The Grainger Museum in Its Museological and Historical Contexts

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The Grainger Museum in Its Museological and Historical Contexts THE GRAINGER MUSEUM IN ITS MUSEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS Belinda Jane Nemec Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2006 The Australian Centre The University of Melbourne Produced on archival quality paper ABSTRACT This thesis examines the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne in the context of the history of museums, particularly those in Europe, the United States and Australia, during the lifetime of its creator, Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882–1961). Drawing on the collection of the Grainger Museum itself, and on both primary and secondary sources relating to museum development in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, the thesis demonstrates that the Grainger Museum reflects many of the concerns of museums of Grainger’s day, especially of the years prior to his relocation to the United States in 1914. Many of those concerns were products of the nationalistic endeavours arising from political upheavals and redefinitions in nineteenth-century Europe, the imperialism which reached its zenith by the First World War, and the racialist beliefs, hierarchies and anxieties accompanying that imperialism. In particular, Grainger’s lifelong concern with racial identity manifested in hierarchical and evolutionary museum interpretations typical of his earlier years. I explore the paradox of Grainger’s admiration for the musical and material culture of the racial ‘other’ and his racially supremacist views, and the way he presented these two apparently conflicting ideologies in his Museum. In elucidating Grainger’s motives for establishing a museum, I argue that Grainger was raised in a social and cultural milieu in which collecting, classifying and displaying cultural material was a popular practice. Grainger’s concern with preservation and memorialisation, although in his case taken to an extreme degree, was part of his family and broader heritage. Grainger also enjoyed visiting museums and exhibitions from a young age, the first three decades of his life coinciding with the ‘golden age’ of museums. Although Grainger’s creation of an autobiographical museum was unusual, it is neither unique nor unprecedented. I examine several other autobiographical museums established by creative individuals, mostly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like these other collectors, Grainger felt compelled to leave a legacy for future generations in the form of a permanent and tangible record of his family heritage, artistic influences, creative achievements, personal beliefs and aspirations. Grainger, and some of these other museum autobiographers, also used objects and collecting as a way of dealing with the i passage of time and feelings of uncertainty and loss, particularly, in Grainger’s case, following the death of his mother. Through his museum project Grainger also attempted to position himself as both part of international musical modernism and Australia’s first (great) composer. He argued that white Australia had a worthwhile cultural life and future, in which he stood at the vanguard, and which merited preservation and communication to future generations through a museum. By surveying the emergence of cultural collecting in Australia, I demonstrate that in this sense Grainger was ahead of many of his contemporaries. Grainger accumulated, acquired and preserved material types and subject matter not then widely collected, and created his Museum at a time when museums, libraries and other collecting institutions placed little emphasis on non-indigenous Australian cultural activity. ii DECLARATION This is to certify that: (i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, illustrations, bibliographies and appendices. Belinda Jane Nemec February 2006 iii iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to my supervisors, Professor Kate Darian-Smith and Dr Sara Wills of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne, for their advice, guidance and encouragement at every stage of this thesis. I have learnt and benefited a great deal from their knowledge, experience and insights, and I sincerely appreciate their supportive and generous approach. Past and present staff of the Grainger Museum (particularly Astrid Krautschneider and Rowena Pearce), University of Melbourne Archives, Baillieu Library Special Collections, Music and Architecture Libraries at the University of Melbourne, National Trust of Australia (Victoria), State Library of Victoria and the Library of Museum Victoria have all been generous with their time in providing access to the collections in their care. I received funding from the Faculty of Arts