Travelling objects: The Wellcome collection in Los Angeles, London and beyond

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 340-366

  Hill, Jude ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY;

CALIFORNIA; ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; LONDON [ENGLAND]; LOS ANGELES; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED KINGDOM; UNITED STATES; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33746116005     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1191/1474474006eu363oa     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. R. Duclos, 'The cartographies of collecting', in S. Knell, ed., Museums and the future of collection (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999), pp. 49-50.
2. A diverse set of papers presented at the IGU in Glasgow, 2004, on 'Geographies of collecting' reconfirmed how and why space and place matter to this field of study.
3. The few existing studies which refer to the collection include H. Turner, Henry Wellcome: the man, his collection and his legacy (London, Wellcome Trust Heinemann Educational, 1980);
4. G. Skinner, 'Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum for the Science of History', Medical History 30, (1986), pp 383-418;
5. J. Symons, The Wellcome Institutefor the History of Medicine: a short history (London, Wellcome Trust, 1993);
6. R. Rhodes-James, Henry Wellcome (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1994);
7. K. Arnold and D. Olsen, eds, Medicine man: the forgotten museum of Henry Wellcome (London, British Museum Press, 2003).
8. S. Pearce, 'Collections and collecting,' in Knell, Museums, pp. 17-21.
9. M. Bal, 'Telling objects: a narrative perspective on collecting,' in J. Elsner and R. Cardinal, eds, Cultures of collecting (London, Reaktion, 1994), pp. 97-115.
10. For more on the dispersal see G. Russell, 'The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum's dispersal of non-medical material, 1936-1983', Museums journal 62 (1986), supplement, S3-S29.
11. Much of the Wellcome collection's 'ethnographic' material was gradually dispersed from 1936 onwards. However, a proportion of the collection remained in the hands of the Wellcome Trust in the early 1960s. Other than three UK institutions - the British Museum, the Science Museum and Pitt Rivers - UCLA received the largest amount of material classified as 'ethnographic'. An initial shipment of 15 000 Wellcome 'ethnographic' objects arrived at UCLA in 1965. The remaining objects were transported to the university the following year.
12. Catalogue details: UCLA Museum and Laboratories of the Ethnic Arts, Masterpieces from the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection at UCLA (Los Angeles, UCLA, 1965).
13. J. Clifford, The predicament of culture: twentieth-century ethnography, literature and art (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 222.
14. Ibid. p. 223.
15. Ibid. p. 224.
16. G. Stocking, 'Essays on museums and material culture', in G. Stocking, ed., Objects and others: essays on museums and material culture (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 6.
17. A. Gell, Art and agency: an anthropological theory (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998).
18. Ibid. p. 12.
19. Ibid. pp. 16-17.
20. This aspect of Murphy's biography serves as an interesting parallel to Wellcome, whose interest in 'primitive' peoples, objects and tropical medicine strengthened during his travels in South America, prior to his move to London.
21. B. Birney, The mosaic image: the first twenty years of the Museum of Cultural History (Los Angeles, Regents of the University of California, 1984) p. 4.
22. Foreword written by Murphy in G. Ellis, Ralph C. Altman Memorial Exhibition, the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and technology, UCLA, 8 April-30june (Los Angeles, Ethnic Art Galleries of University of California, 1968).
23. Altman is listed in the course guide for 1956 as teaching modules on 'primitive', 'ancient' and 'folk art', in the context of 'non-western cultures'.
24. Altman had already proved himself to be a competent curator when working for Claremont University Southern California and Washington State Museum, Scattle. He had organized two exhibitions at Scripps College, Claremont - 'the California Exhibition of North American Indian arts' in 1950, and a local exhibition of African art in 1951. He had also been a guest curator at the Washington State Museum, Seattle.
25. Masterpieces from the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection at UCLA, p. 6. one aim of the 1928 Royal Commission referred to here was to discuss options for the future of the British Museum's ethnographic holdings. As the founder of a very large collection of ethnographic objects himself, Wellcome was called to give evidence as a witness. Wellcome's testament is one of the few direct public statements detailing his motivations and intentions for the collection.
