For those in pursuit of Englishness, and the sacred cow of national identity, a museum with a vast ethnographic collection would not appear to be the most obvious first port of call.
But this month the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is hosting a conference that aims to explore "museum ethnography at home", taking as a starting point the English objects in the museum's collections (see box).
Museums of ethnography and anthropology are traditionally viewed as being about material culture from "other" countries, but ethnographers are keen to widen that definition. Alison Petch, the registrar of the Pitt Rivers and organiser of the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG) conference, says they have been inundated with enquiries.
"I think it's partly because of the current interest in what constitutes Englishness and who the English are - it's the new Zeitgeist," says Petch.
The timing of the MEG conference could not be more appropriate. Speaking last month at London's National Portrait Gallery, Margaret Hodge, the minister for culture, described the search for a common national identity as one of the "truly critical issues of the moment".
But are ethnographic collections the right place to begin this hunt for a common national identity? Most of them are the products of empire and some have, in the past, fallen out of favour in museums that didn't quite know what to do with them.
Len Pole, a consultant specialising in ethnography, says that in the 1950s and 1960s ethnographic collections were often thought of as a "leftover" from people coming back from the colonies. As social history collections gained ascendancy, the status of ethnographic collections declined and, in some cases, whole collections were disposed of.
After a period in the museum wilderness, ethnography attempted to redefine itself in the 1990s with the creation of a number of new galleries, notably the World Culture galleries at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. Pole, who was the curator of ethnography at Exeter at the time, says that the term "world cultures" began to be used about 15 years ago.
"Ethnography is an unfamiliar word - world cultures is easier to understand, whereas ethnography is opaque." Since then there have been a number of redisplays of ethnographic material, some of which have been seen as a radical departure.
None more so than the new displays at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow. Traditional classifications such as ethnography have been discarded in favour of thematic displays, narrative and an interdisciplinary approach. And although the redisplay has been a winner with the public, opinion is divided among ethnography curators.
Its supporters view the thematic approach and the Cultural Survival galleries, which place the stories of indigenous communities from the UK and abroad side by side, as a new way forward.
The idea is to suggest a commonality of experience rather than "looking at funny foreigners", which is what Glasgow's director Mark O'Neill wanted to get away from.
For its detractors though this approach and the emphasis on making all the stories relevant to local audiences has lead to too narrow a style.
Either way, what Kelvingrove has done is to start a debate. "It has encouraged people who work with ethnographic collections to look at them in a different light and not just from one viewpoint," says Pole.
Contested ownership of objects
So what are the current issues that staff working with ethnographic collections face? Repatriation would seem to be an obvious one. The majority of objects in UK collections are there as a result of imperial adventures of one kind or another and the ownership of some of them, in particular human remains and sacred objects, is often contested.
But Jeremy Coote, the head of collections at the Pitt Rivers, says that, while this might be the issue that creates the most hot air, it's a "storm in a tea cup". "We've all grown up a bit. A generation ago people were very worried about it, but not so much now."
Part of the reason that museums may have moved on from this issue is their work with source communities. Coote says that working in consultation with these communities is an ideal to which everyone must aspire.
"We must always work on the assumption that people from that community will turn up and have a look," he says. It can also greatly enhance the understanding of objects. "It feeds into the history of collections. Building relationships with source communities enables greater understanding of collections and makes museum work more dynamic."
Working with source communities can also be fruitful for contemporary collecting. National Museums Liverpool (NML) has been in contact with organisations in America to assess the museum's north-west coast collections. As part of this work it has been asking those communities to suggest contemporary purchases that could enhance the pieces in the existing collection.
And according to Emma Martin, the head of ethnology at NML, more and more museums are now looking at their ethnographic collections as a basis for new collecting because of recently introduced funding streams such as the Art Fund International grant and the Heritage Lottery Fund's Collecting Cultures.
Henrietta Lidchi, the keeper of world cultures at National Museums Scotland, says it is crucial to carry on collecting. "We need to collect today and have to look at what we collect and how that fits in with historic collections."
NMS also collects material by named artists that reflects traditional materials and skills. For example it has acquired work by the Singh twins that is connected to the existing miniatures collection and the collection associated with Lord Iqbal Singh.
Of course not all museums with ethnographic collections are in a position to do extensive fieldwork or make contemporary acquisitions.
As well as being the head of ethnology at NML, Emma Martin is also the chairwoman of MEG. She says there are day-to-day issues that many working in museums will be familiar with: "There's a lack of specialists and a lack of expertise. People are expected to care for ethnographic collections, but are under great pressure to do other jobs."
