art:

...the scholarly apparatus that inscribes the inauthenticity of commoditized wares [is] a central problem in the way that art history has addressed Native art. The authenticity paradigm marginalises not only the objects but the makers, making of them a ghostly presence in the modern world rather than acknowledging their vigorous interven- tions in it.30

In the 1950s Australia was viewed as a country whose Indigenous inhabitants had been long colonised despite the fact that the frontier had only been extended to much of Arnhem Land and parts of central Australia in the decades either side of World War II. Almost from first contact bark paintings were viewed with suspicion by ethnographic muse- ums and art galleries alike, and relatively few A Toa. Parakalani: To the plain which reminded were collected by museums in Australia and Kuruljuruna of his own, or his father’s (Parakarlana) bald overseas during the 1950s and 1960s.31 head. Kuruljurna camped here with his men for some time. White knob=plain. Top=hair representing Parakarlana or Collections made by Kupka and Scougal were Kuruljuruna. Diyari 215 mm. Collection: South Australian notable exceptions. Indeed this attitude that Museum. authenticity is allied to isolation, that charac- terised the views of some anthropologists, gives the Berndts in David Jones art gallery in a superficial weight to Maloon’s arguments. Sydney in 1949 that Tuckson first encoun- Perhaps because Aboriginal art had never tered Aboriginal art, and it was in a book edit- been a major token in the ‘primitive art’ mar- ed by Ronald Berndt that Tuckson wrote his ket there was less resistance to the inclusion of major article on the aesthetics of Aboriginal art made for sale in the fine art category when, art. Moreover it was not for nearly another eventually, the breakthrough came. The prim- thirty years that other galleries joined the itive art market needed to limit its products in AGNSW in adding Aboriginal art to their order to keep the market price high; also its collections. values rested on the difference between Just as it began to gain limited recognition Europeans and the romanticised primitive in the 1950s Aboriginal art had to face anoth- other who was tamed and, in a sense, devalued er challenge, this time to its authenticity. This through contact with civilisation. Between was felt to be threatened with contamination the 1940s and 1980s Aboriginal art moved by contact and trade. While rejecting the cat- from the non-art to the art category almost egorisation of Aboriginal works as primitive, without passing through the stage of being many anthropologists were allied with the considered as primitive art. Aboriginal art primitive art market in assigning a primary became art partly through the process of its

45 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

action with the market. The designs on bark paintings were the same as those produced as body paintings, coffin lids, bark huts and containers or hollow log coffins — but in being painted on bark they were being pro- duced for outside consumption. Similar considerations apply to the transfer of central Australian designs to acrylic paintings on can- vas, though in this case no-one could imagine that they were a pre-European product. Anthropologists who worked on art such as Berndt and Mountford, in making foundation- al collections of art in ‘new media’, were often without realising it integral to these processes of incorporating Aboriginal cultural produc- tion within the new market economy. However in doing so they were only reflecting the agency of Aboriginal people themselves, who used art as a means of persuading outsiders of the value of their way of life as well as a means of earning a living in the post- colonial context. Aboriginal art has also been fortunate in that at the time when interest in it was devel- oping, the categorisation of Indigenous art as primitive art was under challenge. The 1970s and 1980s have seen a breakdown of categories within Western art in general as the hegemony of the Western canon has come increasingly under challenge, from non- Western and Indigenous arts. This challenge has led implicitly to a shift in the definition of what art is and in who defines what is art. ‘Contemporary Aboriginal art’ emerged as a category in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s.32 Initially it included paintings which challenged the ‘primitive art’ category because of the dynamic nature of the art and the con- Shield from Murray River, Victoria. Collection: Pitt temporaneity of the artists. Previously the Rivers Museum, Oxford. Photo: Malcom Osman. only slot allocated to such work was the deval- commercialisation. Because so many forms of ued category of ‘tourist art’. The new category Aboriginal art are the temporary product of included art from all regions of Australia, with performance — body paintings, sand sculp- the proviso that the works were in continuity tures and ground drawings, string construc- with Aboriginal traditions, and thus part of a tions and fragile headdresses — or sacred trajectory that stretched backwards to the objects, in making works that could be sold precolonial era. It included the art of Arnhem Aboriginal craftspeople clearly produced Land — an art whose genesis was independent artefacts whose form was influenced by inter- of European traditions. The category came

46 HOWARD MORPHY Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery into being partly because Aborigines asserted apparently changed rapidly over time; these the contemporary relevance of their art in the paintings thus became unproblematically Australian context. It was their contemporary avant-garde. Bark paintings, which used mate- art, it influenced white Australian art and in rials and techniques that were independent of turn was influenced by the post-colonial European art, had been accepted into the old context of its production. Aboriginal art, too, category of primitive art. Yet as art objects represented dynamic and diverse traditions, they and Western Desert acrylics occupied an and for those who were prepared to see, it was almost identical position, and both were relat- an avowedly political art. The category also ed directly to Indigenous iconographic came to include the acrylic art of the Western traditions. Such Aboriginal art seemed to be and Central Desert. simultaneously ‘primitive’ and ‘avant-garde’. The ‘Aboriginal Australia’ exhibition of As Jean-Hubert Martin pointed out, “If [con- 1981 which travelled to the State art galleries temporary] Aboriginal artists do produce work of Victoria, Western Australia, and of recognized value, then the categories Queensland was a major expression of this reigning in our institutions are in dire need of new and more inclusive category. In addition revision.”33 to bark paintings, Western Desert acrylic The development of ‘contemporary paintings and sculptures from Cape York Aboriginal art’ as a category rescued some Peninsula and Melville and Bathurst Islands, Indigenous art from being marginalised or it included decorated artefacts from all over devalued but it sowed the seeds for a different Australia. It also found a place for string bags kind of marginalisation. In the 1970s, when and basketwork which challenged the accept- the art of the north and the centre was begin- ed division between art and craft. Most inno- ning to achieve recognition, the Aboriginal vatively, perhaps, it included watercolours by art of south-east Australia was still unrecog- Namatjira, paintings by William Barak, and nised. There the illusion that Aboriginal art drawings by Tommy McRae. belonged to a past that was separated from The ‘Dreamings’ exhibition that toured contemporary life was easy to maintain. It was the USA in 1988-89 before returning to its simply a facet of the continuing invisibility of home gallery in Adelaide was in direct conti- Aboriginal people from the south in the con- nuity with ‘Aboriginal Australia’, although its sciousness of most white Australians until the agenda, to show the works as contemporary middle of the twentieth century. Aboriginal Aboriginal art, was even more explicitly art had gone just as Aboriginal people were articulated. ‘Dreamings’ emphasised the ‘fading away’. The near-prehistoric art of the commercial context of much of the art and early to mid-nineteenth century gained some drew attention, especially in the catalogue, to acceptance, but the art of the twentieth cen- Indigenous perceptions of the art as opposed tury and contemporary Koori art remained to Western aesthetics. It also included a far unrecognised, hidden as part of what W. E. H. greater proportion of works from the Western Stanner called ‘the great Australian silence’. Desert than did ‘Aboriginal Australia’, reflect- However, Aborigines in south-east ing the degree to which that art was beginning Australia had continued to produce art and to attract global interest. The exhibition of craftworks and a few, such as Ronald Bull, Western Desert acrylics and bark paintings gained a limited reputation as artists. But they from Arnhem Land together as equal members were in a difficult position, like Namatjira of the contemporary Aboriginal art category only more so. They found themselves posi- was potentially very challenging to the tioned either as producers of tourist art, which conceptualisation of the avant-garde. Western was negatively viewed as a contaminated form Desert paintings were a newly developed art of primitive art, or if their art was influenced form employing European materials, and they by, or indistinguishable in formal terms from,

47 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001 contemporary Western art then what they fuzzy nature of the boundaries between stylis- produced was taken as a sign of their assimila- tic categories and the multiplicity of influ- tion. ‘Aboriginal Australia’ pushed at the ences on a particular artist’s work. The solu- boundaries of these categories by including tion forced by the nature of contemporary works by William Barak and Tommy McRae. Aboriginal art was the recognition both of its But more significantly the emergence of the plural nature and of the consequences of this category ‘contemporary Aboriginal art’ and plurality for Western art-historical theory. the positioning of Arnhem Land bark paint- ings and Western Desert acrylics within it Conclusion brought the contradictions of exclusion and The current moment provides a good opportu- Martin’s ‘need for revision’ closer to home. nity for a rapprochement between art histori- This was implicitly recognised in the cal and anthropological approaches to art. ‘Dreamings’ exhibition. Even so, while the The challenge to the old presuppositions of catalogue included reference to the contem- the Western art world, including the anthro- porary art of southeast Australia the exhibi- pological critique of the concept of primitive tion itself did not. art, has created art worlds that are far more In the 1970s and 1980s many Aboriginal complex and heterogeneous than their prede- people in south-east Australia began to devel- cessors, less subordinate to the developmental op as artists while simultaneously and confi- sequences of European-American art. Once dently asserting their Aboriginality. Most were non-Western arts were only thought to have a trained not in the remote bush or desert history at the moment of their discovery by regions of central Australia but, like many of the West. Such a view is no longer tenable. their white contemporaries, in the art worlds Art history must, as a result, be reinvented to and art schools of urban Australia. What was reflect the diversity of world arts and make their relationship to other Aboriginal artists? sense of the apparent chaos. This is not as rad- What was the relationship between ical a proposal as it may seem. Indeed contem- Aboriginal art and other contemporary porary art curation has long taken for granted Australian art? The paradoxes multiplied the existence of knowledge of the history and when non-Aboriginal contemporary artists significance of objects included in exhibitions, such as Tim Johnson and Imants Tillers bor- without which it is impossible to make sense rowed Aboriginal motifs for their own work. of changes in the artistic record. Many of the Tim Johnson even participated with variations in the Western canon can only be Aboriginal artists in the co-production of explained when related to the wider context paintings. Was a piece of Western Desert art of the objects’ production: why the works of contemporary Australian art when Tim the artists of the voyages of discovery paid Johnson painted some of the dots? Was it such attention to details of geology, environ- ‘Australian’ as opposed to ‘Aboriginal’ even if ment and climate, what motivated the impres- it was formally indistinguishable from other sionists to develop a new paradigm, the role of Western Desert pieces? If it was classifiable as colour theory in Seurat’s pointillism, the avant-garde could it no longer be Aboriginal cubist rejection of representational art, and so art? And if it was avant-garde then weren’t on. The anthropological endeavour of under- Aboriginal artists working in other avant- standing difference as well as similarity is one garde styles equally producers of Aboriginal that gives agency to the artists who made the art? works and allows their intentions and motiva- The apparent paradoxes arise because tions to be reflected in the histories of their Western art history creates pigeonholes. It works that are produced. An anthropological- tends to allocate individual works to single ly informed art history is needed to provide art-historical spaces, failing to recognise the the historical, art historical, social and cultur-