26. Dec. 1965; UCLA University Archives, Box 93, file 148.
27. Two major acquisitions to date had been as follows. 1963 saw the purchase of 3 500 Congolese objects accumulated by Jean-Pierre Hallet, collected from the Lega, Hutu and Tutsi cultures of the Congo basin between 1948 and 1960, and supported by good documentation. In 1964, the University received materials from Nubian excavations of Professor Alexander Badawy.
28. Birney, The mosaic image, pp. 4-5.
29. Cited in an obituary, 'Former chancellor remembered as Renaissance man: hundred honor memory of Franklin Murphy', UCLA today, (22 July 1994), p. 12.
30. Quote by Murphy, cited in UCLA Magazine, summer 1994, p. 15.
31. G. Horne, Fire this time: the Watts uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995).
32. As demonstrated in an image from UCLA today (22 July 1994), featuring the two men standing side by side.
33. Murphy's commitment to public art was perhaps most evident in the creation of the Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA, dedicated in 1967. In an obituary published in the UCLA Magazine (Sept. 1994), Karen Mack wrote: 'Murphy understood that assembling artistic and scholarly treasures meant building strong bridges between the university and the philanthropic community.' Murphy's interest in and influence on the national arts community grew over the years, through connections with (amongst others) the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the National Gallery of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust.
34. Alfred Frankenstein, the distinguished critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, quoted in Frierman's obituary of Ralph Altman (1909-67), reproduced in Ellis, Ralph C. Altman Memorial Exbibition, p. 9.
35. The change was from 'Laboratory of Ethnic Art and Technology' to the 'Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Art and Technology'.
36. Letter from Murphy to President Clark Kerr, Berkeley Campus, 17 Aug. 1965; UCLA University Archives, Box 93, file 148.
37. Letter dated 15 Oct. 1965, written to Vice-President Harry Wellman, Berkeley Campus; UCLA University Archives, Box 93, file 148.
38. Museum staff I met at UCLA continue to use such highly positive terms and to express their continued gratitude to the Wellcome Trust, though none of these employees was working at the time of the transfer.
39. Subdivisions of material within each of the broad 8 geographical zones were generally defined in terms of the designated country of origin (e.g. Nigeria or New Hebrides) and, where identifiable, an object's allotted 'tribal' or 'cultural' affiliation (e.g. for Nigeria, Ibibio, Yoruba). Common 'types' of object were then displayed together within these subsections. In the case of the New Guinea displays, one of the sections included a cluster of material from the Papuan Gulf Elema. Object types shown together for this section were Eharo masks followed by war shields and spirit boards.
40. E. Schildkrout and C. Keim, eds, The scramble for art in central Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998);
41. J. Mack, 'Fetish? Magic figures in Central Africa', in A. Shelton, ed., Fetisbism: visualising power and desire (London, Lund Humphries, 1995), pp. 53-66;
42. J. Mack, 'Justified by deeds: the borders of magic and medicine', in K. Arnold, M. Baldwin and J. Mack, eds, Abracadabra: the magic of medicine: an exbibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London, Wellcome Trust, 1996), pp. 7-16.;
43. B. Geoffroy-Schneiter, Primal arts: Africa, Oceania and the Southeast Asian islands (London, Thames & Hudson, 2000).
44. See S. Errington, The death of authentic primitive art and other tales ofprogress (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998), p. 91.
45. Ibid. p. 94.
46. See E. Court, 'Africa on display: exhibiting art by Africans', in E. Barker, ed., Contemporary cultures of display (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1999), p. 152. Indeed, the 1965 exhibition resembled certain modes of display showcased in Art/Aftifact, an exhibition curated by Susan Vogel which toured a number of North American museums between 1988 and 1990 and examined 'problems' associated with displaying African objects. In particular, the UCLA exhibits incorporated 'simple white space with objects displayed purely for their formal qualities' and also resembled 'the Art Museum, presenting isolated "Masterpieces'"
47. (ibid. p. 155). 39 See E. Court, 'Africa on display: exhibiting art by Africans', in E. Barker, ed., Contemporary cultures of display (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1999), p. 152. Indeed, the 1965 exhibition resembled certain modes of display showcased in Art/Aftifact, an exhibition curated by Susan Vogel which toured a number of North American museums between 1988 and 1990 and examined 'problems' associated with displaying African objects. In particular, the UCLA exhibits incorporated 'simple white space with objects displayed purely for their formal qualities' and also resembled 'the Art Museum, presenting isolated "Masterpieces'"
48. See also Vogel's own description of the exhibition: S. Vogel, 'Always true to the object, in our fashion', in I. Karp and S. Lavine, eds, Exhibiting cultures: tbe poetics and politics of museum display (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), pp. 191-204.
