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Lost in Museums: The Ethical Dimensions of Historical Practices of Anthropological Specimen Exchange
Author(s) -
Nichols Catherine A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/cura.12063
Subject(s) - hopi , anthropology , institution , indigenous , museology , history , object (grammar) , cultural exchange , sociology , ethnology , archaeology , social science , philosophy , ecology , biology , linguistics
The exchange of anthropological objects by museums in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries involved circulation of Indigenous material culture and human remains beyond the institution in which collections were originally accessioned. This paper traces the biography of a Hopi sacred object collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879 from the Smithsonian Institution to the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1885 in order to highlight the ethical implications of how historical practices of specimen exchange affect knowledge about and contemporary access to museum objects. Analysis of specimen exchange emphasizes how the aims and actions of curators contribute to the dynamic nature of museum collections.