{"id":1987,"date":"2019-01-26T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/?p=1987"},"modified":"2019-01-26T22:10:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T09:10:01","slug":"curiosity-in-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/curiosity-in-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Curiosity in Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

CROCC\u2019s first event for 2019 concluded successfully on Friday 25 January.\u00a0 Dr Rosi Crane, a graduate of Otago History\u2019s PhD programme, an Associate Member of the Centre, and the Museum\u2019s honorary curator of science history organised \u2018Held in Trust: Curiosity in Things\u2019, a conference, held at, and in conjunction with the Otago Museum which commemorated its 150th anniversary last year. A range of people, both academics and heritage sector professionals, attended and presented, with most topics relating to collections, collecting and practice in museums from the colonial-era to the present.\u00a0\u00a0 See also Otago Humanities story<\/a> about the conference.<\/p>\n

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Tony Ballantyne (University of Otago) provided the first keynote, \u2018Cultures of Collecting in Colonial Otago\u2019 on Thursday morning.\u00a0 He noted that notions of \u201cimprovement\u201d stimulated the development of intellectual life and culture in early Otago. Several points resonated through many of the following talks: that local enthusiasm, activity and donations allowed institutions such as museums, and even New Zealand\u2019s first university, to be founded and developed; that collecting pervades colonial culture; and that scholars should always be cognizant of the interplay between words and objects. Tony\u2019s talk highlighted the work of Herries Beattie, a local historian who recorded extensive m\u0101tauraka from Southern M\u0101ori, but was also an inveterate collector of texts and things, with his collections now housed at the Hocken, Otago Museum, as well as museums in Gore and Waimate.\u00a0 See ODT story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Rebecca Rice. Photo by @kjhallum<\/p><\/div>\n

In \u2018\u201cMy dear Hooker\u201d: the botanical landscape in colonial New Zealand\u2019, Rebecca Rice (Te Papa) explored the New Zealand \u201cflower painting\u201d of Georgina Hetley and Sarah Featon in the late nineteenth century, whose botanical work was popular but largely unsupported by the scientific world overseen by the likes of Sir James Hector in New Zealand, and Sir Joseph Hooker in the UK.\u00a0 Rebecca\u2019s paper stressed the need to acknowledge women\u2019s contribution to science in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

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Linda Tyler (University of Auckland) looked at the John Buchanan, who worked with Hector at the Colonial Museum, his botanical draughtsmanship and his extensive (if poorly labelled) collections of botanical specimens.\u00a0 Indeed the sending of material to the UK assisted in Buchanan\u2019s ambitions to be recognised as a botanist of note.<\/p>\n

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It was the practice of medical schools to create collections students could learn from; Otago, which established its first Chair of Physiology and Anatomy in 1874 is no exception. Chris Smith (University of Otago) gave a fascinating account of the collections of Otago\u2019s Anatomy Museum, its many specimens of flesh, organs and bones, and models constructed from plaster, wax or papier mache.\u00a0 Early professors, interested in racial difference, sent their medical students out to scour burial sites and other places for M\u0101ori human remains; the Museum\u2019s koiwi M\u0101ori collection is now in the process of being returned to local iwi.<\/p>\n

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Justine Olsen. Photo by @AWanhalla<\/p><\/div>\n

Justine Olsen (Te Papa) discussed the cabinetmaking objects produced by Anton Seuffert and Johann Levien from the 1850 to the 1880s.\u00a0 Their high-quality pieces featured in international and colonial expositions as examples of New Zealand craftsmanship while showing off the \u00a0various New Zealand woods. Seuffert collaborated with the carver Ferdinand Teutenberg to produce items sought-after by New Zealand\u2019s elite.\u00a0 Featuring designs influenced by Ferdinand Hochstetter, their work points to New Zealand\u2019s German network of the late nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

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Simon Ville. Photo @OtagoBallantyne<\/p><\/div>\n

The first day was brought to a close with the keynote of Simon Ville (University of Wollongong), \u2018The exchange, finance and logistics of natural history: a global trade like no other?\u2019\u00a0 Simon is part of an inter-disciplinary team focussing on the collection practices in the nineteenth century of the MacLeay Museum and the Australian Museum.\u00a0 The accumulation of dead creatures (or parts of them), involved purchases from collectors and trading firms, exchanges between institutions, financing field collections, or donations, all of which could be problematic.\u00a0 He argued that the commerce in \u201cnatural history\u201d does not appear to adhere to the ideal conditions for trade and exchange, but despite its difficulties still managed to survive.<\/p>\n

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David Gaimster (Auckland War Memorial Museum) began the second day with \u2018Fitting the colonial museum dashboard? Curatorial agency, civic action and identity building at the Auckland Museum (1852-1917)\u2019 on the early days of the institution that he is responsible for.\u00a0 David explored the synergies of civic action of local Aucklanders to found their museum with the imperial networks that enabled it, and how the \u201csuccessive intentions\u201d of curators shaped its practice and exhibitions.\u00a0 In particular, serious scientific enquiry and disciplinary presentations sat at the edge of the museum\u2019s other aim, to amuse or educate the wider public.\u00a0 More so than some other countries, New Zealand museums collected artefacts from its indigenous people, a process that M\u0101ori themselves, in some part, were able to control.<\/p>\n