49. (ibid. p. 155). See also Vogel's own description of the exhibition: S. Vogel, 'Always true to the object, in our fashion', in I. Karp and S. Lavine, eds, Exhibiting cultures: tbe poetics and politics of museum display (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), pp. 191-204.
50. See also Vogel's own description of the exhibition: S. Vogel, 'Always true to the object, in our fashion', in I. Karp and S. Lavine, eds, Exhibiting cultures: tbe poetics and politics of museum display (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), pp. 191-204.
51. The presentation of objects in the catalogue resembled Masterpieces of African Art Exhibition at the Brooklyn Institution of Arts and Science (Brooklyn Institution of Arts and Sciences, 1954).
52. Such as: W. Fagg, 'On the nature of African art', Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., Mem. And Proceedings 94 (1952-53);
53. W. Fagg, 'The Allman collection of Benin antiquities', Man 53 (1953), p. 201; W. Fagg, Nigerian images (London, 1963).
54. W. Fagg, Nigerian images (London, 1963).
55. Masterpieces from the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection at UCLA, p. 7.
56. Appearing in 'A prime collection of primitives', Herald Examiner (30 Jan. 1966) were: the Janus-faced image of the Kuta, one of the Tsimshian masks (no. 15) and the mask from Cameroon.
57. The Mayumbe figure appeared in 'Treasure of ethnic art at UCLA', Los Angeles Times Calendar (5 Dec. 1965),
58. and the Yoruba mask appeared in 'Great Wellcome collection of ethnic art given to UCLA by Wellcome trustees', UCLA from the chancellor's desk 8 (Jan. 1966).
59. Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 11 in Table 2.
60. L. Tythacott, 'Souvenirs of the travelling surrealists', in M. Hitchcock and K. Teague, eds, Souvenirs: the material culture of tourism (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000), pp. 72-78;
61. E. Maurer, 'Dada and Surrealism', in W. Rubin, ed., Primitivism in 20th century art: affinity of the tribal and the modern (New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1984), pp. 535-93.
62. Errington, The death of authentic primitive art, p. 98.
63. Ibid.
64. Clifford, The predicament of culture.
65. In a letter to Murphy dated 3 Nov. 1964, for example, Altman notes: 'Mrs Webster Plass of Philadelphia, a great collector of African sculpture and a friend and patron of William Fagg of the British Museum, is a potential donor to be "cultivated". I have known her for years, and so has Dr Biebuyck.' Altman anticipated at an early stage that this collector should be invited to the celebration. UCLA University Archives, Box 93, file 148.
66. These included Dr A.A. Gerbands of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, who gave a lecture on 'The concept of style in non-western art' on 14 Jan. 1966. William Fagg of the British Museum presented a paper on 'The African artist' on 10 Dec. 1965. Fagg was a celebrated figure in the field of African art, writing many frequently referenced books on the subject, four of which were cited in the 1965 catalogue. Dr jean Guiart of the Institut Français d'Océanie, Musée de l'Homme, Paris, gave a lecture on 'The artist as an individual in New Caledonian society'. Two of Guiart's books were cited in the 1965 exhibition catalogue. Ignacio Bernal, Director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Chapultepec, Mexico, presented 'Individual artistic creativity in Pre-Columbian Mexico' on 11 Mar, 1966. Two speakers represented East Coast institutions: Robert Goldwater, Director of the Museum of Art, New York City, and Professor of Art, New York University, and Robert Thompson, Professor of Art at Yale University. Goldwater gave the opening lecture on 6 Dec. 1965, judgements of primitive art, 1905-1965'. Thompson gave a lecture entitled 'Abatan: a master potter of the Egbado Yoruba' on 11 Feb. 1966. In 1971 Thompson authored an important UCLA publication, Black gods and kings: Yoruba art at UCLA (Los Angeles, UCLA, 1971), in connection with the then Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Four panellists contributing to a debate closing the symposium series were drawn from UCLA (Altman and Biebuyck), from Berkeley (Dr William Bascom, Director of the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology and Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley) and from Indiana University (Roy Sieber, Professor of Art).