48 HOWARD MORPHY Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery al information, not only for those artistic 4 Howard Morphy, ‘The Anthropology of Art’ in Tim traditions where background cannot be taken Ingold (ed), Companion Encyclopedia to Anthropology for granted but, it could be argued, for the (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 655. Western art tradition as well. 5 For a relevant discussion see Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge: Harvard HOWARD MORPHY University Press, 1991).

This is based on a paper given at the 2000 confer- 6 Nelson Graburn, ‘Epilogue: Ethnic and Tourist Arts Revisited’, in Ruth Philips and Christopher Steiner ence of the American Anthropological Association in (eds), Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in San Francisco, at a session convened by Russell Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds (Berkeley: Sharman on ‘The state of the anthropology of art’. I University of California Press, 1999), p. 345. would like to thank the discussant Nelson Graburn for 7 In 1997 for example there was controversy over the his comments. I’d like to thank Margaret Tuckson who exclusion of some categories of Aboriginal art from put me in touch with Richard McMillan, whose UNSW the art fair in Basel. David Throsby, ‘But is it Art?’, thesis proved invaluable. Nigel Lendon provided stimu- in Art Monthly Australia (Nov. 1997), p. 32, wrote to lating comments on the paper and corrected some of the the chairman of the committee saying that letting in recognisably Indigenous artworks from Australia errors. Christiane Keller provided some useful refer- would open up the floodgates to primitive, tribal, and ences and Katie Russell provided some valuable back- folk art from around the world. Interestingly Tracey ground research. Frances Morphy helped develop the Moffatt’s work was exhibited with great success at structure of the argument and improved the clarity of the same fair. The following year an even more heat- ed debate broke out over the exclusion of a number expression. of Arnhem Land artists from the Cologne art fair, see John McDonald, ‘Black Ban: All They Want is a Fair Endnotes Go’, in Sydney Morning Herald, 29 September 1998. 1 Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: 8 Australian Perspecta (Sydney: Art Gallery of New University of Chicago Press, 1989). South Wales, 1981). 2 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture 9 Ronald M. Berndt, ‘Epilogue’ in Ronald. M. Berndt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). (ed), in Australian Aboriginal Art (Sydney: Ure The chapter titled ‘Histories of the Tribal and the Smith, 1964), p. 1. Modern’ provides an interesting discussion of these 10 Richard McMillan, ‘The Drawings of Tony issues though his eventual collapse of the opposition Tuckson’, (unpublished M. Arts Theory Thesis, between museum anthropologists and primitive art UNSW, 1997), documents the process of the acquisi- aesthetes into an ‘anthropological/aesthetic object tion of the collection and shows it as the result of a system’ oversimplifies the dynamics of the discourse complex process of negotiation between the Gallery and diverts attention away from the issues that divid- staff, in particular Tuckson and the director Hal ed them. Missingham, the Board of Trustees and the donor or 3 Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds), sponsor Scougall himself. As Nigel Lendon pointed Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, Oxford Studies in out to me the Indigenous works were still included the Anthropology of Cultural Forms (Oxford: under the rubric ‘Primitive art’ at the AGNSW until Clarendon Press, 1992); Shelly Errington, ‘What the 1980s. Became of the Authentic Primitive Art’, in Cultural 11 Terrence Maloon, Tuckson and Tradition, Painting Anthropology 9(2) (1994), pp. 201-226; Ruth Philips, Forever: Tony Tuckson (Canberra: National Gallery of Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native American Art Australia, 2000), p. 14. from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998); George Marcus and Fred 12 Maloon, Tuckson and Tradition, Painting Forever, Myers (eds), The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and p. 14. Anthropology (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995); Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places 13 Anthony Tuckson, ‘Aboriginal Art and the West- (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Susan ern World’, in Ronald M. Berndt (ed), Australian Vogel (ed), Art/Artifact (New York: Centre for Aboriginal Art (Sydney: Ure Smith 1964), p. 63. African Art, 1988).

49 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

14 It is precisely the particular form of such universals tigation. The difference may be that the anthropolo- that explains why Bourdieu, in Pierre Bourdieu, gist wishes to establish first what the artist knows Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste about the subject of his painting by placing art with- (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), is so in a context of cultural knowledge and establish the determined not to engage in aesthetic discourse relationship between knowing and seeing, whereas a when considering judgements of distinction, and why particular modernist world view sees that knowledge Gell, in Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: and as being communicated directly through the art Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, itself. 1998), argues so passionately for an aesthetic rela- 23 Margaret Preston, ‘The Application of Aboriginal tivism that eliminates the aesthetic altogether as a Design’, in Art and Austalia, 31 March 1930, cross-cultural category. pp. 44-58. 15 Anthony Tuckson, ‘Aboriginal Art and the 24 W. Baldwin Spencer, Wanderings in Wild Australia, 2 Western World’, p. 63; Terrence Maloon, Tuckson volumes (London: Macmillan, 1928), p. 793. and Tradition, Painting Forever: Tony Tuckson, p. 14. 25 Nigel Lendon, ‘Visual Evidence: Space, Place and 16 I use this formulation Maloon/Tuckson in places Innovation in Bark Paintings of Central Arnhem where it is difficult to know whether the views repre- Land’, in Colonising the Country, special issue of sented are ones shared by Maloon and Tuckson or Australian Journal of Art,12, 1995, p. 60. are simply Maloon reporting his understanding of Tuckson’s position. The confusion may be a sign of 26 This exhibition provides a well documented con- just how well Maloon represents Tuckson’s arguments. tested arena for most of the issues discussed here. Luke Taylor’s ‘The Aesthetics of Toas: A Cross- 17 Indeed Richard McMillan’s 1997 UNSW thesis Cultural Connundrum’, in Canberra Anthropology The Drawings of Tony Tuckson, reveals a heated 11(1), 1988, provides an excellent discussion of the exchange between Tuckson and Ronald and main theoretical issues concerns and Peter Sutton, Catherine Berndt over publication of Tuckson’s ‘Unintended Consequences’, in The Interior, 1 (2), chapter in the book. Reading further between the 1991, pp. 24-29, provides an extended summary of lines one can’t help thinking that the somewhat the debate from his perspective. interventionist editorial style adopted by the Berndt’s helped to polarise the debate and make the protago- 27 Philip Jones and Peter Sutton, Art and land: nists’ views seem more opposed than in fact they Aboriginal Sculptures from the Lake Eyre Region were. (Adelaide: South Australian Museum, 1986). 18 Anthony Tuckson, ‘Aboriginal Art and the 28 Luke Taylor, ‘The Aesthetics of Toas: A Cross- Western World’, p. 63 Cultural Connundrum’, in Canberra Anthropology 11(1), 1988, p. 96. 19 Berndt, ‘Epilogue’, pp. 71-2. 29 Maloon, Tuckson and Tradition, Painting Forever, 20 Berndt, ‘Epilogue’, p. 71; my emphasis. p. 14. 21 Tuckson, ‘Aboriginal Art and the Western World’, 30 Ruth Philips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in p. 68. Native American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 22 ‘The Marginalisation of (Contemporary) Non- (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), p. x. European\Non-American Art (as reflected in the 31 see Howard Morphy, ‘Gaps in Collections and way we view it)’, in Bernhard Lüthi (ed) Aratjara: Spaces for Exhibition—Reflections on the The Art of the First Australians, (Dusseldorf: Acceptance of Aboriginal Art in Europe and Kunstammlung Norrhein-Westfalen, 1993) p. 23; In Australia’, Aboriginal Art in the Public Eye, Art writing a history of this particular period one is con- Monthly Australia Supplement (1992), pp. 10-12. scious of the fact that one is dealing with a coded language in which the use of words like conceptual is 32 The analysis which follows is drawn from Howard far removed from their ordinary language meaning Morphy, Aboriginal Art (London: Phaidon Press, and position the author in a particular way. Tuckson 1998). stresses that non-Western art is conceptual rather than representational, and clarifies his view with a 33 Jean-Hubert Martin, ‘A Delayed Communication’, quote from Golding, ‘The Negro sculptor tends to in Bernhard Lüthi (ed), Aratjara:The Art of the First depict what he knows about his subject rather than Australians (Dusseldorf: Kunstammlung Norrhein- what he sees’. Without agreeing with the presupposi- Westfalen, 1993), p. 33. tions about Negro art, this perspective should on the surface be compatible with an anthropological inves-