Another problem is that ethnographic collections, because of the sometimes haphazard way in which they were collected, can be difficult to research. "They are often the least well-documented collections," says Martin. "Sometimes one person might be looking after large geographical areas of the world."
Martin sees the MEG as part of the solution. It was set up more than 30 years ago as a help group for curators at a time when it was felt there was a real need to bring together specialist staff. Martin says that need still exists, but the group is not just for specialists anymore.
"Non-specialists can find help, support and expertise with display, care of collections, interpretation and a whole range of skills which we can offer to the wider museum community.
"We would like to create a mentor system to allow staff working with ethnographic collections to tackle some of delicate issues associated with them. People who are not specialists sometimes don't have the confidence to develop the collections and their interpretation."
Working together
Sue Giles, the curator of ethnography at Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery, says that cooperation between collections is a solution. "I would like to see collections working together more and cooperating on lending. It's happening, but not enough with small collections."
She also thinks that collecting could be done more cooperatively. "We don't know what everyone is collecting and what everyone has. If two places are collecting from a similar area, they could share collecting… It could avoid a huge amount of duplication."
The one issue that ethnography curators all agree on is the need to make their collections relevant. And for Tony Eccles, the curator of ethnology at Royal Albert Memorial Museum, it comes down to interpretation. "In my opinion, objects don't speak for themselves - a case full of objects can give the impression that cultures are extinct."
The Exeter museum is closed for redevelopment until 2010 and Eccles has been keen to use this as an opportunity to get the collections out to new audiences and address the issue of identity.
Projects have included Small Worlds, a temporary display of ethnographic material in two local schools, and All Different All Local, a photographic display that makes links between the world cultures gallery and the local community.
According to Eccles, collections can be made relevant to society today. "Displays should be blunt and honest and look at subjects such as repatriation and other relevant social issues. We should be dealing with the topics that are not being dealt with in schools, and sometimes the old way of displaying ethnography doesn't allow that."
Reconnecting with audiences
Pat Allan, the curator of world cultures at Glasgow Museums, says that making collections relevant is about reconnecting them with their audiences.
"Most museums in Britain acquired the bulk of their collections from our colonial past which has left a legacy of political and historical issues. Much of the material has lost its traditional connections with its cultural and historical roots."
She says that by working with source communities museums can re-interpret objects in a 21st century context. One way they are doing this in Glasgow is through work with local communities.
Allan cites a partnership project between Glasgow's Open Museum and Medical Foundation Scotland (MFS), a specialised support service for survivors of torture and organised violence.
The project, Patterns of Change, worked with a group from different African countries as part of a therapeutic programme that allowed the group to explore their own patterns of change in moving from Africa to Scotland (see box).
Can ethnographic collections help to provide some of the answers to the identity question? Well, culture minister Margaret Hodge got one thing right when she talked about Britishness, and the role that culture can play in forging national identity, and that was her concluding quote taken from the novelist Ian McEwan:
"Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and it is the beginning of morality."
If they make the vital connections, ethnographic collections have the power to do this.
But this month the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is hosting a conference that aims to explore "museum ethnography at home", taking as a starting point the English objects in the museum's collections (see box).
Museums of ethnography and anthropology are traditionally viewed as being about material culture from "other" countries, but ethnographers are keen to widen that definition. Alison Petch, the registrar of the Pitt Rivers and organiser of the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG) conference, says they have been inundated with enquiries.
"I think it's partly because of the current interest in what constitutes Englishness and who the English are - it's the new Zeitgeist," says Petch.
The timing of the MEG conference could not be more appropriate. Speaking last month at London's National Portrait Gallery, Margaret Hodge, the minister for culture, described the search for a common national identity as one of the "truly critical issues of the moment".
But are ethnographic collections the right place to begin this hunt for a common national identity? Most of them are the products of empire and some have, in the past, fallen out of favour in museums that didn't quite know what to do with them.
Len Pole, a consultant specialising in ethnography, says that in the 1950s and 1960s ethnographic collections were often thought of as a "leftover" from people coming back from the colonies. As social history collections gained ascendancy, the status of ethnographic collections declined and, in some cases, whole collections were disposed of.
After a period in the museum wilderness, ethnography attempted to redefine itself in the 1990s with the creation of a number of new galleries, notably the World Culture galleries at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. Pole, who was the curator of ethnography at Exeter at the time, says that the term "world cultures" began to be used about 15 years ago.
"Ethnography is an unfamiliar word - world cultures is easier to understand, whereas ethnography is opaque." Since then there have been a number of redisplays of ethnographic material, some of which have been seen as a radical departure.
