Whose Idea Was This?

Anthropological face casts: Towards an ethical processing of their histories and difficult legacies of intimacy and ambiguity

“…Additionally, the acceptability of such methods for collecting human “types” and “races” came under scrutiny, especially after UNESCO's publication of the definition of race as being social and not biological. In America, pressure and protests from Native activists and artists had a direct impact on museums, leading them to re-evaluate exhibition strategies that drew on face casts and dioramas in order to present hierarchical theories of race and static depictions of indigenous peoples (Fusco, 1994; Isaac, forthcoming a; Lonetree, 2012). Additionally, in the latter part of the 20th century, physical anthropology has expanded as a discipline, adding new methods and principles to the study of human variability and change over time, such as DNA, resulting in a further shift away from face cast collecting.…”

“…When considering decolonizing frameworks in regard to the casts, it is also worth noting that the categories "original" and "copy" are concepts that commonly employ Euro-American framings about hierarchies of authenticity in which copies are considered denigrations of the original (Isaac, 2011). There are, however, diverse and heterogeneous Indigenous concepts about reproduction that often views these as beings in their own right.…”

“…Museums that are finding ways to address the emotionally charged and politically fraught nature of face and life cast collections appear to be in the initial stages of developing their own self-awareness about the issues they present, especially to descendant communities. Projects and programs like the one at the NMNH that are engaging descendant communities with face cast collections have, to date, focused largely on building consciousness about what and who the collections consist of, and are designed to build communication channels with communities around ethical considerations needed for their appropriate care and or disposition, as well as finding opportunities to distribute duplicates of the casts and busts (Isaac, forthcoming a). A public workshop titled the Face Cast Lab organized by Isaac and the artist Kate Clark for Q?rius, the Coralyn W. Witney Science Education Center at the NMNH included creating face casts of NMNH museum staff, and accessioning these in the Anthropology Department collections, alongside information on how each individual wanted to be remembered.…”

Making sense: Experiential engagements with ethnographic photographs

“…One increasingly common way of investigating ethnographic photographs and their contemporary significance is for researchers to take collections back to the communities where they were taken and encourage people to discuss their views and opinions (Bell, 2003, Curtis, 2006, Smith, 2008, Geismar, 2009, Peers and Brown, 2009a, Isaac, 2011, Dobbin, 2013. These engagements can lead to insights into how communities experienced the role of photographic subject (Bradley et al, 2013) as well as the effects of colonialism and its aftermath (Simpson, 2009b).…”

“…I draw from a growing body of work from that substantiates the wider relevance of embodied and sensory knowledge for the museum field (Howes, 1990, Classen and Howes, 1996, Classen and Howes, 2006, Hubard, 2007, Isaac, 2011, Wood and Latham, 2011, Howes, 2012, Dudley, 2013, Howes and Classen, 2013, Classen, 2014, Clintberg, 2014, Howes, 2014a, Levent and Pascual-Leone, 2014, Pallasmaa, 2014, Johnson, 2015.…”