50 CONSERVING THE PEOPLE’S HISTORY Lessons from Manchester and Salford

PAUL A. PICKERING

he closest that Margaret Thatcher comes reference to the tax that institutionalised high Tto an admission of failure in her volumi- bread prices to buttress the wealth and power nous political memoirs concerns her efforts to of the land-owning aristocracy. For all that promote history as a subject for school the cause was a serious one the numerous children. Ironically, however, one of the colourful banners, bands of music, and the acknowledged legacies of the Thatcher years, presence of many families gave the occasion in a by-product of the transformation of the prospect an unmistakably festive air.1 British economy from manufacturing to Overlooking St Peter’s Fields from the services under her stewardship, is the prolifer- window of a hotel, however, a group of nerv- ation of museums and historical precincts that ous magistrates viewed the scene as anything pepper the countryside from New Lanark to but festive. Alarmed by reports of secret radi- Wigan Pier. Although Mrs Thatcher would be cal ‘drilling’ in the surrounding hills, and unlikely to approve of the subject matter, for tormented by the largely apocryphal tales of those interested in ‘history from below’ there spies and agent provocateurs, the magistrates are many lessons to be learned from recent decided that the scene ‘bore the appearance of efforts at the conservation of the people’s insurrection’ and determined to arrest Hunt. history in the heartland of Britain’s In the surrounding streets contingents of nineteenth-century industrial landscape. Yeomanry Cavalry, Hussars and Special Manchester and Salford offer a vision of the Constables lay in wait to assist in the execu- museum of the future that is worthy of emulation. tion of the warrant. During the morning of Monday, 16 August Hunt arrived to tremendous cheering at 1819, large numbers of people began to gather about 1.00 pm and began to address the mas- in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, for a public sive crowd from the hustings that had been meeting that was advertised to commence erected. As he began to speak the Deputy later that day. The purpose of the meeting was Constable of Manchester was ordered to serve to demand extensive reform of the British his warrant and he, in turn, requested military political system, in particular universal support before setting foot among the protest- manhood suffrage and annual parliaments, ers. The first force to arrive were the and many of the crowd had come to hear these Yeomanry Cavalry — part-time soldiers, principles expounded by the leading radical including many who had no cause to love the reformer of the day, ‘Orator’ Henry Hunt. By radicals — who charged into the peaceful noon a crowd estimated at about 60,000 had crowd near the hustings with sabres drawn. assembled. As each new group of protesters Hunt was arrested, his famous ‘White Hat’ of arrived the cheering was renewed for the sen- Liberty smashed by the truncheon of a Special timents displayed on their many banners and Constable. In the melee fifteen people lost flags: ‘Liberty and Fraternity’, ‘Hunt and their lives — the first victims were a woman Liberty’, ‘Universal Suffrage and Annual and her child — and more than four hundred Parliaments’, and ‘No Corn Laws’, the latter a were injured, many seriously.2

51 Humanities Research Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

Instantaneously British public opinion was however, there were already signs that polarised by the massacre of ‘Peterloo’ — a Peterloo’s talismanic place in British history term coined by a radical journalist that clever- was beginning to wane. In 1888 on the site ly combined the location with the fact that where, in 1842, 30,000 Chartists had wit- the meeting had taken place on the fourth nessed the laying of the foundation stone, a anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. While mere handful of protesters watched the Hunt the Tory-dominated Parliament passed a vote Monument being demolished to be sold-off as of thanks to the cavalry for their ‘patriotic scrap building material.6 By the end of the conduct’, outraged citizens from all over the twentieth century the transformation was nation protested at the arbitrary attack on complete. Despite Mrs Thatcher’s support for members of a peaceful crowd. No event in the study of history in schools, albeit a recent or remote history was more important Gradgrind-like preference for ‘facts’ rather for subsequent generations of radicals and than ‘interpretation’,7 the level of historical reformers. For supporters of the largest work- knowledge and understanding in the general ing-class movement of the 1840s, the community is low. A recent survey completed Chartists, this was evident in innumerable during the sixtieth anniversary of the Battle of ways, from the monument erected by subscrip- Britain, for example, showed that 10 per cent tion in Manchester in commemoration of of Britons aged eighteen to twenty-four ‘Orator’ Hunt, to the scores of ballads and believed that it had occurred in 1815 and a poems that celebrated courage and perpetuat- further 11 per cent thought it had occurred in ed a sense of indignation. 1066. Not surprisingly ‘Peterloo’ is now a for- “How valiantly we met that crew, Of gotten episode.8 infants, men and women too, Upon the plain No student of nineteenth-century British of Peter-loo”, ran the opening stanzas of a pop- politics is surprised that Peterloo occurred in ular satire composed by the fictional Sir Hugo Manchester, a city characterised by abrasive Burlo Furioso in 1819, “And gloriously did class values and the centre of what many hack and hew, The d[amne]d reforming working people regarded as the ‘White slavery’ gang...” For many years after the inns and of the burgeoning factory system. Manchester pubs of working-class Ancoats reputedly was ‘the workshop of the world’ that amazed or echoed to the strains of “With Henry Hunt terrified contemporaries with Thomas Carlyle We’ll Go, We’ll Go” on a Saturday night.3 performing the typically Promethean role of The Peterloo Massacre is better remembered upholding both extremes in his famous refer- for its association with the movement for ences to a “Sooty Manchester” which was manhood suffrage, but leading middle-class “every whit as wonderful, as fearful, unimagin- reformers saw it differently. The Manchester able, as the oldest Salem or Prophetic City”.9 Free Trade Hall, home of the archetypal mid- For most of the first half of the nineteenth dle-class pressure group of the 1840s, the century at least, the city seethed with discon- Anti-Corn Law League, was erected, in part, tent against a backdrop of poverty, squalor and as a “cenotaph raised on the shades of the vic- environmental spoliation that was the scandal tims” of Peterloo.4 of the age. It is thus appropriate that a sus- Peterloo did not pass beyond the realm of tained attempt to rescue the memory of living memory until late in the century. Even Peterloo, and the history of working people in in the 1880s there were a dozen or so ‘Peterloo general, is taking place in Manchester and Veterans’ in the village of Failsworth, a few Salford. miles from central Manchester, who met in In August 2000 the Pump House People’s their local Liberal Club surrounded by the History Museum in Manchester displayed its banners they had carried on that tragic day latest acquisition: a truncheon snatched from more than sixty years before.5 By this time, the hands of a Special Constable on St Peter’s

52 PAUL A. PICKERING Conserving the People’s History

Dreadful Scene at Manchester, 1819. Published by J.Evans and Sons, 42 Long LaneWest, Smithfield, 27th August, 1819. Note the women on the platform in front of a banner of the Female [Political] Union of Royston.

Fields 181 years earlier.10 Passed down from relating to popular leisure from the Beatles to generation to generation in a shoe box by Association Football. A co-op shop is recreat- members of a local family, the truncheon now ed as is the kitchen of leading Manchester suf- takes its place alongside other artefacts from fragette, Hannah Mitchell. The devotion of the massacre that are displayed in one of more considerable space to popular culture, in than twenty galleries in the museum. Located particular football, is appropriate: a reminder on the banks of the river Irwell in the heart- that modern Manchester is best known, not as land of what was industrial Manchester the the centre of a global cotton industry (now museum is funded principally by the long since ended) or for its ‘School’ of Association of Greater Manchester economists (also in decline) but for its beloved Authorities and Manchester City Council. Red-Devils. As the only British museum dedicated As Frank Bongiorno has pointed out, the exclusively to working class history the Pump tone of museum’s galleries is sympathetic but House combines exhibitions of seminal never Manichean.11 Given that the museum is episodes in political history — from Peterloo located in the converted Pumping Station and the campaign for a free press to the that provided Manchester with hydraulic General Strike of 1926 and the creation of the power until the 1970s, a visitor might expect welfare state by the first majority Labour to find more industrial history (machinery) Government after 1945 — with ephemera although this is the principal fare of the near-

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A Peterloo Medal. Reproduced in F.A. Burton, The Story of Peterloo, Manchester, 1919. by Museum of Science and Industry. The Peterloo truncheon. The local woman in space that is given to Manchester’s industrial whose family it had remained knew vaguely heritage makes no pretence at any form of that from her parents — as they had learned it from scientific detachment that characterised some theirs — that it was associated with an impor- contemporary comment on the condition of tant event in Manchester history, but it was nineteenth-century Manchester (and still only during a visit to the Museum that it was characterises the displays at the museum’s identified as a prized relic of Peterloo.14 more grandiose and conventional neigh- The Pump House is part of a larger institu- bour).12 The Pump House offers engaged his- tion, the National Museum of Labour History, tory; an evocation of the past that might have that was relocated to Manchester from meant something to a leading local Chartist, London in the late 1980s. The main Archive James Leach, who described “the bitterest Centre is located in Princess Street in a build- curse” as the “hissing, whizzing, jumping, ing that, having been, successively, a thumping, rattling, steaming and stinking fac- Mechanics’ Institute and home of the inaugu- tory”.13 The Pump House also unashamedly ral meeting of the Trades’ Union Congress in pursues an educative mission, the success of 1868, is most appropriate for its present pur- which is exemplified by the acquisition of the poses. As the principal national centre for the

