Lara: Tuesday, June 20
As always, archival research is incredibly eye opening and is critical for establishing a fuller narrative of an event, person, objects, or in this case all of the above. Reading through the archives casts the objects in a completely different light, changing their significance from articles of diverse and disparate cultures, to witnesses of dynamic and, largely, intrusive change occurring among the populations of colonized Africa.
In fact, a variety of objects were gathered directly through the missionary work of Propst and Whight for the Africa Inland Mission to British East Africa. The collectors even note that "We are pleased to find that collecting specimens for you is quite a help to our missionary work . . . the buying of curios brings many people around whom otherwise we would not come in touch with" (Wight to Gordon June 8th, 1915). This correspondence demonstrate the direct link between the gathering of ethnographic objects and the cultural/religious intrusion of European and Euro-American actors.
Interestingly, many of the collections gathered in Gabon by the doctor William Bowen between 1907-1912 were oriented around collecting native craft before tribal material culture was completely subsumed by the commercial presence of cheap European and Indian goods. As a result, the objects are rendered significant because of the notion that they will soon be rare with not duplicates in existence to remove later. While the irony of the situation is lost on Bowen, his sense of urgency led to the composition of detailed ethnographic descriptions and lists of crafts from tribes across Gabon. As a result, we have an extremely detailed collection of records that no doubt correlate to the objects in our collection and lead to the creation of rich and substantial object histories.
Overall, I am extremely excited about the prospects of archival research, and I believe it will offer those in the curatorial process an rich palette from which to craft and reorient the narratives about Africa and our perceptions of the continent.
In fact, a variety of objects were gathered directly through the missionary work of Propst and Whight for the Africa Inland Mission to British East Africa. The collectors even note that "We are pleased to find that collecting specimens for you is quite a help to our missionary work . . . the buying of curios brings many people around whom otherwise we would not come in touch with" (Wight to Gordon June 8th, 1915). This correspondence demonstrate the direct link between the gathering of ethnographic objects and the cultural/religious intrusion of European and Euro-American actors.
Interestingly, many of the collections gathered in Gabon by the doctor William Bowen between 1907-1912 were oriented around collecting native craft before tribal material culture was completely subsumed by the commercial presence of cheap European and Indian goods. As a result, the objects are rendered significant because of the notion that they will soon be rare with not duplicates in existence to remove later. While the irony of the situation is lost on Bowen, his sense of urgency led to the composition of detailed ethnographic descriptions and lists of crafts from tribes across Gabon. As a result, we have an extremely detailed collection of records that no doubt correlate to the objects in our collection and lead to the creation of rich and substantial object histories.
Overall, I am extremely excited about the prospects of archival research, and I believe it will offer those in the curatorial process an rich palette from which to craft and reorient the narratives about Africa and our perceptions of the continent.
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