New Book: Returning Southeast Asia's Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution

 Edited by Louise Tythacott and Panggah Ardiyansyah

With contributions from Gabrielle Abbe, Jos van Beurden, Socheat Chea, John Clarke, Charlotte Galloway, Chanraksmey Muong, Duyen Nguyen, Phacharaphorn Phanomvan, Melody Rod-ari, Wieske Octaviani Sapardan

The last 150 years has seen extensive looting and illicit trafficking of Southeast Asia's cultural heritage. Art objects from the region were distributed to museums and private collections around the world. But in the 21st century, power relations are shifting, a new awareness is growing, and new questions are emerging about the representation and ownership of Southeast Asian cultural material located in the West.

This book is a timely consideration of object restitution and related issues across Southeast Asia, bringing together different viewpoints including from museum professionals and scholars in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia – as well as Europe, North America and Australia. The objects themselves are at the centre of most narratives - from Khmer art to the Mandalay regalia (repatriated in 1964), Ban Chiang archaeological material and the paintings of Raden Saleh. Legal, cultural, political and diplomatic issues involved in the restitution process are considered in many of the chapters; others look at the ways object restitution is integral to evolving narratives of national identity. The book's editors conclude that restitution processes can transform narratives of loss into opportunities for gain in building knowledge and reconstructing relationships across national borders.

"Every Southeast Asian country has a different experience of the loss of antiquities, but we all share in the deeply-felt benefits of contemporary restitution initiatives. This book makes an important contribution to bringing these questions out into the open."
- Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia

Louise Tythacott is the Woon Tai Jee Professor of Asian Art at Northumbria University, United Kingdom.

Panggah Ardiyansyah is an MPhil/PhD student of History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS University of London.

NUS Press

PhD Opportunity: Tan See Bock Studentship at Northumbria University

Northumbria University Gallery holds the Woon Collection of Asian Art, which includes a significant number of rare ancient Chinese bronzes including a standing and a seated Acuoye Guanyin both from the late Nanzhao Kingdom (AD 653-902) and an Amitabha Buddha and a Vairocana Buddha, both seated in Dhyanasana pose, from the Dali Kingdom (AD 937-1253). The project would further our understanding of the histories, iconographies, collecting and display of ancient Chinese bronzes in the Woon Collection and other collections around the world, as well as their composition and methods of manufacture. The successful PhD student would help shape our understanding of the best approaches to the care, interpretation and exhibition of ancient Chinese bronzes in museum collections and the influences on the technology used. Although there is research on the history of early Chinese bronzes from this area, there is little from the technological perspective. 

Full details available here.

Freelance opportunity: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery is looking for help to identify ethnographic material and for advice on potential restitutions.  These objects were purchased between 1940 and 1988,  and were subsequently part of the Derbyshire Schools Library Service collections.

They are looking for people who can help identify objects from:

·       South Pacific (around 85 objects)

·       Africa (around 119 objects)

·       North America (around 33 objects)

·       Australia (around 26 objects)

The objects are located in Buxton, Derbyshire. You will need to travel to view the objects in person.

With the support of the Esmee Fairburn Collections Trust funding, they are able to offer a fee of £250 a day plus reasonable travel expenses.

The work needs to be carried out between October and December.

If you are able to help, please send a description of no more than 500 words detailing your relevant experience to Anna Rhodes anna.rhodes@derbyshire.gov.uk by 5pm on Friday 20^th September. 

Collections in Circulation: Conference, 9-10 May 2019

The Mobile Museum Project Conference will take place at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on Thursday 9th and Friday 10th May 2019.

The conference brings together scholars from the UK and overseas with a shared interest in the mobility of museum collections, past and present. Their papers will address various aspects of the history of the circulation of objects and their re-mobilisation in the context of object exchange, educational projects and community engagement.

