Losing Your Marbles

The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions

by Adam Kuper (2023, Profile Books, 416 pages)

Jump in…

• Holiday Souvenirs
• Them Dry Bones
• But is it Art?
• Whose Story is it Anyway?
• Elsewhere on the Bookshelf

Holiday Souvenirs

As Western Europeans forged trade routes and “discovered” New Worlds in Africa, Asia and America, planting their flags and striding over their colonies, so the first huge accumulations of cultural artefacts were sent back home. Mountains of stuff – some treasures, many mundane but “exotic” weapons and tools and clothes, along with sacred and human remains – were bought, bartered, looted, swindled and stolen from the original Other People of these far-away places.

By hook and (often) crook, collections were made and museums constructed in Paris, Leiden, Copenhagen, London and Oxford. Kuper tells the story of how the many thousands of items in the British Museum collections were acquired and housed. The interesting history of one old favourite of mine, Oxford’s Pitt-Rivers museum, is also laid out here. Wealthy private collectors, victorious military and colonial leaders accumulated vast numbers of things. Some were motivated by scientific curiosity, others by a genuine concern to preserve evidence of ways of life that would indeed be endangered by the arrival of dominant incomers.

Them Dry Bones

But a museum is never a neutral empty space with objects in it. It tells a story, whether implicit or explicit. And many of the cultural and human artefacts were presented in the 19th century to tell a story that best fitted the prevailing theories of humankind: a story of evolution, from Primitive to Civilised. In British museums this at least reinforced the colonial mindset of national superiority, and in German – and American – institutions it more boldly asserted the racist theories that ravaged the world in the 20th century.

The holdings of human remains – skulls, skeletons, “shrunken heads etc. – which are now vigorously argued over [see below] – were always a matter of contention. What to do with them? Are these bones best understood in the context of an ethnographic display (alongside other cultural items) or anthropological (to emphasise the supposed development and difference between racial types) or even as a part of natural history? This uncertainty and the fight for resources and physical space to house and display these enormous collections meant that often these important items fell through the cracks. They were neglected, dispersed, stored inappropriately etc. It is shocking that so much material that now is the subject of heated debate, was then almost overlooked.

But is it art?

Another dimension to the controversies which shaped museums in the 20th century was whether the objects crafted by Other People should be curated to highlight their cultural function within their society, or as crafted object of intrinsic artistic merit? What is certain is that displays of indigenous art, including masks, had a profound effect on pioneers of western modern art. Picasso’s ground-breaking 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which was directly influenced by seeing exhibits of African masks in Paris. Here is where the terms “L’art negre” and “Primitivisme” were coined.

Of course, artists will absorb and re-work new ideas from whatever source, like in the 19th century exposure to Japanese culture, which appears in visual art, music and fashion of the period. But this set off the second dilemma for curators: do they present these masks, bronzes, carvings, paintings etc. in context, or out of context, simply to admire them as art, albeit springing from different sources than was familiar in the West? And anyway … Is It Art?

Whose Story Is It Anyway?

Adam Kuper writes so skillfully. He somehow walks the narrow line between a neutral historical prose and a divisive polemic about colonialism and exploitation. While not denying the dodgy origins of the millions of artefacts that are now housed or stored in the Smithsonian, the London museums and elsewhere, he addresses the concerns for legitimate scientific and ethnographic interest in the collection, while also acknowledging the problematic competing claims on them.

Athens have strong claims on the “Elgin” Marbles. Nigeria has been more or less successful in securing the return of the Benin Bronzes. Numerous other ethnic groups have campaigned for the return of sacred and personal items, and especially of ancestral remains. But the most fascinating part of this book is when the author calmly looks at the genuine complexities of these debates. For example, who are these groups to make the claims, for some of them may be … only vaguely connected to the people from whom (or of whom) the objects in question were obtained. The modern country called Benin is not the same as the ancient Kingdom of Benin. And there are a huge number of indigenous American groups demanding their say over anthropological collections in the USA.

The level-headedness of Adam Kuper’s prose almost cracks with frustration over the effects of “identity politics” entering the fray, where minority groups make almost impossible demands over the control of items, or the rights to tell their own stories through the holdings in the great museums. Who on Earth would be a curator in this age? They are being held to impossible standards, and jumped on by any and every representative group that would find fault in their action or inaction.

Elsewhere on the Bookshelf

• Telling Africa’s story – OffTheShelf – in which I reflected on Robin Derricourt’s book Inventing Africa (2007) which examined how Europeans’ ideas about Africa history perpetuated so many narratives of colonial superiority. Histories that included ancient African empires and cultural achievements were systematically dismissed.
• The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut by Nigel Barley (1983, Penguin, 190 pages) – This outrageously funny book lifts the lid on anthropological fieldwork. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. It was recommended reading before going to live in rural Africa: it was hilarious and scared the living daylights out of us!
• Nigel Barley’s other books are also entertaining:
  • Not a Hazardous Sport (1988) is from Barley’s time as Director of The Museum of Mankind. Like all anthropology, it may feel a bit uncomfortable now from our 21st century perspective.
  • Native Land (1989) turns the tables on us: Barley brings the the methods of ethnographic research to describe that exotic and strange tribe, the English.
• Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory by Patrick Wilcken (2010, Bloomsbury, 376 pages) – this is a brilliant biography of one of the great figures in 20th century cultural anthropology.