Monthly Archive for October, 2010

Learning together: Haida people, Haida collections, and the Pitt Rivers Museum

Published on October 21, 2010 in Case Studies.

Institution name: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Summary:  How do museums create ongoing relationships with overseas indigenous communities around the collections from those communities?  How can both the museum and its staff and audiences, and the community, benefit from working together around the collections?  Supported by a Leverhulme International Networks grant, we invited a group of Haida artists and elders to work with the Haida collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  They benefited from seeing historic masterpieces and cultural treasures: artists learned technique and refined form, language terms were retrieved, memories recorded of traditional life.  The Museum gained information on nearly all 300 objects studied.  We are now looking together at future projects to sustain our relationship: an internship at PRM?  A placement at the Haida Cultural Centre?  The carving of a replica box to match a masterpiece and take home to Haida communities?  We hope all of these and more will happen in the future.

Download this case study as a pdf: UMG member project case study – Pitt Rivers Museum, Haida people

Keywords: Haida – Indigenous source community – collaboration

Background: The Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum of world cultures from all periods of history; it is famous for its Victorian-inspired displays and cutting-edge ethnographic curation.  We have worked with Indigenous communities in North America for over a decade to create access to collections and learn about them.

Objectives: To bring the Pitt Rivers Museum and an Indigenous community from whom the Museum holds historic collections together in a permanent and mutually supportive relationship, to explore what our different needs and goals are, and to explore ways of meeting these and maintaining a relationship in the long term.

Project details:  With a Leverhulme International Networks grant, we were able to hire Dr Cara Krmpotich, a specialist on Haida culture, as network facilitator.  Krmpotich organized the visit and ensured the smooth coordination of retrieval, photography, and conservation of 300 objects and the addition of information into the database following the visit.  Since the entire Museum staff was involved, and a large group of Haidas travelling from abroad (some for the first time overseas), the facilitator was essential.  We also worked with the British Museum and took the Haida delegates to see collections in their storage facility.  This was a logistically demanding project, requiring extensive travel arrangements, new techniques for managing a large number of objects being processed over a 6-month lead-in period and then put away after the visit.  We also trained Museum staff in cross-cultural skills for recording information and working with Haidas in the object handling sessions.  It was a joy to see real expertise brought by Haidas to the objects, to see objects danced, to hear traditional stories told about the crest figures decorating Haida objects, and to witness public dance performances and demonstrations.

Project outcomes and impact: The photographs of Haida objects were posted on Flickr, our first experiment with that site, and attracted positive comments from Haidas who were not able to come to the UK.  We are now working on a book about the project and its process, which will be co-authored with Haida participants.  Artists have taken inspiration from historic collections in the making of new works, and want very much to return to copy a box in the PRM collections.  UK project staff travelled to Haida Gwaii in August 2010 to consult with Haida delegates there about future work together, and we hope to sponsor an intern in the UK for training and to do placements to train staff at the Haida Gwaii Museum.  While there, UK staff also worked to begin a facilities report for the Haida Gwaii Museum, so that it can accept loans of treasures held in the UK.  PRM has new educational material for public programs which we hope to improve again soon with Haida help, and we anticipate several podcasts and new display labels as a result.  And, we have Haida colleagues to whom we can turn for answers to cultural and ethical display issues.

What went well? Getting to know Haida people and their perspectives on historic treasures; the dance/public performances and art demos, which were enthusiastically given and received; the mutual respect that developed between PRM staff and Haidas during the object study sessions, as we all came to recognize each others’ knowledge.  And the great respect shown by Museum staff, who agreed to active forms of object handling such as dance (for some masks and dance paddles), so that Haidas could feel a deep sense of reconnection with the collections.

What could have been done better? The length of the Haida visit to the UK was 3 weeks, which was a long time to be away from home in strange environments.  We didn’t have budget for as much video/audio recording as we would have liked, and we had too many eager volunteer note-takers: it was difficult to get a balance between learning for the Museum’s records and not interfering with Haidas’ learning from the artefacts.

Conclusions and recommendations for the future:  This required a great deal of planning and logistical coordination inside the Museum and for the travel aspect of the project; a dedicated post was needed to facilitate the project.  We also found that we needed to invent new ways of storing a sub-collection in active use for some 9 months during preparation for the visit and during the visit; we needed to think through how objects would be presented to Haidas, and deal with emotional, cross-cultural interaction during the study sessions: this sort of project requires mentoring from those who have the ethnographic and cross-cultural skills and who have done such handling/study sessions before.  It’s worth it, though!

Contact name and email address:

Dr Laura Peers

Curator (Americas)

Pitt Rivers Museum

Laura.peers@prm.ox.ac.uk

INK Exhibition at UCL

Published on October 15, 2010 in News.

INK is an eclectic collection of 120 objects all relating to the history and substance of ink. It draws extensively from the remarkable museums, archives and the work of staff at University College London (UCL).

Contemporary artworks sit alongside a fossilised squid, a 15th century German prayer book and Francis Galton’s fingerprints.

‘Live respondents’ including Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson will inhabit the exhibition every day, producing new objects to be added to the ever growing repository of ink.

The UCL North Lodge is a new exhibition space transformed by Mobile Studio architect practice and the curators of INK.

 Contact  ink-exhibition@ucl.ac.uk