Confirmed speakers include Claudia Augustat, Paul Basu, Joshua Bell, Martha Fleming, Tony Kanellos, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Luciana Martins, Wayne Modest, Catherine Nichols, Jude Philp, Daniel Simpson, Alice Stevenson and members of the Mobile Museum project team.

The full conference programme is now availlable and is designed to allow opportunity for extended discussion of the papers and their implications. A reception will be held in Kew’s Shirley Sherwood Gallery, and there will be optional tours of the Economic Botany Collection, the Herbarium and Kew’s library & archives.

BBC Civilisations Festival 'Museums and the materialisation of refusal'

Wayne Modest, Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde and Africa Museum, Netherlands, responds to issues related to exhibiting experiences of empires, with reference to what he refers to as the 'materialisation of refusal'.

Friday 9 March 2018,
18.30–19.30 BP Lecture Theatre, British Museum


To book a ticket visit the website

SACKLER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP ON THE HISTORY OF CONSERVATION AT THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM

WORCESTER COLLEGE AND THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 

Salary £28,413 p.a. plus £5,000 housing allowance p.a. 

Applications are invited for a three year Sackler Research Fellowship on the history of Conservation at the Ashmolean Museum, in association with Worcester College, Oxford. Based in the Ashmolean's Conservation Department in Oxford, the postholder will research the preservation history of the museum. 

As the country’s oldest public museum, founded in 1683, the Ashmolean is in an exceptional position to follow the history of conservation and restoration. The department holds formal conservation records from cards and notebooks that date back to the middle of the last century along with other sources. The research will concentrate on a history of conservation and restoration through the records and practices, collections and staff, building on existing work carried out in the department and on display in the Restoring the Past Gallery. 

The successful candidate will have a proven ability to carry out research in an area related to the history of collections or conservation, a relevant post-graduate degree, either completed or due to be completed by October 2017, and a genuine interest in learning about conservation ethics and preservation methodologies. There may be opportunities for candidates with a suitable qualification in conservation to maintain practical skills during their tenure if they wish, so long as this enhances the research focus of the Sackler Research Fellowship. 

This award is tenable for three years, at a salary of £28,413 plus a housing allowance of £5,000, commencing on 1 October 2017 or as soon as possible thereafter. For full details of the post and the application process, please visit www.worc.ox.ac.uk/jobs. Closing date for applications is 10am on Thursday 31 August 2017 

Worcester College has recently adopted a diversity strategy and is actively seeking to increase the proportion of Fellows on Governing Body who are women and/or of BME origin 

The Evolution of the Museum

Science Museum, 
London, 14th July 2017

This workshop is part of the AHRC/Labex funded Project, Universal Histories and Universal Museums: a transnational comparison. 

Museums are emergent entities – and the evolution of a museum is dependent on a number of factors, including: changes in collecting and disposal practices, redisplays and the legacy of temporary exhibitions. New pedagogical perspectives relating to new questions or ideological trends, either in museology or in the disciplines represented in the collections, are also influential.

The workshop will focus on selected case studies to analyse methodological issues relating to universal histories and universal museums. The evolution of the museum will be discussed in relation to the impact of temporary exhibitions and the circulation of knowledge in the public sphere, including the 1876 Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at the South Kensington Museum and the creation of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro.

The 1876 Loan Exhibition is a temporary exhibition which took place in 1876 at the South Kensington Museum and was one of the founding displays which led to the creation of the Science Museum. This exhibition offers a case study for the ways in which temporary displays have a permanent legacy in national and international museum collections, and how far the interpretation and presentation of materials was transformed in this process. 

The Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro opened in 1882 following the 1878 International Exhibition, for which the Trocadéro palace had been built. Though many studies have focused on the successive transformations of this museum in the Musée de l’Homme and, successively, the Musée du Quai Branly and the MUCEM, the first assemblage and display of these ethnographic collections is less well known. Drawing on the place given to the arts, the regions, and different themes in universal exhibitions in Paris, and particularly in the 1878 exhibition, the discussion of the Musée d'Ethnographie will cast new light on the motivations and relationships of collectors, learned societies, politicians, and publics in informing the creation of this museum. 