54 PAUL A. PICKERING Conserving the People’s History study of material relating to the history of Lottery Fund to support these efforts in the working people it boasts an impressive collec- conservation of the nation’s banners — tion: from the papers of the Chartists, Henry estimated at £10,000 for an average banner — Vincent and Bronterre O’Brien and leading and received funding for a major national Labour figures such as Keir Hardie and Robert survey as a preliminary step. During 1998-9 Blatchford, to an impressive array of organisa- the National Museum’s banner survey identi- tional records from the Industrial Women’s fied over 2500 banners extant (not including Organisations (1913-1971) and the Socialist military insignia) which represents an Sunday School Movement (1907-1971) to the unparalleled resource for the study of people’s National Union of Railwaymen Reports and history.20 Proceedings (1894-1972) and the Central and The efforts of the National Museum and Political Committee Minutes of the British the Pump House also have a valuable adjunct Communist Party (1930-1991). The collec- across the Irwell in Salford. Located in a late tion is growing apace with regular acquisitions Victorian building, Jubilee House, opposite of the papers of recently retired or deceased the Salford Art Gallery and Museum, the stalwarts of the Labour movement such as Working Class Movement Library had begun Michael Foot, John Smith and the irascible in 1961 as a private collection of books, pam- left-wing Liverpool MP, Eric Heffer.15 The phlets and labour movement ephemera by two contrast to the recent difficulties faced by local labour movement activists, Ruth and the comparable Noel Butlin Archives at Eddie Frow, and was originally housed in their the Australian National University is self- home in Stretford.21 By the early 1980s the evident.16 ‘Library’, at that time containing more than What has put the National Museum of 10,000 volumes, had outgrown a private resi- Labour History on the cutting edge in the dence and the City of Salford offered to house study of history from below has been the col- it in more suitable premises that would better lection, documentation and conservation of facilitate its use by scholars and the general political and trade banners (some of its collec- public. Since its relocation the collection has tion are displayed at the Pump House). Few grown to 25,000 books and 15,000 pamphlets, historians have given much attention to the as well as an impressive range of badges, inscriptions and pictorial representations on posters, photographs and archival material the banners and flags carried in demonstra- under the care of a professional librarian. One tions and parades,17 but their importance in of the most prized artefacts in the collection is popular politics was evident to radicals and an un-presented fragment of one of the ‘mon- the authorities alike. It was no accident that ster’ petitions demanding the implementation Peterloo commenced with the command to of the People’s Charter during the 1840s.22 the Yeomanry Cavalry to ‘have at their Taken together these three premises, locat- banners’, and, as one of the victims, Samuel ed within a few short kilometres of each other, Bamford, vividly recalled, the contest for possess a critical mass that has made them continued throughout that fateful day in Manchester and Salford a Mecca for the study 1819.18 Those Peterloo banners that survived of the people’s history.23 Manchester, wrote were regarded as sacred relics and often took A.J.P. Taylor in 1957, is “irredeemably ugly”.24 pride of place among the banners and flags At the time Taylor’s comment must have carried by the local Chartists.19 seemed like an epitaph: after more than a cen- Since its move to Manchester the Museum tury of conjecture the story of Manchester had has applied professional conservation stan- reached an unhappy conclusion, a microcosm dards to banners and has now built a collec- of Britain’s decline as an industrial nation and tion of 360, the largest of its kind. In 1997 the a world power. Nevertheless Manchester Museum applied to the British Heritage survived the ‘British disease’ and emerged

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‘Roll Up Roll Up - No Chinese’ flag. Courtesy Young Historical Society Inc. from the harsh reality of Thatcherism with ny to the transfer of cultural practices and val- renewed prosperity as a centre of finance and ues through migration. Lying in a dusty glass commerce. It would surprise Taylor as much case in the premises of a small as it would Carlyle that, at least in part, the amateur society, it is essentially hidden from rebuilding of Manchester’s international history. It is a reminder that the practice of standing stems from the study of ‘history from ‘history from below’ in Australia has produced below’. Unfortunately for students of many works of significant scholarship but Chartism the nationwide banner survey con- fewer landmarks of conservation.26 It too ducted from Manchester’s National Museum deserves to be rescued. of Labour History failed to identify a single surviving Chartist banner. In the town of PAUL A. PICKERING Young, on the southern New South Wales Endnotes southern tablelands, however, the visitor to the Historical Society premises — known as 1 See S. Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (origi- nal 1839-41, repr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, the Lambing Flat Folk Museum — can see a 1984); J. Marlow, The Peterloo Massacre (London: banner painted on a tent-flap in 1861. Rapp and Whiting, 1970); R. Walmsley, Peterloo: Bearing a Southern Cross superimposed over a The Case Re-opened (Manchester: Manchester Cross of St Andrew with the inscription, ‘No University Press, 1969). Chinese, Roll Up’, the banner was an adver- 2 E.P. Thompson emphasised the actual violence of tisement for a public meeting that presaged the day. See The Making of the English Working Class the infamous Lambing Flat riots later that (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1980 edition), p. 752f. year.25 Notwithstanding the unfortunate 3 Manchester Central Reference Library, newspaper sentiment, the banner is a possibly unique cuttings: Notes and Queries, 12 March 1903, pp. 182- example of the Chartist art form at its peak. 3; Northern Star, 2 April 1842, pp. 6-7. The Renowned Achievements of Peter-loo (Manchester, Painted by a Scottish migrant, it is a testimo- 1819), was reputedly written by James Varley whose

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grand-daughter reprinted it in a novel in 1876. See 17 Notable exceptions are John Brewer, Party Ideology G. Linnaeus Banks, The Manchester Man and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Altrincham: John Sherratt & Son, 1876), pp. 131-2. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), ch. 9; James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political 4 See P.A. Pickering and A. Tyrrell, The People’s Bread: Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790-1850 A History of the Anti-Corn Law League (London: (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Gwyn Leicester University Press, 2000), p.204. Williams’ Introduction to J. Gorman, Banners Bright: 5 P. Percival, Failsworth Folk and Failsworth Memories: An Illustrated History of the Banners of the British Trade Reminiscences Associated With Ben Brierley’s Native Union Movement (London: Allen Lane, 1973). See Place (Manchester: G. Hargreaves, 1901), also Pickering, Chartism and the Chartists, ch. 9. Like pp. 5-6, 27. Gorman’s, most studies of banners (in Britain and elsewhere) have tended to pursue antiquarian or aes- 6 P.A. Pickering, Chartism and the Chartists in Manches- thetic rather than analytic objectives. See N. ter and Salford (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 183. Laliberté & . McIlhany, Banners and Hangings: Design 7 M. Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: and Construction, (New York: Van Nostram Reinhold Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 595-6. Co, 1966); A. Stephen & A. Reeves, Badges of Labour; Banners of Pride: Aspects of Working Class 8 Daily Mirror, 15 September 2000, pp. 1-2. The local Celebration (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986). museum in Devizes, near Hunt’s home town in Wiltshire, has made an effort to keep his memory 18 J. Brewer, Party Ideology, p. 182; S. Bamford, alive (see: Guardian, 24 January 1996). I am grate- Passages in the Life of a Radical, pp. 207, 211; James ful to Alex Tyrrell for this reference. Epstein, ‘Understanding the Cap of Liberty: Symbolic Practice and Social Conflict in Early 9 T. Carlyle, Past and Present (original 1843, repr. Nineteenth-Century England’, in Past and Present, London: Chapman & Hall, n.d. ), p. 247. 112 (August 1989), pp. 97-103. 10 Media Release, Pump House People’s History 19 See Manchester Guardian, 26 September 1838, p. 2; Museum, 9 August 2000. Northern Star, 2 October 1841, pp. 6-7; 19 August 11 F. Bongiorno, ‘Heritage Report: Peoples History 1843, p. 3. According to Peter Percival, ‘as late as Museum, Manchester’, in Labour History, 76 (1999), 1884’ one of Bamford’s Peterloo Banners was carried p. 151. in a demonstration against the House of Lords by members of the Failsworth Liberal Club. See 12 This contrast is noted in Bongiorno’s perceptive Failsworth Folk and Failsworth Memories, pp. 5-6. report. 20 See N. Mansfield, ‘Radical Rhymes and Union 13 Northern Star, 11 July 1840, p. 1. Jacks: A Search for Evidence of Ideologies in the Symbolism of 19th Century Banners’, unpublished 14 The inspiration derived from a Peterloo relic —in paper, 2000, pp. 1-25. I am grateful to Dr Mansfield, this case a sword — is a plot line in Howard Spring’s Director of the National Museum of Labour History, story of the rise of a labour politician in Fame is the for providing me with a copy of his paper. Spur (Collins, London, 1940). 21 See E & R Frow, ‘Travels with Caravan’, in History 15 The only dark cloud on the Manchester horizon is Workshop Journal, 2 (1976). the threat to funding for the Manchester Central Library. At the time of writing (January 2001) 22 I am grateful to the librarian at the Working Class Manchester City Council were considering options Museum, Dr Alan Kahan, for allowing me to exam- to reduce services at the library which has served the ine this document. For the importance of petition- local community since 1852. For the early history of ing see P.A Pickering, ‘“And Your Petitioners &c”: this institution which commenced in what had been Chartist Petitioning and Popular Politics, 1838- the Owenite Hall of Science in Manchester see M. 1848’,in English Historical Review, 466 (April 2001), Hewitt, ‘Confronting the Modern City: the pp. 368-388. Manchester Free Public Library, 1850-1880’, in Urban History, 27,1 (2000), pp. 62-88. 23 Of note also is the establishment of the North West Film Archive by the Manchester Metropolitan 16 See T. Irving, ‘How to Save the Butlin Archives’, University which now has a collection of over in Labour History, 73 (1997), pp. v-vii; J. Merritt, 25,000 reels of film and video tape. ‘Closing Down Our Heritage’, Canberra Times, 7 Encounter, November 2000; Hansard (Senate), 30 October 24 A.J.P. Taylor, ‘Manchester’, in 8, 3 2000, p. 18613 (speech by Senator Kim Carr). (1957), p. 4.

