Isabella: Amandus Johnson Archival Research

This Tuesday, I decided to focus my research on Amandus Johnson, prominent Swedish scholar and the director of the African Educational Expedition to Angola, 1922-1924. I first learned about Amandus Johnson in Allen Wardwell's book African Sculpture in the Penn Museum. Amandus Johnson aimed to make an expedition to Africa to escape his troubles at home, which included the loss of several his manuscripts after two library fires and a looming divorce. He received funding for the expedition from Henry C. Mercer, a benefactor of the Penn Museum, making it the first ethnographic expedition to Africa that was sponsored by the Penn Museum. All objects in the African collections up to this point were either donated or bought from collectors.

Johnson also promised Gordon that he would collect ethnographical and archaeological materials for the museum, confirmed in a letter Gordon wrote which says, "I am writing you this letter to confirm the sense of our conversation i which it was agreed that you should collect ethnographical and archaeological material for the University Museum in Africa and submit the same to the University Museum in Philadelphia upon your return, without committing the University Museum to any obligation in the matter. It is understood that these collections will be made for scientific purposes only." However, despite this agreement, J. Allen Ewertz, Johnson's photographer, accused Johnson of going on the expedition for more selfish monetary reasons. Ewertz writes, "...not due to any enthusiasm relating to Ethnographic discoveries or collections, Dr. Johnson simply intended company with a German Mr. Freyberg and myself to lift a cache of Diamonds which the above mentioned German buried in Africa years ago. The collections and taking movie film was to cover up the real game. The plans failed when Dr. Johnson started to fight with the German accusing him of sealing cartridges (Hall Correspondences, 1917-23)."

It's important to read this accusation with a grain of salt. J. Allen Ewertz was an extremely shady character who stole film from Johnson and replaced the film with rocks so Johnson wouldn't notice the empty canisters. Based on the correspondences, Gordon didn't follow up on the accusation and seemed to believe Johnson's intentions. However, I thought this was such an interesting lead and hoped that there would be more information regarding whether or not Johnson's intentions were pure on this expedition in the archives. I will talk with Dr. Zuberi tomorrow about whether or not this research is important to him. While I think that Johnson's story says a lot about how Penn Museum expeditions were conducted and the character of the researchers, according to the Penn Digital Collections, there are only 16 objects from Johnson at the museum. I am wondering if the Johnson expedition plays too small a role in provenance and will make sure with Tufuku that this story is of interest before diving deeper into my research.

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