The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections.

Gray, Geoffrey

The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections

Nicolas Peterson, Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby (eds) 2008

Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., xvi+596pp, ISBN 9780522855685

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections is a large volume, 596 pages and 20 chapters, which are arranged under four broad headings: 'Collecting in its institutional context'; 'Collecting under the influence of evolutionism'; 'Before it is too late' and 'Transformed collecting'. In this way, the editors attempt to historicise and contextualise collecting and the motives of collectors. After attending the conference 'Makers and Making', held in Melbourne in early 2006, I looked forward to this publication. I found the conference both interesting and illuminating, and this book does justice to the presentations. It includes some papers that were not presented at the conference, which has only strengthened the overall quality of the volume. The importance of the volume is summed up by the editors:

 the chapters gathered here are the first
 attempt at a broad coverage of how many of
 the most important collections of Aboriginal
 artefacts came to be made, how they were
 influenced by the people who put them
 together, and how that in turn influences the
 image of particular ways of life.

The editors underline the fact that 'it was only in the mid-1990s that the makers and making of ethnographic collections started to receive attention either in Australia or elsewhere' (p.3). This volume, the reader is told, is one of perhaps half a dozen that deal with the topic, and only a few are concerned with Australia. Those few that deal with Australia are merely listed by the authors' name but are not referenced as such.

The increasing interest in the collectors and collecting in Australian museums, art galleries and archives is illustrated not only by The Makers and Making but also by the publication of Hunting the Collectors: Pacific collections in museums, art galleries and archives (Cochrane and Quanchi 2007). Hunting the Collectors is an unwitting but complementary companion to The Makers and Making. It, too, covers a broad historical period. Both volumes are cheaply produced. Both are extensive in their illustrations. Both deal with a common theme, collecting in Australian museums, but concentrate on separate areas, namely Melanesia and mainland Australia. The Makers and Making, however, reduces the imaginary boundary of Australia by restricting itself to mainland Australia, excluding the Torres Strait Islands (there is no reference in the index, either). The Torres Strait seems to have fallen through the cracks: a serious omission.

In the main, the makers making the collections are anthropologists, travellers, traders, missionaries and curators; the role of Aboriginal people in the making of these collections is largely omitted, although there are some attempts to include the transactions that occurred in the collecting of material in the field. The removal of artefacts, especially sacred and magical objects, raises a question of how these objects were acquired and under what conditions. Did Indigenous people willingly give these objects to anthropologists, missionaries, traders, government officials and so on? There is a lack of interest in matters such as intellectual property and moral ownership. In fact, the editors declare a lack of interest in issues of Indigenous agency, exchange, justice, reciprocity and utilisation of goods acquired through trading or bartering. The problem of the interaction between collectors and Indigenous people is quickly passed over by highlighting the difficulty of these encounters and transactions, which are described as fragmentary in the documentation that was gathered in encounters measured in minutes.

It is no surprise, therefore, that there is little reference to any Indigenous people who participated in the making of these collections in the field. This failing is partly rescued by Perusco and Hamby. Ann Perusco discusses the relationship between McConnel and Billy Mammus (pp.424-7). (There is a quite wonderful typo (p.422) in this chapter: McConnel attended University College, London, where she undertook doctoral studies under WJ Perry and 'Elliot Gould'. Perusco means Elliot Grafton Smith.) Hamby diligently names many of Warner's informants, suggesting that 'it seems probable that the pool of makers, donors or sellers of objects would have come from among these people' (pp.368-9).

To a wider public, displayed artefacts provide a window into Indigenous life. How many visitors to museums have read any of the articles and books that set out the lives of people from whom these artefacts were collected? In contrast to the public visibility of the collecting enterprise displayed at museums, the mechanics of collecting can be seen as a by-product of anthropological research and certainly not as central to the research enterprise. Collecting and collections of material culture, their purpose and intended and unintended effects have been discussed and analysed by many scholars, including the anthropologist James Clifford. He argues that ethnographic collecting 'implies a rescue of phenomena from inevitable historical decay or loss. The collection contains what "deserves" to be kept, remembered, and treasured. Artefacts and customs are saved out of time' (Clifford 1988:231). And presented out of historical context.

