Regimes of value in museum practices: A networked biography of the MacGregor field collection from British New Guinea

The dancing trees: objects, facts and ideas in museums. In From Field to Museum—Studies from Melanesia in Honour of Robin Torrence, ed. Jim Specht, Val Attenbrow, and Jim Allen

“…This has brought new insights to objects in museum collections and into shaping the collections through acquisitions (Bolton et al, 2017). Anita Herle and others have worked to make the contexts of objects more freely available through their efforts to share the material traces of collectors and their encounters with those makers/former owners through publication of archival papers, photographs, notebooks and journals (Herle and Philp, 2020;Ballard, 2013). Archaeologists using museum collections have lent their material focus too.…”

“…On the face of it the values of the things exchanged were not equal; neither in New Guinea nor in Sydney would a bundle of arrows be worth fourteen plumes. However, for the Museum, much of the value lay in the relationship this established with Hurley himself (Torrence et al, 2020). The photographer and filmmaker had achieved considerable fame through his work on no less than three Antarctic expeditions, as well as receiving the rank of honorary captain as an official photographer during World War I (Dixson, 2011;Specht and Field, 1984).…”

Up close and personal: James Edge-Partington in Australia in 1897. In From Field to Museum—Studies from Melanesia in Honour of Robin Torrence, ed. Jim Specht, Val Attenbrow, and Jim Allen

“…While most of these collections were likely viewed in the homes of their owners, that assembled by the then deceased politician Sir William John Macleay required a visit to the Macleay Museum at the University Sydney. P. G. Black was employed by Burns Philp andCo. as Branch Inspector (1889-1902).…”

Preface. In From Field to Museum—Studies from Melanesia in Honour of Robin Torrence, ed. Jim Specht, Val Attenbrow, and Jim Allen

“…To date one edited volume has been published (Byrne et al, 2011) and another one is in preparation dealing with the major collection made by Sir William MacGregor during his time as Lieutenant-Governor of British New Guinea, now known as Papua, part of the independent state of Papua New Guinea. Initial results have been presented in Torrence et al (2020; see also Chan, 2018).…”