19th Century British Museums example essay topic

HST 230's 'Modern ways of seeing': Studies in the role and development of C 19 museums RESEARCH ESSAY By: Stephen Conor Thabiso Ralph's 31 October 2001 In a recent holiday trip to the Drakensberg with my extended family (in celebration of my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary), with this essay at the back of my mind and my inherited sporting inclinations being enticed constantly, I was fortunate to be presented with a few symbolic 'visuals'. These visuals filter through at this stage of final execution of this essay, which is a response to the closure of the 'bushman' (hunter-gatherer) diorama. The first was a wooden sculpture of two Khoisan hunters in poised positions situated in the lobby of the posh resort we stayed at. Their stance and static nature echoing their modelled and cast, clothed and positioned, life-size counterparts in glass surrounded displays at the recently closed 'bushman' diorama in the South African Museum. The extent of this kind of imagery in South African iconography resonates across the world.

The second came in the form of visual memories of cave paintings, shamanistic rituals and story telling learnt in my school days. These were sparked by certain family ceremonies initiated by my very own shaman, my father. His antics, I wish I could go into full detail, ignited a kind of story telling in the rest of the family, which now takes on a significance which this discussion shall draw upon. I am referring to the ability, cultures have, to uniquely record their own histories, to place memories in context. The problem is when these methods are corrupted and destroyed through misrepresentation and oppression.

I find it problematic that certain committees representing the Khoi and San are upset at the closure of the diorama. This is not a judgement on my part and I comment that current politics within these committees and academic circles cloud this approach to the debate. I am, however, stressing that it is because of their displacement that the Khoi and San people have not the same mode of remembering as once they practised, and accepting the diorama unchanged is difficult because it represents the disruption of a cultures own memory reserve. The closing of the diorama is justified but is not sufficient.

In this discussion I hope to qualify the previous statement through a careful dissection of 19th and 20th century developments in South Africa which led to the exhibition. I will also examine the contradiction inherited from museum prototypes specifically British and how this contradiction informs the statements I have made. C 19 and C 20 developments. .".. the 19th and 20th century interests of scientific inquiry and public curiosity (twinned with the prejudice of colonialism) were served by alienating the San from history and so from humanity". (Pippa Skotnes 2001) 2000 years ago the indigenous people of southern Africa were free in a rich land; today more than 2000 skeletons of Khoisan people are held 'captive' in museums and universities across South Africa.

(R L S warns, 2000), many without identity. The history of this shift traces the interaction between Dutch, British, Portuguese and Afrikaans colonists and the self-sufficient peoples of southern Africa. .".. colonists took Khoisan for slavery, sport or exhibition, and measured, dissected and gazed upon Khoisan bodies in the name of Medical Science" (P Lane, 1996, p 4). The result of this relationship is evident in debate today surrounding land reclamation, the rewriting of our history books and the extinction of certain cultural practices and languages - a number of San languages like / Am, Kx " au, //ku//e and! Ga! ne have disappeared (Trail 1996). Discussing the political discourse surrounding the exploitation and displacement of the Khoisan in historical terms seems repetitive and I refer the reader to Pippa Skotnes' book which accompanies her exhibition entitled: Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushman, for more eloquent and extensive descriptions.

I do see it necessary to focus on the role the museum has played in the history of the 'bushman' diorama in the 19th and 20th centuries. The main problem with the diorama is depicted in Pippa Skotnes' exhibition 'Miscast' that exposes the nature of the representation of the 'bushman' as being both mis representative and displaying a 'colonial mentality'. It also recognises the role of archaeology in the transformation of Khoisan from "human subject to museum objects" (P Lane, 1996, p 6). What is the role that the museum has played in all of this? The SA museum has existed since 1825 and follows from a tradition of representation emerging from Europe (mainly Britain). The exhibitions, around the latter part of the Industrial Revolution (1800-1850), drew upon the idea of public knowledge through public interest.

This idea was shown in the Great Exhibition (1851) held at the Crystal Palace where the displays. ".. had to suggest, however obliquely, that the audience would benefit in some way from seeing it... ". (P Greenhalgh, 1989, p 75). The notion of progress needed to be asserted and represented, and the colonies needed to be incorporated into this worldview. An inherent property of progress is the concept of moving from a 'worse off's tate to a better one and in this exhibition 'the other' is viewed as lower down in the evolutionary order.

