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ToolsJacobs, Karen (2025) A Collection of Relationships:Kamoro Material Culture in the Museum. In: Western New Guinea. Terra Australis . ANU Press, Canberra, pp. 367-383. ISBN 9781760466718
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Material culture from the Kamoro region on the south-west coast of New Guinea ended up in European ethnographic museums as a result of encounters between Kamoro people and various collectors. As early as 1828, artefacts were acquired during the Triton Expedition for the Wereldmuseum in Leiden, the Netherlands. More material was collected during subsequent expeditions, which found its way into Dutch and British museums. During Dutch colonial times, substantial additions were made by colonial officers, anthropologists, and missionaries. While the Indonesian period between the late 1960s and the 1990s is virtually non-existent in the museum, the Leiden Museum assembled a substantial Kamoro collection during the Kamoro Arts Festival (1998–2006). By focusing in detail on a series of objects in museums, this chapter aims to highlight the Kamoro and European agents involved in collecting processes and their distinct agendas, the long tradition of Kamoro exchange, and the current relevance of museum collections to Kamoro artists. For instance, an armlet collected in 1828 reveals how Kamoro people were continuing an exchange practice established during trade relations with Eastern Indonesia which had been recorded from the seventeenth century onwards. A breast ornament collected by British explorer A.F.R. Wollaston shows how encounters with local communities were not of primary significance to these early expeditions, which were focused instead on the colonial goals of mapping and establishing control over territory. The object was catalogued as ‘Utakwa River’ after the river that the explorers followed. Naming the makers was not important. Yet this breast ornament, unique in museum collections, inspired Kamoro artists to create similar ornaments to sell at the Kamoro Arts Festival in 2002. An ancestor pole (mbitoro) collected by Jan Pouwer in the 1950s indicates how anthropological knowledge was recorded. The encounter with this mbitoro by a group of Kamoro visitors to the Leiden Museum revealed how museum collections are not sets of decontextualised, static objects, but are active links to ancestors. Overall, this chapter demonstrates that Kamoro museum collections of material culture are composed of relationships, past and present. Kamoro museum collections are processes, subject to change as collections are moved or studied, despite their seemingly fixed nature within museums.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | For conditions of use, see: https://press.anu.edu.au/faqs/conditions-use |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Centres > Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas |
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| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Feb 2025 16:30 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Feb 2025 16:30 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98562 |
| DOI: | 10.22459/TA58.2024.20 |
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