67. UCLA University Archives, Box 93, file 148.
68. This term was first coined by Arjun Appadurai in The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986).
69. When Fagg retired from the British Museum's Museum of Mankind, he took a post at Christie's, appraising objects for the 'tribal art' market. After his appointment, text describing objects in sales catalogues began to reflect Fagg's particular approach. See M. Satov, 'Catalogues, collectors, curators: the tribal art market and anthropology', in J. MacClancy, ed., Contesting art: art, politics and identity in the museum world (Oxford, Berg, 1997), pp. 215-41.
70. R. Altman, 'Commentary', in D. Biebuyck, ed., Tradition and creativity in tribal art (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969), p. 187.
71. Ibid.
72. G. Marcus and F. Myers, eds, The traffic in things: refiguring art and anthropology (London, University of California Press, 1995), p. 7.
73. The Yoruba mask appears in at least five other UCLA publications, four of which were associated with exhibitions also including the object: Thompson, Black gods and kings; M. Berns, Àgbáyé' Yoruba art in context (Los Angeles UCLA Museum of Cultural History Pamphlet Series, vol. 1, no. 4);
74. D. Ross and T. Garrard, eds, Akan: transformations problems in Ghanaian art history, (Los Angeles, Museum of Cultural History, 1983);
75. H. Drewal and J. Mason, Beads, body and soul.. art and light in the Yoruba universe (Los Angeles, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1998);
76. H. Cole, ed., I am not myself: The ail of African masquerade (Los Angeles, Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1985).
77. The Eharo mask has appeared in at least three other publications: P. Altman, G. Ellis and R. López, Image and identity. the role of the mask in various cultures (Los Angeles, UCLA, 1972);
78. CJ. Mamiya and E.C. Sumnil, Hevebe: art, economics and status in the Papuan Gulf (Los Angeles, Museum of Cultural History, Monograph series no. 18, 1982); Birney, 7-be mosaic image.
79. This phrase was used by curators of Medicine man: theforgotten museum of Henry Wellcome (June-Nov. 2003). They describe the neglected status of the Wellcome Collection as follows: 'Scattered as ghostly fragments that have settled in hundreds of institutions, where, except in two or three large repositories, barely a few scholarly keepers with good memories can recall their origins, the Wellcome Museum has all but been forgotten - a phantom of the museum world': Arnold and Olsen, Medicine Man, p. 43.
80. As noted in correspondence files from the UCLA University Archives, Box 93, file 148. Professor Delougaz, the Near Eastern archaeologist appointed director of the institution in 1970, also encouraged this shift in curatorial style.
81. According to the text, 'the Eharo mask of the Papuans provides entertaining interludes between sacred initiation rites, yet the masks are made under the same conditions of secrecy as the ritual ones' (Altman et al., Image and identity, p. 13). A variety of 'purposes' for which masks are used were also explored: 'concealment', 'social control', 'metamorphosis', 'physical protection', 'spirit manipulation', 'curing', 'fertility', 'power' and 'death, burial and perpetuation'. Other more general themes examined masks in relation to their 'perspective in time', their wide 'geographic distribution', 'materials' and 'form and western response.'
82. J. Mack, ed., Masks: the ail of expression (London, British Museum Press, 1994);
83. C. Gosden and Y. Marshall, 'The cultural biography of objects', World archaeology 31 (1999), pp. 169-78.
84. G. Marcus and F. Myers, eds, The traffic in things.. refiguring all and anthropology (London, University of California Press, 1995), p. 7.
85. A. Coombes, Relnventing,4ffica: museums, material culture andpopular imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1994).
86. From an introduction to 'Primitive arts', an exhibition curated by Altman in 1962. Cited in Ellis, Ralph C. Altman Memorial Exhibition, p. 10.
87. Marcus and Myers, The traffic in things, p. 35.
88. Ibid. p. 5.
89. Wellcome Archives: WA/HMM/RP/MAL/6, 9 Jan. 1930.
90. For a further discussion of objects, performance and institutional exchange (in relation to repatriation), see F. Myers, 'Social agency and the cultural value(s) of the art object', journal of material culture 9 (2004), pp. 203-11.
91. Gell, Art and agency, p. 11.
92. Ibid. p. 24.
93. A. Henare, Museums', anthropology and imperial exchange (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 9.