This idea accompanies the new disciplines, like anthropology, archaeology and palaeontology, being explored around the same time. This, the scientific recording of the 'primitive' emerges in this diorama where the 'bushman' is objectified in the name of progress. This 'colonial mentality' constitutes "the old intellectual baggage' " which J Lohman (head of museums in Cape Town) says contemporary museums must "deconstruct". In the South African museum in Cape Town the body-casts were made within this context. The casts were made in 1912 by James Drury, whose intention was to make casts for scientific study and put them on display as "examples of pure racial type" (M Gosling, 2000). Looking at this history of scientific recording is where another problem lies as, in many cases, the bushmen were forced into having casts made and. ".. it is true that a few Bushmen died during this process" (A Thoma, 2001).

The argument for the closure is precisely that the bushmen were being treated like natural history specimens. I feel strongly for those families whose nameless relatives exist in numbered boxes in storage in museums across the country. The closure, in my opinion, has brought this problem forward in a stronger way than if the debate existed while the diorama remained. The closure helps to stress that a real and new evaluation is needed and not just minor adjustments. The memory of the diorama is imprinted in a certain way on many people's minds in South Africa and the world, and this will take a lot to alter. Contradiction The 19th century British (and European) museums functioned in societies which revolved around certain ideological patterns, which were seen as correct to them at that time.

Thus, in their mentality, colonialism was justified and this entailed the viewing of certain other cultures as less advanced or 'less civilised'. Museums, although advocating equality and universalism, displayed this worldview, through the subjugation of others. This is the contradiction. In South Africa those advocating apartheid acted in a similar way. The museums fall generally into this paradigm, and the irony is that, as with the British museums in the 19th and 20th centuries, their political ideologies emerge in their exhibitions. The museum exhibits of the 19th century arise from the tradition of 'cabinets of curiosities' which changed course after the exploration into the new sciences.

The emphasis became increasingly that of the ordering, classification and systemisation of artefacts in order to serve didactic purposes. The educated elite, however, defined these purposes. Ludmila Jordanova's article entitled 'Objects of knowledge, A Historical perspective of museums', highlights the questions surrounding the museum visit. She asks whether the visitor can be treated as "passive recipients of an ideological position, conveyed through all the physical aspects of the museum" (1989, p 33).

She goes on to say that the visitor, by participating in the museum experience, does to some extent "assent" to the claims made by museums with regard to the insights that looking at objects provide. These claims pertain to historical authenticity and precision but the epistemological problems persist. That is, it is impossible to capture experiences and feelings in material form. (1989, p 34). It is also difficult to know whether, in the future, one's ideological stance will alter or be proven irrational.

"Reclaiming a Native worldview or philosophy does not necessarily mean reconstructing a timeless traditional way of thought and belief. Like all human groups, the intellectual life of a community is changing over time" (Duane Champagne, 2001, p 215). The museum re-contextualizes objects through its physical relocation in the museum setting and also by the process of classification and annotation (P Davison, 1991, p 2). This immediately threatens the claim by museums to display authentic objects in a universal way. Davison mentions that "the result is that certain sectors of society and aspects of everyday life may be underrepresented or invisible in museum collections and displays".

She goes on to say that the. ".. collection can never be neutral, as selectivity is inherent to museum practice". The SA museum selected bushmen in the bush, selected not to show the negative effects of colonialism and apartheid on these communities and also selected not to show the history of how these casts were made and what condition they were kept in. These, in the semantic space of the 'state museum', mirror a racist belief system. My response to the closure is that it should have happened, like many things, a long time ago. In reading responses by some academics who oppose the closure but are for alteration, I relate to their reasons as to why the diorama needs to be changed. I differ in that I believe that its closure might spur on a more radical change in representing a people than happen by simply altering an existing exhibition.

I have looked at certain 19th and 20th century influences both in museum practice and in political beliefs and have commented on the contradiction inherited from 19th century museum practice.