Loaning a Matakau Ancestor Figure

This month Birmingham Museums loaned its Fijian Female Ancestor Figure to the National Gallery of Australia for the forthcoming Atua exhibition.

1918A17.24 Fijian Ancestor Figure © Birmingham Museums

The figure was bequeathed by Captain Norman Chamberlain in 1918 along with 27 other Fijian objects. It was collected in 1877 / 1878 by his father, Herbert, and uncle, Walter who had bought the Fijian island of Naitauba and its cotton and copra plantations. 

The figure is one of only a dozen or so in existence and features a shell bead necklace, fibre skirt -or liku- and tattoos on the mouth and hips. To the back of the figure, a label reads “Figure from the mountain district of Viti Levu – (the tatoo about the mouth shews the married woman), HC”.

While the figure itself was sound, specialist conservation work was required on the fragile skirt which travelled separately in a custom-made box with integrated supports.

Travel Crate for the Ancestor Figure © Birmingham Museums

Following the exhibition tour, the figure will go back on display in Gallery 33 at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Adam Jaffer

Curator of World Cultures

Birmingham Museums

Atua: Sacred Gods from Polynesia

23 May – 3 August

National Gallery Australia

Call for Papers: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage: Heritage, Tourism and Traditions

13-16 July 2015, Liverpool, UK

Trans-Atlantic dialogues on cultural heritage began as early as the voyages of Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus and continue through the present day. Each side of the Atlantic offers its own geographical and historical specificities expressed and projected through material and immaterial heritage. However, in geopolitical terms and through everyday mobilities, people, objects and ideas flow backward and forward across the ocean, each

shaping the heritage of the other, for better or worse, and each shaping the meanings and values that heritage conveys. Where, and in what ways are these trans-Atlantic heritages connected? Where, and in what ways are they not? What can we learn by reflecting on how the different societies and cultures on each side of the Atlantic Ocean produce, consume, mediate, filter, absorb, resist, and experience the heritage of the other?

This conference is brought to you by the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (IIICH), University of Birmingham and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP), University of Illinois and offers a venue for exploring three critical interactions in this trans-Atlantic dialogue: heritage, tourism and traditions. North America and Europe fashioned two dominant cultural tropes from their powerful and influential intellectual traditions, which have been enacted in Central/South America and Africa, everywhere implicating indigenous cultures. These tropes are contested and linked through historical engagement and contemporary everyday connections. We ask: How do heritages travel? How is trans-Atlantic tourism shaped by heritage? To what extent have traditions crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic? How have heritage and tourism economies emerged based upon flows of peoples and popular imaginaries?

The goal of the conference is to be simultaneously open-ended and provocative. We welcome papers from academics across a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, business, communication, ethnology, heritage studies, history, geography, landscape architecture, literary studies, media studies, museum studies,

popular culture,  postcolonial studies, sociology, tourism, urban studies, etc. Topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

The heritage of trans-Atlantic encounters 

Travelling intangible heritages

Heritage flows of popular culture 

Re-defining heritage beyond the

postcolonial 

The heritage of Atlantic crossings 

World Heritage of the

Atlantic periphery 

Rooting and routing heritage

Community and Nation on display

Visualising the Trans-Atlantic world

Abstracts of 300 words with full contact details should be sent as soon as

possible but no later than 15th December 2014 to

ironbridge@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Job vacancy: Principal Curator, Oceania, Americas and Africa, National Museums Scotland

Principal Curator, Oceania, Americas and Africa

£34,360 - £45,502 per annum plus membership of Civil Service pension scheme

This is an exciting opportunity to manage and develop a section within the World Cultures Department. The section covers the ethnographic and archaeological collections from the region of Oceania, the Americas and Africa. The section has responsibility for curatorial input to the galleries and exhibitions. The collections are currently featured in the six World Cultures galleries in the recently refurbished National Museum of Scotland and in the Scotland to the World gallery which tells the story of Scots migration.

As head of section you will have responsibility for developing these collections, and setting out a programme for their research and exhibition. You will lead, manage and develop a strategy for the research, interpretation and public programme activities of the section. You will be expected to contribute to the Department’s input to National Museums Scotland’s special exhibition programme. You will have acknowledged demonstrable personal expertise in a relevant specialist area, with a preference for Oceania. You will also be able to support the Keeper in developing the Department and help it achieve its aims and ambitions.

You will have a degree/postgraduate qualification (or equivalent) in a relevant subject, plus proven relevant work experience. An excellent communicator with proven research and publication skills, you will be organised, methodical, adept at problem solving, a team worker and a good thinker. You will have experience in managing staff and projects, and will have good ICT skills. A driving licence is highly desirable. Details of this post and of all our vacancies can be viewed on website.

For further information and an application pack, please visit the website, telephone 0131 247 4094 (answerphone) or email applications@nms.ac.uk, stating reference NMS14/497. Closing date for completed applications is Monday 16^th June 2014.

PACIFIC PRESENCES – KIRIBATI (GILBERT ISLANDS OR KINGSMILL) COCONUT FIBRE ARMOUR COLLECTIONS IN UK MUSEUMS REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Pacific Presences, a major 5 year ERC funded project, co-ordinated by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge is investigating the art and history of the Pacific, and Europe's engagement with Oceania, through the rich ethnographic collections found in many European museums. (see MEG newsletter November 2013 and Project website).

As part of the project the British Museum, a Pacific Presences partner, is investigating its own collection of Kiribati coconut fibre armour and is compiling a survey of Kiribati armour held in other UK Museums. These distinctive Micronesian artefacts are known to feature in many UK museum collections and information which would help build a comprehensive, contemporary picture of their UK museum presence would be very helpful.