None more so than the new displays at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow. Traditional classifications such as ethnography have been discarded in favour of thematic displays, narrative and an interdisciplinary approach. And although the redisplay has been a winner with the public, opinion is divided among ethnography curators.
Its supporters view the thematic approach and the Cultural Survival galleries, which place the stories of indigenous communities from the UK and abroad side by side, as a new way forward.
The idea is to suggest a commonality of experience rather than "looking at funny foreigners", which is what Glasgow's director Mark O'Neill wanted to get away from.
For its detractors though this approach and the emphasis on making all the stories relevant to local audiences has lead to too narrow a style.
Either way, what Kelvingrove has done is to start a debate. "It has encouraged people who work with ethnographic collections to look at them in a different light and not just from one viewpoint," says Pole.
Contested ownership of objects
So what are the current issues that staff working with ethnographic collections face? Repatriation would seem to be an obvious one. The majority of objects in UK collections are there as a result of imperial adventures of one kind or another and the ownership of some of them, in particular human remains and sacred objects, is often contested.
But Jeremy Coote, the head of collections at the Pitt Rivers, says that, while this might be the issue that creates the most hot air, it's a "storm in a tea cup". "We've all grown up a bit. A generation ago people were very worried about it, but not so much now."
Part of the reason that museums may have moved on from this issue is their work with source communities. Coote says that working in consultation with these communities is an ideal to which everyone must aspire.
"We must always work on the assumption that people from that community will turn up and have a look," he says. It can also greatly enhance the understanding of objects. "It feeds into the history of collections. Building relationships with source communities enables greater understanding of collections and makes museum work more dynamic."
Working with source communities can also be fruitful for contemporary collecting. National Museums Liverpool (NML) has been in contact with organisations in America to assess the museum's north-west coast collections. As part of this work it has been asking those communities to suggest contemporary purchases that could enhance the pieces in the existing collection.
And according to Emma Martin, the head of ethnology at NML, more and more museums are now looking at their ethnographic collections as a basis for new collecting because of recently introduced funding streams such as the Art Fund International grant and the Heritage Lottery Fund's Collecting Cultures.
Henrietta Lidchi, the keeper of world cultures at National Museums Scotland, says it is crucial to carry on collecting. "We need to collect today and have to look at what we collect and how that fits in with historic collections."
NMS also collects material by named artists that reflects traditional materials and skills. For example it has acquired work by the Singh twins that is connected to the existing miniatures collection and the collection associated with Lord Iqbal Singh.
Of course not all museums with ethnographic collections are in a position to do extensive fieldwork or make contemporary acquisitions.
As well as being the head of ethnology at NML, Emma Martin is also the chairwoman of MEG. She says there are day-to-day issues that many working in museums will be familiar with: "There's a lack of specialists and a lack of expertise. People are expected to care for ethnographic collections, but are under great pressure to do other jobs."
Another problem is that ethnographic collections, because of the sometimes haphazard way in which they were collected, can be difficult to research. "They are often the least well-documented collections," says Martin. "Sometimes one person might be looking after large geographical areas of the world."
Martin sees the MEG as part of the solution. It was set up more than 30 years ago as a help group for curators at a time when it was felt there was a real need to bring together specialist staff. Martin says that need still exists, but the group is not just for specialists anymore.
"Non-specialists can find help, support and expertise with display, care of collections, interpretation and a whole range of skills which we can offer to the wider museum community.
"We would like to create a mentor system to allow staff working with ethnographic collections to tackle some of delicate issues associated with them. People who are not specialists sometimes don't have the confidence to develop the collections and their interpretation."
Working together
Sue Giles, the curator of ethnography at Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery, says that cooperation between collections is a solution. "I would like to see collections working together more and cooperating on lending. It's happening, but not enough with small collections."
She also thinks that collecting could be done more cooperatively. "We don't know what everyone is collecting and what everyone has. If two places are collecting from a similar area, they could share collecting… It could avoid a huge amount of duplication."
The one issue that ethnography curators all agree on is the need to make their collections relevant. And for Tony Eccles, the curator of ethnology at Royal Albert Memorial Museum, it comes down to interpretation. "In my opinion, objects don't speak for themselves - a case full of objects can give the impression that cultures are extinct."
The Exeter museum is closed for redevelopment until 2010 and Eccles has been keen to use this as an opportunity to get the collections out to new audiences and address the issue of identity.
Projects have included Small Worlds, a temporary display of ethnographic material in two local schools, and All Different All Local, a photographic display that makes links between the world cultures gallery and the local community.