Part III is entitled, 'Before it is too late'. The editors appear uninterested in discussing the persistence of the idea of 'before it is too late' in Australian anthropology and linguistics. It was critical in the establishment of a Chair of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. It was a key factor at the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science and Pan Pacific Congresses of the early 1920s. Radcliffe-Brown (1927) further underlined it: 'Every year it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain specimens illustrating the life and culture of the Australasian peoples. The native people are dying out or are ceasing to make or use the things they formerly had.' He proposed museum that would 'preserve, study and exhibit objects illustrating the mode of life and manners and customs of the aboriginal regions--New Guinea, Melanesia, Polynesia, etc.' The beginning of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies was also posited on such an idea. The conservative parliamentarian William Charles Wentworth noted, in the late 1950s, as part of the rationale for establishing an institute, that 'from an academic point of view, these people are among the most primitive races in the world, and perhaps even the most interesting. Certainly they are in many respects unique' (Wentworth 1959). He emphasised how little remained of the Aboriginal field, stressing that 'within ten years there will be nothing but a fraction of a fraction left' (Wentworth 1959). In grant applications to what is now the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Tortes Strait Islander Studies, there is a category for 'information at risk of imminent loss'. James Clifford comes to mind.

Nevertheless, the collecting enterprise was by and large a haphazard and disordered one. The University of Sydney Department of Anthropology held items collected by anthropologists on behalf the Australian National Research Council (ANRC). Perusco discusses McConnel's difficulties of making and managing a collection under the auspices of the ANRC. (The ANRC collection was transferred to The University of Sydney in 1951; in 1956-7 the bulk of the collection was transferred to the Museum of Australia and the Institute of Anatomy.) Radcliffe-Brown had addressed the lack of space at the end of the 1920s, noting that 'the problem of the proper storage and care of these collections is becoming increasingly difficult'. Housing the collection and properly looking after it would be solved by the establishment of a national museum. David Kaus, in The Makers and Making, discusses some of these problems and the creation of the national ethnographic collection.

The omission of chapters dealing with the ANRC collection and its fate, and the role of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in raising the awareness of the value of material culture is a weakness in the volume, as it was at the conference (however, see Davis 2008). The anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt amassed probably the largest collection of material for the ANRC collection. This says, I think, more about Ronald Berndt's predilection to collect than any interest on the part of the then Professor of Anthropology, AP Elkin, and his interest in material culture, although this needs more research (see, for example, Thomas 1999:165-6). Unfortunately, the chapter on Ronald Berndt is the least satisfying and seemingly least researched in the collection.

For his chapter in The Makers and Making, John E Stanton, Director of the Berndt Museum at the University of Western Australia, relies on personal anecdotes and his memory of Friday evening conversations with Ronald (presumably over food and wine), none of which appears to have been recorded, to detail the collecting habits and interests of Ronald (and Catherine) Berndt. It is surprising, therefore, that Stanton makes literally no use of the collection and archive he is employed to look after, or the results of a researcher he has assisted in accessing this material. His chapter would have benefited had he referred to the work of Kate Brittlebank (2007, 2008). Stanton's argument would have been more convincing had he considered Brittlebank's work, especially on the Berndts' Asian collection. She discusses Ronald's early collecting, from the age of 12, of Asian material. Her work provides insight into the collecting urge of Ronald in particular. Lack of reference to her work was an opportunity missed by Stanton to discuss a major ethnological collection and the way in which it was made.

This is a welcome volume, not least because it addresses an issue that has been largely confined to the internal workings of museums and other institutions with an interest in collecting material culture. Overall, this is a valuable collection, the chapters are all of a good standard, and it opens a field of study that will no doubt expand. It is a field that requires expanded critical analysis and this book should be used by anyone seeking to extend such analysis. A weakness is the elision of the way collections were made in the field and the interactions and role of Indigenous people, as well as lack of interest in cultural and intellectual property rights. Fortunately there is some research underway on this aspect of collecting but it is focused on Papua and New Guinea. A major irritation is the lack of pagination on the contents page. Notwithstanding, I recommend it to all who have an interest in the way collections are made and the work of individual collectors.

REFERENCES

Brittlebank, Kate 2007 'Anthropology, fine art and missionaries: The Berndt Kalighat album rediscovered', Journal of the History of Collections 1-16.

--2008 'Two People--One Life', Australian Historical Studies 39(1):3-18.

Clifford, James 1988 The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth century ethnography, literature, and art, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Cochrane, Susan and Max Quanchi 2007 Hunting the Collectors: Pacific collections in Australian museums, art galleries and archives, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge.

Davis, Michael 2007 Writing Heritage: The depiction of Indigenous heritage by European-Australians, Australian Scholarly Publishing and National Museum of Australia Press, Melbourne.

Radcliffe-Brown 1927 'The Need of National Museum Ethnology', August, Elkin Papers, University of Sydney Archives.

Thomas, Nicholas 1999 Possessions: Indigenous art/ colonial culture, Thames & Hudson, New York.

Wentworth, William Charles 1959 'An Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies', August, Wentworth papers, AIATSIS, Canberra.

Reviewed by Geoffrey Gray, AIATSIS <geoff.gray@aiatsis. gov.au>