Any information members may be able to provide would be welcomed, but if you are able to include details such as images, museum reference numbers, acquisition year and collector name, or other ethnographic information about these artefacts it would be much appreciated.

If MEG members can assist with information, please email either Polly Bence ( PBence@britishmuseum.org ) or Geoff Rubenstein ( GRubenstein@britishmuseum.org ) at the British Museum.

Contact with individual UK institutions will be made in due course.

The World in Reading

On the 29th April I was among colleagues from other museums in the South East with ethnographic collections invited by Reading Museum to a day of knowledge sharing and brainstorming around the theme of community engagement. 

I was very pleased to be revisiting Reading Museum where I started my Museum career. Reading will always hold fond memories for me. Reading Museum is a sizeable local authority funded town Museum. The Museum has galleries including displays of Huntley and Palmers biscuit tins, a Victorian replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, Roman artefacts from nearby Silchester, 20th century art and sculpture. The Museum has a large temporary exhibition space currently hosting the exhibition 'Reading at War'.

Reading Museum also has reserve stores and a successful school loans service. Included in the stores and in loans boxes are objects from all over the world, which form the 3,000 strong 'World historic objects' collection. Like many local authority museums, the curator responsible for this collection does not have an expertise in ethnography or anthropology, she is also responsible for the art collection of which Reading has a significant collection of art by notable local and regional artists. 

The day was organized by Felicity McWilliams, project officer at the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) and Brendan Carr, curator of community engagement. As part of the ACE funded project 'Reading Connections' both Felicity and Brendan have been working on raising the profile of the historic world objects collection at Reading. I worked on basic cataloguing of the collection when I was a museum assistant in Reading several years ago. The collection was in a state of neglect for many years. The main aim of the 'World Cultures' strand of the Reading Connections project is to create enhanced records for 600 Historic World Objects, to be included in a new online catalogue for Reading Museum collections. Felicity and her colleague Adam gave a short introductory talk to the group illustrating the range of objects in the collection. The Historic World Objects Collection was mostly collected between the late-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century. Most of the objects were donated by local people who had gathered artifacts during their own travels abroad. Smaller numbers were collected during the course of overseas expeditions, and others were donated as part of large collections, including Reading Museum's founding Bland and Stevens Collections. The Museum officially 'closed' the Collection and stopped acquiring objects for it in the early 1950s.

A major aspect of the 'World Cultures' strand of the project has been consultancy with Reading Museum and MERL working together in partnership. A number of consultancy days have advised on different aspects of the collection and the focus of the day I was invited to was community engagement. In the morning we heard of a number of interesting engagement projects and personal experiences of such projects from Helen Mears, Keeper of World Culture at Brighton Museumand Art Gallery, Keiko Higashi, education project officer at the Powell-Cotton Museum, Catherine Harvey Education officer at Hastings Museum and myself. 

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery have been very innovative and focused on audience engagement from the early 1990's. Helen spoke of the many co-curated projects she has been involved in since working at Brighton from 2008. Most notably the major redisplay of the world culture gallery as part of the World Stories: Young Voices project. Helen engaged young people to redesign the gallery making it more relevant to them. The thing they most wanted from a new display of the world culture collections was culturally specific displays and connections to Brighton. Helen stressed the major learning curve to come out of such projects was one of processes rather than actions. Helen also stressed how time consuming and resource hungry co-curated projects could be and shared her mantra of 'D DIY' 'Don't do it yourself'! However she did emphasis the value of such projects to the communities involved. Often they are curatorially driven and she would like to see the impetus for engagement come from communities themselves without funding agendas prescribing project outcomes. 

  

The Powell-Cotton Museum is currently undergoing a major project redesigning the unpopular 'gallery 6' which displayed the Museum's ethnographic collections. 'Securing the Future of Our Past' aims to increase access to the ethnographic collections by contextualizing them with the natural history collections and raising the status of the handling collection. Keiko explained how she had been using community philosophy as a model to engage with visitors to Quex Park and Museum staff. 

Catherine told the group about work Hastings Museum has done with creative practitioners including the inspired 'Ethnographic Imaginings' a series of poems exploring and bringing to life objects in the collections and Hyakkai Yakou's evocative dance performance 'A night walk of A hundred demons' inspired by Durbar Hall at Hastings Museum. Hastings also engaged with young people to redisplay their Native American displays. 

Finally I spoke to the group about the 2011 temporary exhibition 'Made for Trade' and the Pitt Rivers current HLF funded VERVE project Need Make Use highlighting some of the community engagement activities we have been exploring during the first year of this project. 

The afternoon provided us with an opportunity to digest some of the ideas from the morning session. After an introduction by Matthew Williams, Reading Museum Manager, to Reading’s follow on project from ‘Reading Connections, ‘Reading Engaged’ a joint project with MERL aimed at strengthening engagement with local communities, we split into groups to brainstorm engagement ideas for Reading’s ‘Historic World Objects’ collection. Reading is a vibrant town of great community spirit and diversity. From Matt and Brendan we learnt that the Museum has taken a proactive approach by positioning itself as a leader in Reading’s cultural life and activities.

The morning presentations stimulated great discussion of how to proceed having done all the ground work in cataloguing and researching the ethnographic collection at Reading Museum encouraging the Museum to reignite partnerships with Reading Solidarity Society (RISC) and other local community groups. I was very happy to be part of such a knowledge sharing and thought provoking day and look forward to hearing more of Reading’s activities as the project progresses.

Faye Belsey 

Assistant Curator, Pitt Rivers Museum.