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archival institutions and memory custody of books and other print media, and “ National Library,” according to Pierre sometimes pictorial material. Museums on the ARyckmans, “is a place where a nation other hand, have historically fewer collection nourishes its memory and exerts its imagina- boundaries, but developed over time — as tion — where it connects with its past and either specialist or generalist institutions — a invents its future”.1 It is the artefacts of mem- commitment to the display of three-dimen- ory which provide the means for this connec- sional objects. Archives collect documents, tion with the past, in the collections of specifically the records created by govern- contemporary archival institutions. Spoken ments or other organisations. Unlike libraries, views and recollections held within these as repositories for bibliographic material institutions as recorded oral histories — more already created in its entirety, the documen- often in libraries, than in archives or museums tary material in archives has been given mean- — have become increasingly important as a ing as it is accessioned, through an elimina- research resource, and as a way of understand- tion and arrangement process, and attempts to ing the past and its influence on the present second-guess which material might be and the future. More precisely than other important enough to keep. collected items, they have become artefacts of It is clear nevertheless, that boundaries memory. between these different types of archival insti- Some of the most significant memories of tutions have always been to some extent recent times are at present being documented blurred. In addition to bibliographic collec- through the National Library of Australia’s tions, libraries have kept manuscripts and Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, other documentary material; museums are over a four-year period to conclude in mid- repositories for an infinite array of objects, 2002. This collection will illuminate and which might include books and documents honour the removal experiences of separated (and even living objects like plants and fish); Indigenous Australian children and their and archives contain much material which families, and others directly connected with libraries and museums might collect, including these events, which occurred over a period of diaries, photographs or even three-dimension- several generations. It is our common task to al models. All of these institutions, despite ensure that these memories become collective their emergence as specialist collecting estab- memories, and to reflect upon how that is best lishments from the “undifferentiated achieved, within the archival institutions of collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth- our times. century rulers, aristocrats and scholars”3 retain These institutions have generally been the imprint epitomised by the Closet of identified and organised around the artefacts Curiosities from which the Ashmolean in their care, and the specialised skills required Museum at Oxford originated. This collection to create access to them, and care for them.2 of John Tradescent towards the end of the Public libraries were initially charged with the seventeenth century included various objects

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related to natural history and antiquities, as elements of collections and the research well as a library and a chemical laboratory.4 underpinning them, in ways never imagined Curiosity was a favoured impetus of the peri- by former generations of museum or archival od, for collecting rare and exotic objects of workers. Information technology and digiti- various kinds, and for expanding knowledge of sation have revolutionised the way objects, other cultures and of the past. As collecting bibliographic material, audio material or even institutions developed differentiated collect- archival records, can be accessed. Digitisat- ing roles, so societies developed a dependence ion, as Rayward has observed, “eliminates on these institutions, for retrieval of informa- physical distinctions between types of records tion and access to records. and thus, presumably, the need for institution- As part of the evolving history of archival al distinctions in the management of the institutions themselves, collections have systems within which these records are han- expanded, accumulated and moved into the dled.”7 Such questions as “What is to be province of consolidated and collective mem- collected, by whom and under what circum- ory. At the same time, they have undergone stances of preservation, availability and various transformations, not only into differ- access”,8 whilst not being intrinsically new, entiated and classified bodies of material and require fresh approaches in any attempt to find information, but into collections which relevant answers. provide references to local and contemporary At the audience/user end of the spectrum, life and activity. These two aspects of museum digitisation provides the opportunity to ‘create function — memory and contemporary activ- ever-changing virtual “cabinets of curiosities” ity — are linked. As the accumulated past in at will’. All collecting institutions making use archival institutions expanded to become of the opportunities presented by digitisation collective memory, the community became might then be termed, for practical purposes, increasingly interested, implicated and museums, as the original mobility and scope of involved: the presence of the community institutional collections is reinstated. It is a inevitably brings the community’s present to mobility which implicitly welcomes the addi- bear, and community activity now readily tion of objects, technologies and approaches occurs in conjunction with that of museums arising from contemporary frameworks of and other such institutions. The instructive knowledge, activity and expectation. influence of the museum, as reformists of the The notion of a collection of sound, with mid-nineteenth century conceived it, was to its overtones of ephemerality, synthesises well bring an appropriately ‘civilising’ model into with these new dynamics. The technology the life of the community.5 However, its pres- which makes such a collection possible is a rel- ent mandate is much more likely to include atively recent arrival. It has heralded the the capacity to reflect, and to reflect upon, the development of oral history as a discrete disci- life of the community in which it is situated. pline and contemporary phenomenon, and All forms of archival institution have has enabled its inclusion in collections — and taken on display activities, making stored also in the displays and retrieval mechanisms materials accessible through exhibitions and — of libraries, archives and museums. The further blurring the boundaries established analogous evolutions of oral history as a disci- with such enthusiasm during the mid-nine- pline, information technology as a support teenth century6 as museums became part of mechanism, and of the museum as a phenom- the public sphere. Further contributing to the enon have come to a meeting point, or increasing ambiguity of archival institutional perhaps a crucible, wherein many cultural function, is the emergence of collections of elements now have the opportunity to audio, video and multimedia material, now amalgamate. accessible and retrievable, along with other

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Oral history the importance of communication (both Oral history — the recorded memoirs and speaking and listening) is amplified, and reflections of people who become during the Jordens’ ‘ear for the future’ is of particular course of an interview, memoirists, narrators interest and consequence. Ronald Grele, an or interviewees — is an increasingly validated historian whose work was significant in shap- discipline. Its development, along with the ing the methodology of the recorded interview expansion of oral history collections, has as it is approached today, highlights two views occurred in parallel with the broadening role on oral history — one which sees it as a way to of museums and other collecting or archival ‘flesh out the record, to get more history for institutions. As with the conservation of the historian’ and the other, as a way to bypass expanding collections of three-dimensional the historian and hear the real voices of the objects, the safekeeping of sound archives has people and the past — to get beyond history. developed as a separate discipline, and audio- Grele believed that neither view should engineers in archival institutions are likely to prevail, but that the collaborative work of the be as concerned with sound preservation as historian and the interviewee in creating a they are with sound quality. Memory has been sound document should be recognised.10 given a technical guise, as collections of During the early 1960s Allan Nevins spoken sound have accumulated, and the established the Oral History Research Office individual and collective memories of various at Columbia University, in the USA, to record communities have been laid down, first on participation in the political, cultural and eco- magnetic, and more recently, on digital tape. nomic affairs of the nation, of Americans who The significance of these collections of had lived significant lives. The outcome of spoken memoirs is far-reaching, for paradoxi- the tape-recorded interviews conducted was cally, memory relates to the past, but is signif- not the same as the oral history record as it is icant only for the present and the future. Our known today — usually an unedited master understanding of the past, dependent on writ- sound recording, accompanied by verbatim ten and oral accounts of the time, is used to transcript. At Columbia at this time, the illuminate the present and the future. tapes were edited and might eventually be Anticipation, hope, desire, vision — all these erased, after changes to the written material states of projection into the future are impos- — often worked on by both interviewee and sible to experience without memory and a historian — except for a small example sense of the past. Oral history collections play retained as an illustration of delivery and an important role as the keepers of memory, style.11 with the increasing diversity, size, mobility and accompanying disjunction of contempo- oral history at the National Library of Australia rary communities. With a sense of the impor- tance the past as a presence, Ann-Mari The early development of the oral history Jordens, an interviewer for the Bringing Them collections of the National Library of Home Oral History Project writes: Australia were influenced by the work carried out at Columbia University under Nevins. As an interviewer I am a conduit, allowing From 1970, interviews were commissioned (as the interviewee to speak to living distinct from those initiated from enthusiasts Australians and those yet to be born. I am external to the Library, such as Hazel de Berg) an ear for the future.9 by the Library, to record the views and histories of Australians prominent in politics, In the context of increasingly unwieldy journalism or the public service. The main bodies of knowledge, and complex interrela- purpose of these interviews was to augment tionships within and between communities, the manuscript collection, which held the