The workshop will bring together researchers from ethnography, history of science, and museum history, to explore the evolution of museums, mainly – but not only – in France and the UK. The workshop will also reflect on object agencies through a session with the objects studied in the Universal Histories and Universal Museums project. 

Papers will focus on themes including

• History and/or  comparison of the science and art collections in the South Kensington Museum, and the foundation of the Science Museum
• History of ethnographic collections in Paris (and direct comparisons with other cities and particularly with London) and of the first Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro
• The impact of temporary exhibitions and universal exhibitions on the creation and development of museum collections.

For the full programme and to registrar.  

Call for Papers ‘The evolution of the museum’

Science Museum, London, 13-14th July 2017

Museums are emergent entities – and the evolution of a museum is dependent on a number of factors, including: changes in collecting and disposal practices, redisplays and the legacy of temporary exhibitions. New pedagogical perspectives relating to new questions or ideological trends, either in museology or in the disciplines represented in the collections, are also influential.

This workshop will focus on selected case studies to analyse the impact of these changes on methodological issues relating to universal histories and universal museums. In particular, the evolution of the museum will be discussed in relation to the impact of temporary exhibitions and the circulation of knowledge in the public sphere. The workshop will explore how social knowledge practices influence the structuring of institutional knowledge, and the emergence of new disciplines.

The case studies that we will use to trace this evolution over time are the 1876  Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at the South Kensington Museum and the creation of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro.

The 1876 Loan Exhibition is a temporary exhibition which took place in 1876 at the South Kensington Museum and was one of the founding displays which led to the creation of the Science Museum. This exhibition offers an ideal case study for the ways in which temporary displays have a permanent legacy in national and international museum collections, and how far the interpretation and presentation of materials was transformed in this process.

The Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro opened in 1882 following the 1878 International Exhibition, for which the Trocadéro palace had been built. Though many studies have focused on the successive transformations of this museum in the Musée de l’Homme and, successively, the Musée du Quai Branly and the MUCEM, the first assemblage and display of these ethnographic collections is less well known. Drawing on the place given to the arts, the regions, and different themes in universal exhibitions in Paris, and particularly in the 1878 exhibition, the discussion of the Musée d'Ethnographie will cast new light on the motivations and relationships of collectors, learned societies, politicians, and publics in informing the creation of this museum.

The workshop will bring together researchers from ethnography, history of science, and museum history, to explore the evolution of museums, mainly – but not only – in France and the UK. The workshop will also contain a session with the objects studied in the Universal Histories and Universal Museums project. We invite papers and posters exploring the agencies and reception of these two institutions and their collections. Contributions might consider, but need not be confined to, the following themes:

-          History and/or  comparison of the science and art collections in the South Kensington Museum, and the foundation of the Science Museum

-          History of ethnographic collections in Paris (and direct comparisons with other cities and particularly with London) and of the first Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro

-          The impact of temporary exhibitions and universal exhibitions on the creation and development of museum collections.

Important information:

• Papers - abstract: 300 words (30 minutes papers)
• Poster presentations – abstract: 300 words

                                          

Deadline for both abstracts: 21^st April 2017. 

Send abstracts to: universalhistoriesmuseums@gmail.com. 

Authors will be notified by the 30^th April.

Note that we will aim to publish the workshops of the ‘Universal Histories, Universal Museums’ research project as a journal special issue.

On behalf of the Universal Histories and Universal Museums team: André Delpuech, Hervé Inglebert, Sandra Kemp, Chiara Zuanni.

Discover more about the project: https://universalhistories.org - Get in touch via Facebook (page ‘Universal Histories and Universal Museums’), Twitter (@UniversalMuseum), and Instagram (@universal_histories).