Travel for Research in Postgraduate Study scheme, and additional funding from the Australian Centre, to travel to White Plains in October 2003. This enabled me to visit Grainger’s house and inspect the collection of the Percy Grainger Library Society. Mr Stewart Manville, Archivist of the Society, was helpful and hospitable throughout my visit, and subsequently responded obligingly to further requests for information. I am indebted to Mr Manville and the Board of the Society for granting permission to copy Grainger’s Museum Legends. I thank my family, friends and colleagues for their patience during the writing of this thesis, including my managers at work: Ian Pausacker at the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Robyn Sloggett at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, and Michael Piggott in Information Services, University of Melbourne. My parents Jane and Danilo Nemec have encouraged me in this as they have in all my undertakings, while my husband Jason Kreitner has been unfailingly supportive, patient and helpful in a thousand ways. I certainly could not have completed this project without him. I dedicate this thesis to the memory of another Australian composer, Ivan James Nemec (1962–1997). v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i Declaration iii Acknowledgements v Table of contents vii List of illustrations ix Editorial note xi Introduction 1 Chapter One: A museum of which time? 23 A late Victorian museum in the 1930s? 24 A scientific museum? 36 Cultural history in Australian collections 43 A museum dedicated to Australia’s bright cultural future 49 Designing the Grainger Museum 55 Museum design in the 1930s 57 The plan of the Grainger Museum 61 Conclusion 72 Chapter Two: Death and memory in the Grainger Museum 75 The past, death and the museum 76 The death of Rose Grainger 80 Musée Gustave Moreau 86 Grainger on the past, memory and forgetting 89 The habit of collecting 94 Collecting families 111 Men’s collecting, women’s collecting 114 A museum in the house 119 Maison Pierre Loti 124 The ‘period room’ 126 Three Grainger Museums? 130 Conclusion 138 vii Chapter Three: Race, nation, empire, museum 141 Museums, race and empire 142 Museums in the colonies 146 Grainger’s Australian national identity 150 ‘A chance for all to shine in a starry whole’: Grainger and Australian democratic values 156 A ‘theatre of memory’ and mausoleum 159 Grainger’s views on race 162 A map of Grainger’s empire of ideas 175 Chapter Four: The typical collector? 183 Grainger the eccentric? 183 Avant-garde and primitive: ‘twin halves of a cultural whole’ 207 Folk-song collecting 217 Museums and the preservation of traditional social values 221 Conclusion 224 Chapter Five: The Grainger Museum as autobiography 225 Grainger’s collection as autobiography 225 Other autobiographical museums 233 Family legends 240 Australia’s first great composer 244 Propitious circumstances and fructifying personalities 259 Conclusion 273 Conclusion 275 Bibliography 283 The Museum Legends Appendix viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: From Clarence S. Stein, ‘Making museums function’, Architectural forum, June 1932 63 Figure 2: Percy Grainger, sketch of proposed Grainger Museum, 4 March 1935 64 Figure 3: Gawler & Drummond, ‘Proposed additions to the Grainger Museum’, n.d. [before September 1938] 64 Figure 4: Gawler & Drummond, Plan from working drawing, 3 October 1938 65 Figure 5: Clarence S. Stein, Main floor, “The museum of tomorrow”, January 1930 67 Figure 6: [Percy Grainger], ‘Indian collection of beadwork in the hall of 7 Cromwell Place’, n.d. [c.1921–1938] 123 Figure 7: Percy Grainger, Beadwork ‘collar and tassels’, c.1909 200 Figure 8: Percy Grainger, Self-portraits wearing Melanesian skirt, and beadwork belt, armbands and necklace, 1909 201 Figure 9: Ella Grainger, Laird of art, 1941 202 Figure 10: The Bower Studio, Percy Grainger and Ada Crossley, Durban, 1904 204 Figure 11: ‘South African ricksha boys’, c.1904 205 Figure 12: Percy Grainger and Frederick E. Morse wrestling, 1922 206 Figure 13: ‘The wrestlers, Dahomey Village’, 1909 206 Figure 14: Percy and Ella Grainger and others, with effigies, c.1953 263 Figure 15: Percy Grainger dressing a mannequin of himself, 1955–1956 264 ix x EDITORIAL NOTE Percy Grainger’s written expression is idiosyncratic and inconsistent. In quoting from his letters and other unpublished writings, I have generally preserved his spelling and idiom, with the exception of correcting obvious minor errors. Grainger variously used single, double or triple underlining to emphasise a word or phrase; all have been replaced with italics. Grainger’s use of upper case for emphasis has been retained. Italics in quotations by other authors are from the original unless otherwise stated. Grainger used
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