The Formation of Ethnographic Collections: The Smithsonian Institution in the American Southwest

The history of museum collections is also the history of the management of information about these collections. Today, increased access to large amounts of robust collections data requires that information be curated so that is useful for communities and individuals who wish to access it. This has caused scholars and communities to question modes of ordering that do not necessarily map onto their own local and personal understandings of the world. In light of the major pragmatic and intellectual affordances stimulated by information technologies, the inner workings of these systems are often made invisible and act as infrastructures rather than singular or simple tools. By providing a historical account of how information about anthropological museum collections was computerized in the 1970s at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), I consider the museum catalogue as a socio‐technical information infrastructure. From that perspective, I argue that the knowledge produced by modes of inscription such as catalogues is generated by relationships of individuals and technologies. A detailed and critical history of catalogues must take into account these historical socio‐technical infrastructures.

Section: Anthropology and The Object Catalogue At The National Museummentioning

confidence: 99%

The Computerization Of Material Culture Catalogues: Objects and Infrastructure in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Anthropology

Turner

2016

“…The BAE was the most prolific source of specimens for the USNM during this time. Parezo (, 13) reported that between 1879 and 1885 the BAE collected 12,609 artifacts from the Pueblo of Zuni alone, an average of about 6 objects per community member. In terms of relative size, Native North American specimens dominated the USNM's collections.…”

Section: The Shifting Content Of Museum Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increased attention to the collecting practices of anthropologists and historians during the formation of anthropological collections has brought about new knowledge and ways of understanding relationships between collectors who worked under positivist and empiricist traditions, and communities and individuals from which objects were sourced (Hinsley ; Parezo ). We recognize these colonial encounters as arenas in which to consider the polysemic nature of objects engaged in collecting encounters (Thomas ) and that the collector's knowledge, abilities, and interests shaped the kind of material they acquired (e.g., Cole ; Wintle ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates at the Smithsonian Institution

Nichols

2016

The museum catalogue has historically been used to classify artifacts based on their material and contextual features. The use of natural history, catalogue‐based classifications in nineteenth‐century museums resulted in curators designating some anthropological museum specimens as duplicates. These items were then used in specimen exchanges among museums and collectors, which served to extend each recipient's scope of collections. This article explores how cataloguing techniques recontextualized anthropological artifacts into specimens, which then circulated based on networks of correspondence. I compare the purpose and goals of three exchanges carried out by the Smithsonian Institution to the Rijks Ethnographic Museum in Leiden, the Historical Department of Iowa, and U.S. Congressman Joel P. Heatwole. Specimen exchange highlights the interconnections among institutions and emphasizes how approaches to collecting by one museum can affect the content of collections in other museums.

“…Until the early 1900s, the Smithsonian's NMNH was known as the United States National Museum (USNM), whose formal exhibits opened in 1848. Throughout its tenure, the USNM's Department of Ethnology and the Bureau of Ethnology (BAE) fostered research and researchers who have had profound effects on the development of anthropology as a social science (Hinsley ; Nichols ; Parezo ). Determined to be a veritable “effect” by Greene (this issue), individuals within the Smithsonian's USNM crafted many of the key ideas and processes of museum documentation still used there and elsewhere.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Histories of Museum Catalogues

Turner

2016

This article introduces a special issue on the topic of museum documentation and knowledge production. The articles in this issue address the history of museum catalogues and position the documentation of material culture as a historical epistemological practice. Each article examines how cataloguing practices have evolved over time and how the categorization or classification of ethnographic material culture often depends on specific individuals or preexisting scientific standards. This issue engages critically with emergent discussions concerning the formalization of knowledge about ethnographic material culture as it emerged in the nineteenth century. These articles also contribute to theoretical discussions that consider the material practices of knowledge production and the affective relations that shape this information. As a whole, this issue gives unique insights into how museums have documented material culture through time and provides a way of thinking about how we might engage with such historical practices that still impact much of our present work.