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Rosi Crane (CRoCC, Otago Museum) turned to the work of the first three curators of the Otago Museum with \u2018What were they thinking? Tracing the traces of scientific thought through the Museum collections (1868-1939)\u2019.\u00a0 Unlike other museums, the Otago Museum was part of the university, with the early curators, Frederick Hutton, Thomas Jeffery Parker and William Benham mixing academic teaching roles with building and maintaining their collections. Rosi traced their scientific interests, as the museum expanded.\u00a0 All three were ardent evolutionists, but felt compelled at times not to advertise the fact in their museum displays.<\/p>\n

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Most of the conference attendees were probably unaware of the influence of Korean art in New Zealand ceramics.\u00a0 While Chinese and Japanese ceramics are often seen as pioneering, Korean art is just as significant, and the three nations influenced each other over many centuries.\u00a0 Grace Lai (Auckland War Memorial Museum), in \u2018Inequality of knowledge: reinvestigating the influences of Auckland Studio Pottery through the lens of Korean ceramics\u2019, discussed the extensive collection of Korean pottery held by the Auckland Museum, and how, after the opening of the Hall of Asian Arts in 1969, this influenced Auckland\u2019s potters.<\/p>\n

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The burning bush (Exodus 3) has been an enduring symbol for Scottish Presbyterianism from the 1600s, and was subsequently exported to New Zealand with the Free Church migrants in 1848. Steve Taylor (Knox Centre for\u00a0Ministry\u00a0and\u00a0Leadership) explored this theme in \u2018The symbol of the burning bush as an object in global exchange and local adaptation\u2019.\u00a0 The image appears in books and bookmarks, and has even in flower beds, and portrayed through the Scottish saltire forms the New Zealand church\u2019s current logo.\u00a0 Steve elaborated on how the Scottish symbol had been reframed and transformed through culture, such as in the blue, frangipani-graced burning bush stained glass window at St Johns Papatoetoe, reflecting the churches links to the Pacific Ocean and its peoples, and the stylized \u201cglowing vine\u201d of Te Aka Puaho, the M\u0101ori Presbyterian Synod.<\/p>\n

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Kane Fleury (Otago Museum) expounded on the Museum\u2019s extensive Lepidoptera collection in \u2018Books and drawers full of moths\u2019, much of it the work of the still-living collector, Brian Patrick. \u00a0The museum has been involved in several collaborate moth-related projects: Mothnet<\/a>, \u201ccitizen science\u201d working with school children to collect and report on the moth populations, and the production of guides of New Zealand moths<\/a> both in English and te reo M\u0101ori and the digitisation of the Museum\u2019s extensive moth collections.\u00a0 By comparing the notes and collection data of historic moth collection with more current data, the Museum is helping to understand how environmental change is affecting our rich moth fauna.<\/p>\n

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Rachel Wesley. Photo by @historyobjects<\/p><\/div>\n

The mauri of places and resources were often embodied in k\u014dhatu (stones) that maintained and safeguarded their wellbeing.\u00a0 This, of course has implications for museums that hold such taoka, but that might also produce their own embodiments of mauri.\u00a0 Rachel Wesley (Otago Museum) explored this kaupapa in \u2018K\u014dhatu Mauri: an exercise in practice across cultures\u2019, discussing how the Museum had created its own k\u014dhatu mauri from within its collections.\u00a0 Unlike traditional iterations, whose tapu might preclude physical contact, the modern k\u014dhatu are placed to be touched by museum visitors.\u00a0 Rachel explored the implications of this, and the conflicting values and preservation practices of the museum and m\u0101tauraka M\u0101ori, and how an accessioned item that ordinarily is only for viewing might be recontextualised (and de-accessioned), changing from mere geological artefact to a taoka with new meanings.<\/p>\n

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Museum at Papawai. Photo by @AWanhalla<\/p><\/div>\n

Conal McCarthy (Victoria University of Wellington) was given the hard task in his keynote, \u2018From curio to taonga: 150 years of museum histories, theories and politics\u2019 to wrap up the conference, of drawing in the preceding talks, while also giving his take on New Zealand\u2019s museums\u2019 own pasts, presents and futures. \u00a0Conal, acknowledging that museums were part of a wider colonial culture, looked at how museums had interacted with t\u0101ngata whenua and their culture, again stressing that M\u0101ori had often been involved in how M\u0101ori material might be exhibited.\u00a0 He also noted that M\u0101ori had sometimes had their own museums, such as the Kotahitanga base at Papawai, and that individuals such as Ngata and Buck through their involvement with ethnology, museums and heritage, had been prominent in how M\u0101ori culture might be seen.\u00a0 But New Zealand had now come to a time when museums needed to find new ways to engage with indigenous peoples, in particular through employing whakapapa as a practical ontology for the future.<\/p>\n

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The conference had a great buzz, with the single-stream format, a diversity of topics, and the generous coffee breaks allowing the sixty-odd people who attended to engage in many fruitful exchanges.\u00a0 Many congratulations to the organiser, Rosi Crane, on hosting such a fun and productive conference. She is now investigating how some of these presentations may be converted into published research outputs.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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