According to Eccles, collections can be made relevant to society today. "Displays should be blunt and honest and look at subjects such as repatriation and other relevant social issues. We should be dealing with the topics that are not being dealt with in schools, and sometimes the old way of displaying ethnography doesn't allow that."
Reconnecting with audiences
Pat Allan, the curator of world cultures at Glasgow Museums, says that making collections relevant is about reconnecting them with their audiences.
"Most museums in Britain acquired the bulk of their collections from our colonial past which has left a legacy of political and historical issues. Much of the material has lost its traditional connections with its cultural and historical roots."
She says that by working with source communities museums can re-interpret objects in a 21st century context. One way they are doing this in Glasgow is through work with local communities.
Allan cites a partnership project between Glasgow's Open Museum and Medical Foundation Scotland (MFS), a specialised support service for survivors of torture and organised violence.
The project, Patterns of Change, worked with a group from different African countries as part of a therapeutic programme that allowed the group to explore their own patterns of change in moving from Africa to Scotland (see box).
Can ethnographic collections help to provide some of the answers to the identity question? Well, culture minister Margaret Hodge got one thing right when she talked about Britishness, and the role that culture can play in forging national identity, and that was her concluding quote taken from the novelist Ian McEwan:
"Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and it is the beginning of morality."
If they make the vital connections, ethnographic collections have the power to do this.
The Other Within is a three-year project to research and analyse English material in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
Although the museum is internationally renowned for its collection of ethnographic material from around the world it is also home to a lesser-known but substantial collection of English material.
The Other Within came out of an earlier research project to map the entire collection from 1884 to 1945. According to researcher Chris Wingfield, one of the surprising results of the mapping exercise was the amount of English material: around 44,990 artefacts (and 6,724 photographs) representing 15 per cent of the total collection.
"It shows that when the museum was set up, it wasn't just about the 'other'," says Wingfield, who has studied artefacts such as the witch's ladder.
The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and aims to throw new light on what was collected and why. It began in April 2006 and includes a website with databases containing information about the English collections (both ethnographic and archaeological), and the photographic collections.
"Some of objects were already quite well known," says Wingfield, "such as the witch in a bottle, but there are other related objects such as the heart that was found stuffed up a chimney and the bewitched onion, found in a pub."
http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/
Patterns of Change was a partnership project between Glasgow's Open Museum and Medical Foundation Scotland a support service for survivors of torture and organised violence.
The artist Londi Beketch Luyeye, himself a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, inspired the group to create a textile through the exploration of objects from Africa that were important to the participants' lives.
Participants felt the project allowed them to work in a peaceful space. "I wanted to share our culture - how we've got different things back home - what our ancestors have left us," says Maurice Mangumbe, one of the participants.
Maurice says that having the exhibition in a public space meant that the group felt it could connect with other Africans and remind them of their heritage, and raise awareness of Africa.
Maurice proudly wears a t-shirt printed with his own design from the project and he says he feels happy when people ask about it. "Even in the metro people ask me about my t-shirt. I am able to share Africa with others because of this t-shirt," he says.
Although the museum is internationally renowned for its collection of ethnographic material from around the world it is also home to a lesser-known but substantial collection of English material.
The Other Within came out of an earlier research project to map the entire collection from 1884 to 1945. According to researcher Chris Wingfield, one of the surprising results of the mapping exercise was the amount of English material: around 44,990 artefacts (and 6,724 photographs) representing 15 per cent of the total collection.
"It shows that when the museum was set up, it wasn't just about the 'other'," says Wingfield, who has studied artefacts such as the witch's ladder.
The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and aims to throw new light on what was collected and why. It began in April 2006 and includes a website with databases containing information about the English collections (both ethnographic and archaeological), and the photographic collections.
"Some of objects were already quite well known," says Wingfield, "such as the witch in a bottle, but there are other related objects such as the heart that was found stuffed up a chimney and the bewitched onion, found in a pub."
http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/
Patterns of Change was a partnership project between Glasgow's Open Museum and Medical Foundation Scotland a support service for survivors of torture and organised violence.
The artist Londi Beketch Luyeye, himself a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, inspired the group to create a textile through the exploration of objects from Africa that were important to the participants' lives.
Participants felt the project allowed them to work in a peaceful space. "I wanted to share our culture - how we've got different things back home - what our ancestors have left us," says Maurice Mangumbe, one of the participants.
Maurice says that having the exhibition in a public space meant that the group felt it could connect with other Africans and remind them of their heritage, and raise awareness of Africa.
Maurice proudly wears a t-shirt printed with his own design from the project and he says he feels happy when people ask about it. "Even in the metro people ask me about my t-shirt. I am able to share Africa with others because of this t-shirt," he says.
