The Museum and Anthropological Research

Fenton, William N.

doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1960.tb01697.x

Cited by 19 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Quimby and Spoehr’s system for categorizing museum collections was incorporated into museum cataloging practice in the mid-twentieth century (cf. Collier, 1962; Fenton, 1960). Their schema to quantitatively measure acculturation and identify artifacts as either “Native American” or “European” has persisted in many American museums, especially in the categorization of “cultural attribution.” These classificatory tendencies limit and narrow our interpretations of the nuanced ways in which colonial peoples acquired, used, and constituted identity with material culture (see Lightfoot et al., 1998; Loren, 2008; Rubertone, 2001; Silliman, 2009; Voss, 2008).…”

Section: Moments Of Longing In the Museummentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing hybridity in the anthropology museum: Practices of longing and fetishization

Loren

2015

Journal of Social Archaeology

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Hybrid colonial objects are potent. Simply stated, hybrid colonial objects in museum contexts are defined as those items that contain material characteristics of both colonizer and the colonized. These objects are constituted in complex colonial contexts, resulting from the adoption and fusing of elements of style, manufacture, material, and meaning from distinct intellectual and cultural legacies, which were themselves hybrids. While hybridized material culture was used alongside more familiar, perhaps non-hybrid objects, archaeologists encounter hybrid colonial objects differently. They seemingly encapsulate in material form a certain lived experience of colonialism, allowing validation that the concepts of hybridity we argue were real and tangible in the past. In this paper, I turn a critical mirror on collections of colonial material from eastern North America at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University to discuss not only how hybrid artifacts from the colonial world were documented, cataloged, and preserved, but also to interrogate the processes of longing and fetishization that impact the collection and interpretations of these objects.

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Section: Moments Of Longing In the Museummentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing hybridity in the anthropology museum: Practices of longing and fetishization

Loren

2015

Journal of Social Archaeology

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“…, i n a d e q u a t e p e r s o n n e l t h a t i s commonly overburdened w i t h a d m i n i s t r a t i v e d u t i e s , and a g e n e r a l l a c k of f i n a n c i a l s u p p o r t . Fenton 1960) and may w e l l become f a i r l y e a s i l y a t t a i na b l e a s museum c a t a l o g u e s are b e i n g i n c r e a s i n g l y computerized. I w i l l r e t u r n t o t h i s p o i n t once more below i n a d i f f e r e n t c o n t e x t .…”

Section: Anthropology Anthropological Museums and The Third Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sharing of Anthropological Collections: Cooperation With Third World Museums

Hutterer

1980

Council for Museum Anthropology newsletter

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“…In recent years concentration in field work on specialized interests and problems has tended to prevent comprehensive studies of cultures, even by museum men. Many unstudied or inadequately studied human groups are on the verge of biological or cultural extinction ( Heine-Geldern, 1958-1960. The salvage of disappearing languages and cultures was a preoccupation of American anthropologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as most North American Indian tribes became extinct or highly acculturated, this feeling of urgency and obligation waned among American anthropologists in and out of museums.…”

Section: Ethnographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One solution to the problem of the anthropology curator's dilemma is for museums to have separate curatorial and research staffs (Fenton, 1960, pp. 334-338).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Museums and Ethnological Research

Collier

1962

Curator The Museum Journal

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ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY M U S E U MAt present, museums of anthropology in the United States tend to be isolated from the main streams of teaching and research in anthropology. A gap is growing between the traditional interests and activities of museums and the center of gravity in anthropology. This gap has resulted partly from the conservatism of museums and partly from the lessening of interest of anthropologists in historical problems and the currently unfashionable status of research on material culture and technology. This situation is bad for the museums and bad for anthropology.These views and others I present here cover all types of museums. I am aware of the exceptions to my generalizations and the differences between university and non-university museums, but I am interested in some general trends that significantly affect all museums. I am concerned here with ethnology rather than with archeology and physical anthropology, which still stand in close relationships with museums and their collections.The peripheral position of our museums of anthropology is quite recent. During the great period of museum growth in this country, from 1890 to about 1930, museums occupied a central position in the development of anthropology. They marshaled a major share of funds for field research; their curators carried out or influenced most of the field work and played a major role in the teaching of anthropology in the universities (Collier and Tschopik, 1954). Beginning about 1930 two trends set in that led to the present position of museums in anthropology. One was the accelerating increase in the number of non-museum anthropologists attached to universities, government agencies, hospitals, research institutes, and interdisciplinary programs. In contrast, the number of museum anthropologists was increasing relatively little. The other trend was the tremendous growth of social anthropology and the various behavioral specialties in 322

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The Museum and Anthropological Research

Cited by 19 publications

References 13 publications

Seeing hybridity in the anthropology museum: Practices of longing and fetishization

Seeing hybridity in the anthropology museum: Practices of longing and fetishization

The Sharing of Anthropological Collections: Cooperation With Third World Museums

Museums and Ethnological Research

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