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papers of significant contributors to the com- Through the recollection and reflections munity, and to uncover insights into impor- of those involved, government policies and tant processes and events. The coordinated practices which resulted in the separation establishment of a broader based collection of from their families of many Indigenous interviews from a wide cross-section of the Australian children, will be considered. The community, recommended in the report extent of the dislocation which occurred, the commissioned during the 1960s by the resulting disintegration of that collective Library’s then Assistant Librarian, Harold memory linked with family and culture and White, was not to occur until the early 1980s. language, and the painful collective loss of a Finally, in 1983, a social history component sense of identity, are only now being realised, was officially written into the Library’s collec- and the effects only now being reckoned. tion development strategy, providing a The Bringing Them Home Oral History context for numbers of interviews already in Project is therefore recording the highly the collection, of people who did not fall into personal accounts of those who were directly the hitherto favoured category of ‘eminent’ involved in separation events as children, par- Australians who might have been persuaded ents, close family, adoptive or foster parents, as to deposit their papers with the Library.12 well as the recollections of those who worked with the children professionally. A wide vari- the Bringing Them Home Oral History ety of roles were played by non-Indigenous Project people as school teachers, religious and wel- This new development also provided a spring- fare workers, policemen and patrol officers, board for many other initiatives, some of hospital matrons, staff in children’s homes, them national in scope, such as the Cultural and also as government administrators and Context of Unemployment project which policy makers. The range of their experiences recorded the memories and reflection of more is extensive. Many believed they were acting than 500 unemployed people across Australia. in the best interests of the children involved, Such a project is the Bringing Them Home and tried to do their work to the best of their Oral History Project established with an ability. It is important that these stories are allocation of federal government funding as a also heard, so that future generations under- response to the report of the Australian Human stand the complexities of this history. Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission A significant aspect of this project is the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and role it will play in making previously inacces- Torres Strait Islander Children from their sible information available to all, on the pub- Families. This project is arguably one of the lic record. Interviewees are therefore encour- most significant oral history initiatives to be aged to give permission for their interviews to undertaken in Australia, grappling as it does, be on open access, although some interviews with issues which affect all Indigenous — or sections of them — are embargoed for Australians, and which have become part of particular periods of time, where appropriate. an uncomfortable dialogue across all commu- Some relevant recordings will be held by nities in Australia, through media coverage state or large regional libraries as co-reposito- and political action. Its scope is both broad ries, and in appropriate community keeping and comprehensive, by virtue of the range of places, if the interviewee is agreeable. This views to be sought, the numbers of interviews distribution of tapes will ensure that the mate- it aims to record, the degree to which it aims rial is accessible to a much wider audience to resolve the processes inherent in recording than if the material is held only in the nation- and archiving oral histories, and not least, the al capital — although it should be emphasised amount of funding which has been made that the National Library’s stated goal is that available in order to carry it through. “all Australians, at their place of choice, have

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direct, seamless access to print and electronic Lowenthal15 refers to the growing inclusivity of sources of information”.13 Also planned as part the term ‘heritage’ and its importance in of making the material accessible, is a major bestowing collective identity and by implica- publication which will include interview tion, individual identity. Included in the term excerpts. Unlike the Human Rights and Equal ‘heritage’ are such intangibles as legend, Opportunities Commission Inquiry, which language and history, and Lowenthal remarks made a commitment to keeping all interviews on the worldwide similarity of concerns with confidential, this project aims to allow wide precedence, antiquity, continuity and coher- community access to the stories of all those ence, despite their being expressed in distinc- who were personally and directly affected by tive ways by different cultures. He also points the separation of Indigenous children from to the prevailing global interdependence their families. which makes heritage increasingly universal, Bringing Them Home interviewers operate though reflecting personal or communal individually in their own regions, usually far self-interest. from the National Library in Canberra, but The notion of heritage and identity can be the project trains and establishes support links linked to the concept of commemoration, or between interviewers, creating an inclusive ritualising memory.16 Taking an example used and cooperative network. The collaborative by Rosenzweig and Thelen, the battle contribution of technical staff, coordinators, described from a colonial Western perspective researchers, historians and importantly, the as Custer’s Last Stand, is known as an equally memoirists and interviewers who interface heroic event by the Oglala Sioux people, and directly with them and with their unfolding other Native Americans, as the Battle of Little stories, is inestimable and reflects a multi-dis- Bighorn. General Custer, Sitting Bull and ciplinary approach within the project. This Crazy Horse are part of a convergent history. can be linked to Grele’s optimism in the The divergent heritage bestowed by their 1970s about contemporary trends in oral his- actions however, may be interdependent, but tory, in narrowing “...the gap between history, is certainly not shared. and folklore and anthropology”.14 Many Indigenous people are able to the power of the spoken word describe so eloquently how identity and Some concern may be felt by the findings of memory are interleaved, and how fractured Rosenzweig and Thelen, that Americans in memories have resulted in lost and fragment- general are interested in history, especially ed families and the struggle for reclamation of that which personally affects them, or their identity. It becomes ever more apparent, as families, but are bored by and do not trust these particular interviews unfold, that many of the time-honoured methods of identity and history both live in the memory. imparting historical information which historians have come to rely on. Far more identity and memory trustworthy than books, the local history Shared memory contributes to an understand- teacher or even the professor of history at a ing of both individual and collective identity. tertiary institution, are museum displays and Although it is often to strangers that life- eyewitness accounts.17 This view was even stories are told, the unspoken memories of a more emphatically held by the groups of family or community group held in common Native American peoples canvassed by imply a shared identity, which empowers the Rosenzweig and Thielen. Here, a divergent individual to act effectively within the con- heritage is also at work. Historians trained in text of the present or to plan for activity in the the Western scholarly tradition will tend to be future. All action is contextual, and depends mistrustful of oral accounts because they are to some degree on the past — on heritage. based on memory and coloured by personal

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Margaret Robinson with Rosemary (L) and Rhonda (R), taken in 1959 in Broome. Below: Margaret’s parents, Regina Maria Roe b. 1902 and Edward Roe b. 1900, taken in the early 1950s outside the family home in Broome WA. Photos courtesy Margaret Robinson.

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experience. Native American historians such MARGARET ROBINSON — A as Angela Cavender Wilson18 however, point ‘BRINGING THEM HOME’ STORY out that the oral traditions of the Dakota peo- ple are the result of skills learnt and passed on Margaret Robinson was born in 1924 in in a disciplined way, as a task. Repetition, Broome, Western Australia. She was praise, critique and other devices were used to delivered in her family home by a doctor ensure that training was rigorous, skills were who took payment in chickens or eggs as learned and accurate information was deliv- Indigenous people were not allowed to give birth in the hospital at that time. Margaret ered and archived. As Wilson says: remembers the Second World War and the bombing of Broome and can remember ...the Dakota definitions of oral tradition is being evacuated several times. It was dur- based on the assumption that the ability to ing one of these evacuations that she was remember is an acquired skill — one that picked up by Native Welfare officers and is acutely developed or neglected.19 put on a plane to Perth where she was placed in Sister Kate’s home. She was then These observations may be applied — in sent out as a domestic to work at a floristry their own cultural context — to the oral farm in Kalamunda. While there she wrote to her father in Broome who organised to traditions of other Native American peoples have her brought back home. or to the oral traditions of Indigenous Australians. In these cultures, the function of oral traditions is not confined to the transmis- Margaret remembers: sion of history, but also to the delivery of a wide range of information which might be as Margaret recalls working at the Club Hotel important in providing moral guidelines as in in Derby, her uncle and brother were also passing on practical knowledge about food there. She was told her mother and father sources. were coming to collect her at 4am, so they To Indigenous Australians, the recording wouldn’t get evacuated, but Native Wel- fare and Police officers came and picked her of oral ‘histories’ (or memories, or personal up along with another girl and put them on visions and reflections) is a highly significant a plane (a DC-3) to Perth. She was fifteen activity, which provides not only an archive, years old. but a connection with their own definitive ways of articulating heritage. The Bringing She “stayed the first night with the Them Home Oral History Project, particular- Salvation Army, then Sister Kate’s, then to ly, provides opportunities for sharing collec- Kalamunda to the Davies’ “. She was in tive memories, and for the heightened sense of Sister Kate’s 2-3 months and was told she identity which follows. It also creates oppor- couldn’t return to Broome. tunities for communicating with others and She wrote to her father while in Sister Kate’s for participation in a more democratised who arranged with Colonel Gibson to get version of history. her home. He flew her home to Broome (1944) and locked her in the Hotel room museums of sound and memory with a guard. “Paddy Torres stayed guard Those versions of history which might be because there were 3000 troops in Broome termed democratised, take account of the at the time.” input of various people, not least those who have been part of the history. Democrati- Biographical material written by Marnie Richardson, Bringing Them Home inter- sation might also refer to the input of those viewer. who wish to access history — those who appreciate the opportunity to engage actively

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with objects and their histories and create memories of those who selected it for exhibi- their own relationships with them. Bennett20 tion and created interpretive text also become points out that unmediated contact with an part of its reality, as do the memories brought object is not possible in a museum context, to bear by the viewer. A displayed object and that the same interpretive layers surround serves as a tangible reminder of the journey it, as might be produced by a book or a film. travelled from origin to museum display, as The artefact, according to Bennett, becomes a well as being a reassurance to the viewer of the rhetorical object as soon as it is placed in a reality of that journey as well as its own museum, and when viewed as part of a display history. As Morton points out, there are or exhibition, takes on the character of a several consequences which arise from an ‘signifier’. This view of the museum and the object-centred approach to history, the pri- objects it holds may be accurate, but according mary one being that “if there are no objects to Rosenzweig and Thelen,21 many members of available, it becomes very difficult to mount a the public would not agree — books and films museum display”.22 and history teachers are regarded by a surpris- Sound collections of oral history, as non- ing percentage of the American public as material phenomena, may provide the same unreliable filters, and objects in a museum and assurance for the museum visitor that he or the eyewitness accounts of people who were she is directly in touch with experienced actually present at an event provide the best history, as an object does. Reliance on sight as means possible for actually getting to the truth the ‘I saw it with my own eyes’ phenomenon, of the matter. is analogous to the ‘I heard it with my own This implies that the public does not ears’ confidence in oral eyewitness accounts. favour layers of interpretation, although per- Both utilise senses which are of major impor- haps the general viewing audience is not quite tance to individual interpretation of the daily aware of how omnipresent this can be in a environment. The oral histories archived in museum. In a museum context however, the various (but usually library) collections are, interpreter/curator/selector/researcher, unlike like collections of objects, tips of the collec- an author, film-maker or teacher, is not only tion iceberg stored out of sight. Oral collec- talking about an object, but placing it in view. tions are more accessible however, through The power of the object is that it has a life bibliographic retrieval systems which have apart from its museological context, including made the information held in libraries so the life ascribed to it by a viewer, who is an accessible, and their storage facilities so trans- active participant in the exchange, and may parent. In many ways, these collections are select — as the curator has done — which constantly on display — virtual catalogues objects to include in their own experience of a have opened the doors and windows, allowing display, and what meanings to ascribe to that audiences to see inside and make instant selec- object, from their own range of experiences. tions. Further advances in technology will This is a valid activity, insofar as it remains a allow effortless access to online sound. private activity — since it does not take into These developments will emphasise both account the very real concerns felt by those to the similarities and differences between whom an object may culturally belong, and museums and libraries as archival institutions. who may wish it to be understood in that Collections of sound accommodate easily to context. the idea of the virtual museum. However These observations bring to mind the role museums are constrained by ideologies of of the museum as a custodian of many kinds of selection which do not apply to libraries. memory. Every object is infused with the Libraries work under obligations and charters memory of the person/s to whom it belonged to facilitate access to information held within before it made its way to the archive. The their collections, and from this perspective

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DOREEN MELLOR Artefacts of Memory

may continue to be more appropriate reposito- 11 R. J. Grele, (ed), Envelopes of Sound: Six ries for sound collections. Until further Practitioners Discuss the Method, Theory and Practice of Oral History and Oral Testimony (Chicago: Precedent blurring and coalescing of boundaries between Publishing, 1975) p. 2. archival institutions occurs, the virtual museum of sound and memory sits comfort- 12 B. York, ‘Impossible on Less Terms’, in P. Cochrane, ed., Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library’s ably within its present bibliographic confines. First 100 Years, 1901-2001 (Canberra: National Artefacts of memory, such as those within the Library of Australia, 2001). Bringing Them Home collection, await this 13 NationaL Library of Australia, Directions for 2000- further diffusion of boundaries before their 2002. status as virtual objects is formally conferred. 14 R. J. Grele, (ed), Envelopes of Sound, Six Practitioners Discuss the Method, Theory and Practice of DOREEN MELLOR Oral History and Oral Testimony (Chicago: Precedent Publishing, 1975) p. 3. Endnotes 15 David Lowenthal, ‘Identity, Heritage and History’, in John R. Gillis, Commemorations, The Politics of 1 P. Ryckmans, cited in Directions for 2000-2002, National Identity (New Jersey: Princeton University National Library of Australia. Press, 1994) p. 43. 2 W. Boyd Rayward, ‘Information and Functional 16 Roy Rosenzweig & David Thelen, The Presence of Integration of Libraries’, in E. Higgs, (ed), History the Past, Popular Uses of History in America (New and Electronic Artefacts (New York: Oxford York: Columbia University Press, 1998) p. 166. University Press, 1998) p. 208. 17 Roy Rosenzweig & David Thelen, The Presence of 3 W. Boyd Rayward, ‘Information and Functional the Past, Popular Uses of History in America, p. 21. Integration of Libraries’, p. 212. 18 Angela Cavender Wilson, ‘Power of the Spoken 4 W. Boyd Rayward, ‘Information and Functional Word’, in D. Fixico (ed), Rethinking American History Integration of Libraries’, p. 212. (Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 5 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, 1997) p. 113. Politics (London: Routledge) p. 28. 19 Wilson, ‘Power of the Spoken Word’, p. 113. 6 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, 20 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 146. Politics (London: Routledge) p. 2. 21 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 146. 7 W. Boyd Rayward, ‘Information and Functional Integration of Libraries’, p. 214. 22 A. Morton, ‘Tomorrow’s Yesterdays’, in R. Lumley, The Museum Time-Machine: Putting Cultures on 8 W. Boyd Rayward, ‘Information and Functional Display (London & New York: Routledge, 1988) p. Integration of Libraries’, p. 215. 131. 9 A-M Jordens, ‘An Ear for the Future’, in Gateways, no. 47, October 2000, p. 21. 10 R. J. Grele, (ed), Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History (Chicago: Precedent Publishing, 1985) p. viii.

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future shots

prominent australians share their thoughts on museums of the future

Betty Churcher, ao Sir Robert May former director, art gallery of President, The Royal Society western australia, former director, Chairman Emeritus, Natural History national gallery of australia Museum, London “Yesterday’s museums tended to be — mar- “I’m not sure what the art museum of the vellously but simply — treasurehouses or cab- future will become, but I do know that I hope inets of curiosities. Whether art galleries, or it never ceases to be a place of private discov- museums of science or natural history, the ery and contemplation. I believe that the interpretive material was usually minimal. more transitory and electronic our world Today’s museums (with a few exceptions) aim becomes, the greater will be our need for to educate, using the objects on display to tell objects of lasting value. Palpable objects that a story about our past, or about how the natu- are prepared to sit quietly on a wall or on a ral world works. Unfortunately, these stories floor and speak to us with their own voice are too often presented as wisdom to be across time and space.” received, and sometimes even preached as ser- mons which force-fit today’s values onto the different realities of yesterday. I hope that andrew sayers, tomorrow’s museums will go beyond the best director, national portrait gallery, chairman, advisory board for the of today, using the objects to provoke ques- humanities research centre tions, with guidance that is open-ended rather than a closed answer. Increasingly, this will be “The greatest challenge for museums in helped by moving beyond the Gutenberg style the medium to long term future is sustainabil- — text on a panel — to add information and ity. Around the world, museums are undertak- questions in the style of computer games, and ing larger and more complex building projects; in other imaginative ways, which will engage virtually every major gallery and museum has contemporary audiences of younger people. recently seen major additions, or these are I end on a paradoxical note, based on dis- planned. Yet these buildings create their own cussions and experience in the Natural demands. At the same time, running costs are History Museum in London. Despite what I dramatically increasing, yet money is not have just said, I have great personal affection being spent on running costs at a rate com- for the Victorian clutter of the cabinets of mensurate with capital expansion. Museums curiosities. So the real challenge for tomor- are about collections and ideas — buildings row’s museums may be to blend a demotic are important, too, but it is essential that the idiom suited to the realities of the TV/com- right balance is maintained and the core val- puter/internet age, with nooks and crannies ues which sustain museums are not put under which preserve some of the crowded displays impossible pressures by over-investment in that have so much appeal to a certain kind of bricks and mortar.” scholarly mind. No easy trick.”

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FUTURE SHOTS

Carol scott, President of Museums in themselves but tools to be exploited, to Australia and evaluations manager, Powerhouse museum, sydney enhance and expand the museums’ pluralistic roles, the imaginative dimension and the “Museums in the future will be facing sig- multi-sensorial. nificant challenges. Firstly, they will be exam- Museums will be compelled, by an increas- ining the impacts of technology on interpreta- ingly sophisticated, insatiable and educated tion and the place of the object. Will ‘bytes’ audience to expand their functions and deep- of information and networked paradigms en and broaden the knowledge base. Just as become substitutes for linear narratives and shops lining one street in linear progression stories? What will be the significance of the have been replaced by shopping malls that object in a world where less distinction is offer a total, more immersive experience, from made between the simulated and the authen- beauty and health to retail and entertainment, tic? Secondly, the museum of the future has the museum of the future, I believe, will work ahead of it with regard to maintaining combine many of the functions of the tradi- audiences. In a post modern world, the tional museum, art gallery and university with increasing pace of life is favouring fun and contemporary needs. That is, alongside a entertainment over leisure that requires intel- sense of worship by a congregation of people lectual commitment. And museums, accus- in cathedral-like spaces and the leisure of the tomed to being patronised by the numerous park or garden as before, there will also be a and affluent generation of baby-boomers, will sense of the cultural keeping place of ancient be encountering an emergent generation that and living traditions, the engagement of is less numerous and less willing to accept the penny arcades, theme parks and festivals. A transcendent authority of the museum. kind of one-stop shop. I see the beginnings of Finally, the issue of the repatriation of cultur- all this at the NMA where joint scholarly al material to communities and individuals projects with universities are underway and will be a compelling concern. All of this where museum spaces are being used for criti- points to a re-negotiation of relationships with cal contemporary debates broadcast to the communities and stakeholders and a re-posi- nation alongside ‘yowie’ picnics. tioning of the place of the museum in society Accountability on all fronts, in particular . content and delivery, will be high. And only those who can address the popular with the margo neale, director, gallery of scholarly, the object with the experience, the first australians, national museum fun and fantasy with the profound, the sacred of australia with the secular and a sense of the spiritual, “The museum is an eighteenth-century will survive in the highly competitive market concept and this is the twenty-first century. ahead. The idea of ‘either - or’ and that This apparent dichotomy will have to be things have to one way or the other is out- addressed by museums of the future. Do we moded and bound for the dustbins of history. still need museums? If so, why and what sort ? From an Indigenous perspective and a Regardless of how futuristic, virtual and minority position, I hope the museums of the conceptual the museum of the future may look future increasingly become sites of negotia- and feel, and how many bells and whistles it tion. Places where multiple histories are told has, it would be a mistake to confuse these by diverse voices and stories have no end. A new modes of delivery with content and disre- place where contradictions are allowed to gard the traditional visitors’ changing expec- exist, hard questions are posed without quali- tations and the basic human need for contem- fication, answers are debated and conclusions plation, reflection and enlightenment. Instead are forever rubbery. And most of all where I see the tools of new technologies, not as ends these practices are considered normal and

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future shots (cont’d)

expected and not resisted by a reactionary city only positioned in different parts of the mainstream as sacrilege. A time when one globe but having the same overall population does not even have to talk about these ideas in profile. Toronto has more Italians, Melbourne the same sentence as the word ‘future’. has more Greeks but they all have the whole ‘Encounters’ and ‘people’ will hopefully world represented in their population and remain the keystone of all future museums, therefore their institutions tend to be going in value-added over time. The museum must the same direction. always be a place of encounters. Encounters People are always asking why museums are between cultures, between disciplines and being built at the rate they are and why is the between technologies. Encounters with and public investing hundreds of millions and between objects. Encounters between people sometimes billions of dollars in these new from all walks of life and as the new National museums. In that sense I think they represent Museum’s logo states, encounters between yes- culturally neutral space in an environment terday and tomorrow.” where the renegotiation of identity is an ongo- ing process. We look at social models such as the American ‘melting pot’ and all those george macdonald CEO Melbourne museum processes are still at play. The whole require- (an extract of an interview with ment is for every individual to identify who dr Amareswar Galla) they are in the world and to what group they belong and what is the positioning of that “I think in many ways we are dealing with group in the social, economic world and a new form of culture that has not been given political world. full recognition, which I call the ‘distributed So museums of social history or historical metropolis’. It is just not the global village, museums even natural history museums, come that village model does not fit. We are in a into play and in this they are there as a forum, metropolitan society that has a manifestation as a market place of ideas. But as a place of around the globe and that’s the part of society renegotiation of individual and group identi- that is growing most rapidly. These cities are ties they form an appropriate kind of place for made up of elements from every part of the that to happen.” globe, every population is represented. I think of Toronto and Melbourne as being the same

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REMARKABLE OCCURENCES THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA’S FIRST 100 YEARS 1901-2001

BOOK REVIEW BY RALPH ELLIOTT

The National Library of Australia, with a Henry Moore sculpture in the foreground. Photo reproduced by permission of Canberra Tourism & Events Corporation.

tymologically, a ‘library’ is a bookseller’s account of the remarkable literary and pictori- Eshop; for Chaucer it was a place “in which al archive of the New Zealand-born art dealer I put bookes”; today it is a building or room and collector Rex Nan Kivell, which is one of containing collections of books, periodicals, the Library’s most prized possessions. John and sometimes films and recorded music’. But Ferguson and Edward Augustus Petherick, for Joan Kerr in her chapter on ‘Strange very different characters, as Graeme Powell Objects’ in this elegant book, the National avers, collected invaluable Australiana, Library of Australia contains “a rich treasure including the first printed book on ‘Terra trove of three-dimensional objects”, including Australis’. But it is James Cook’s ‘Endeavour a nineteenth-century copper kettle, Sir Robert Journal’, the Library’s MS 1, which, “in num- Menzies’ uniform as Lord Warden of the ber and in sentiment, is the foundation docu- Cinque Ports, ‘boring’ inkstands used 100 ment of the National Library of Australia”, as years ago by the Department of Foreign Greg Dening proclaims in his lively opening Affairs, and a death mask of Vance Palmer chapter. with a chipped nose. Starting life in 1901 as the Common- Such objects occasionally formed part of wealth Parliamentary Library with one collections sold or given to the National Remington typewriter, the National Library Library, and several chapters are devoted to became an independent statutory authority in these. Nicholas Thomas gives an admirable 1968, but already in 1902 books relating ‘in

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any way’ to Australia were being acquired. It ticular interest in politicians and, as Stuart was the start of a century of diligent pursuit of McIntyre writes in his excellent chapter ‘The manuscripts, papers, letters, books, maps, Library and the Political Life of the Nation’, pictures, on behalf of the steadily maturing White’s “epistolary courtship” of politicians, institution we cherish today. active or retired, “was constant and insistent”. Peter Cochrane, editor of this book, tells of There were of course other claimants, like the the Library ‘Becoming National’. By 1928 it National Archives, just as other items coveted possessed two typewriters and one of its by the Library found their way to other insti- renowned founding fathers, Kenneth Binns, tutions in Canberra. Thus ScreenSound called it the ‘National Library’ and managed Australia, the former National Film and to obtain special grants from Parliament to Sound Archive, now houses the classic 1919 purchase not only Cook’s ‘Endeavour Journal’ film ‘The Sentimental Bloke’, whose rescue by but the Ellis Rowan paintings of flowers and the Library’s Film Division is traced by Peter birds and the Hardy Wilson collection of Old Cochrane with appropriate photographs. Colonial architectural drawings — all for For too long the Library’s accumulating £13,000. Tim Bonyhady devotes his chapter to treasures were stored haphazardly in most these collections, accompanied, as indeed is unlikely places: boxes in a grain store at the the whole book, with some superb illustra- railway station, films in the nurses’ quarters at tions, although the aureate captions are rather the old hospital premises on the site of the hard to read. Australian National University, with serials There is one name that crops up irrepress- stored in the morgue, and other items in the ibly throughout this fascinating history, that of old laundry. Eventually the splendid building Harold White, one of the famed Seven Dwarfs by Lake Burley Griffin, strikingly photo- of Canberra, whom John Thompson aptly graphed by Damian McDonald, was built and describes as “when roused, this diminutive ceremoniously opened. man was unstoppable”. I can myself testify to Along with his contemporaries Cliff being cornered on quite a few occasions at his Burmester and Courtenay Key, Harold White hospitable Red Hill home, while Harold busily promoted the development of stronger expounded on his vision for his Library and his Asian collections in the Library, as David insistent methods of achieving it. Walker narrates. White himself visited librari- White’s pertinacious pursuit of the Vance ans and scholars in various Asian centres and and Nettie Palmer papers is a typical example, persuaded Sydney Wang at Taipei to join the as well as what remained of Katharine National Library, which he did in 1964. While Susannah Prichard’s papers after the tantalis- some scholars regretted the Library’s move ing burning of so many others, reminding from the traditional European and American Thompson of that other ritual burning of his cultural heritage towards Asia, the opportuni- papers by the aged Thomas Hardy in his ty to build a world-class Asian Collection garden at Max Gate in 1919. John Thompson, proved irresistible, not least with such acquisi- himself for twenty years a senior member of tions as the Yetts Chinese collection and the the Library staff, also mentions Harold Luce collection dealing largely with Burma. White’s wife Elizabeth, his staunch supporter One of the Library’s major undertakings is in all his tireless endeavours on behalf of the ‘The Oral History Collection’, another of National Library. She, too, deserves to be Harold White’ brainchildren, established in affectionately remembered. 1970, which, as Barry York writes, is now a White succeeded Kenneth Binns in 1947 34,000-hour sound collection, including the as National Librarian, as he styled himself, pioneering recordings made by the intrepid although this fitting title was regrettably Hazel de Berg on her ancient metal and bake- changed to Director-General. He took a par- lite tape recorder, one of Joan Kerr’s ‘Strange

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Book Review — Remarkable Occurences

Objects’. The Collection includes music, folk- legendary Daisy Bates mapping Aboriginal lore recordings, as well as interviews with places in situ from the Nullabor Plain to the Australians from all walks of life, conducted Kimberley, maps now being used in connec- by a select group of interviewers like Terry tion with Aboriginal land claims. By the end Colhoun, formerly of the ABC, of whose of the twentieth century the National Library interlocutory skills I was made personally of Australia possessed over 600, 000 maps, 2500 aware. The Library’s ‘Bringing Them Home’ atlases, and over 800, 000 aerial photographs. oral history project, designed to collect and In the final chapter, ‘The Network and the preserve a range of stories from Indigenous Nation’, Paul Turnbull looks at the National Australians and others involved in the process Library’s increasing reliance on new technolo- of child removal, has so far recorded inter- gy. This development, closely watched by views with more than 200 individuals. It is interested and sometimes highly critical scheduled to be completed in 2002. observers, has not been without hiccups. But It remains to mention other aspects of the fine achievement of the Library’s many White’s design to systematically collect and distinguished and devoted directors and staff, preserve ‘material of all kinds illustrating the and its active body of Friends, live on, and the life and development of the Australian peo- reader closes this book confident that under its ple’, as described in this book. Hence the well- present Director-General, Jan Fullerton, the researched and illustrated chapters by Helen vision of that young cadet cataloguer of 1923, Ennis on the Photographic Collection and by Harold White, will remain alive and fruitful as Robyn Holmes on ‘Musical Dialogues’, with the National Library of Australia enters upon its tributes to the well-known music critic and its Second Century. antiquarian bookseller Kenneth Hince and RALPH ELLIOTT the distinguished musicologist Andrew McCredie. Suzanne Rickard writes on the Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library Map Collection, which includes a 1535 of Australia’s First 100 Years 1901-2001. edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia, with its Edited by Peter Cochrane. suggested existence of Australia as ‘Terra National Library of Australia 2001. 283 pp. Incognita’, as well as a lively account of the ISBN 0 642 10730 0. $59.95.

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