Browsing by Autor "Anita Herle"

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Archaeology of Torres Strait turtle-shell masks: the Badu Cache
(2004) Bruno David; Ian J. McNiven; William Bowie; Manuel Nomoa; Peo Ahmat; Joseph Albert Stanton Crouch; Liam M. Brady; Michael Quinnell; Anita Herle
Turtle-shell masks are distinctive Torres Strait Islander objects that were used during ritual performances, and carefully curated, during ethnographic times. Yet the history of these rituals and their material expressions are poorly understood. The numerous instances of turtle-shell masks collected during the nineteenth century and currently held in museum collections around the world, and the chance discovery of one such mask cached in a rockshelter on the island of Badu, now allow for their historicising through a program of AMS radiocarbon dating. Initial results are reported.
Discussion avec le public
(2017) Friedrich von Bose; Anita Herle; James Clifford; Hamady Bocoum; Guido Gryseels; Boris Wastiau
De la salle Merci pour ces intéressantes communications. Nous sommes en train de nous interroger sur les apports du modèle du quai Branly, sur les différences et les ressemblances entre différents projets. Une m’est apparue et me semble tout à fait intéressante. À l’origine et en amont de ces projets, il y a presque toujours eu une discussion sur la réunion ou non des collections européennes et extraeuropéennes. Cela ne se pose évidemment pas pour Boris qui a fait le choix de remettre tout ce...
Displaying Colonial Relations: from Government House in Fiji to the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
(University of Leicester, 2018) Anita Herle
AbstractThis paper focuses on the assemblage and display of Fijian collections at Government House during the first few years of British colonial rule and reflexively considers its re-presentation in the exhibition Chiefs & Governors: Art and Power in Fiji (6 June 2013 – 19 April 21014) at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA). It moves beyond reductionist accounts of colonial collecting and investigates the specificity and nuances of complex relationships between Fijian and British agents, between subjects and objects, both in the field and in the museum. A focus on the processes of collecting and display highlights multiple agencies within colonial networks and the fluid transactional nature of object histories. The Fijian objects that bedecked the walls of Government House from the mid 1870s were re-assembled in 1883 as the founding ethnographic collections of the University of Cambridge Museum of General and Local Archaeology (now MAA). Ethnographic museums have tended to efface the links between the material on display and their colonial pasts (Edwards and Mead 2013). In contrast, the creation of Chiefs & Governors was used as an opportunity to explore the multiple agencies within colonial relations and the processes of collecting, displaying and governing (Bennett et al.2014; Cameron and McCarthy 2015). The second half of this paper analyses the techniques and challenges involved in displaying colonial relations in a museum exhibition and considers the ongoing value of the collections for Fijian communities, cultural descendants, museum staff, researchers and broad public audiences today.
Exhibition and representation: stories from the Torres Strait Islanders exhibition
(Taylor & Francis, 2001) Anita Herle
Cross‐cultural collaborative work that goes into the preparation of exhibitions reflects the changing role of museums as places of exchange and research where curatorial expertise and indigenous knowledge meet. Anita Herle, senior assistant curator of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology concentrates her research on issues of access and representations in museums. She directed the preparations for the centenary exhibition to mark the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait and in this article emphasizes the importance of analysing exhibitions as processes. She explains how specific objects in the expedition’s collections in the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology continue to be active intermediaries in the relationship between museum staff and the Torres Strait Islanders, and how, as a consequence, the museum has become a fieldsite and a place for encounter and dialogue. This article provides an ethnography of the process of creating the exhibition and explores in different ways the resonance that many of the objects displayed have for Islanders today. A longer version of the article has been published in Ethnos, 2000.
« L’effet Branly »
(2017) Anita Herle; Boris Wastiau; Guido Gryseels; Hamady Bocoum; Friedrich von Bose
Anita Herle, Boris Wastiau, Guido Gryseels, Hamady Bocoum et Friedrich von Bose © musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, photo Cyril Zannettacci Mme Anita HERLE La création du musée du quai Branly a donné lieu à de nombreuses controverses à Paris et dans le monde entier. Son ouverture en 2006 a stimulé les débats d’ordre muséologique autour de la politique de la représentation, de l’héritage du colonialisme dans les collections des musées, des relations entre les approches fondées sur l’arch...
Relational Objects: Connecting People and Things Through Pasifika Styles
(Cambridge University Press, 2008) Anita Herle
Debates around cultural properties tend to focus on law and ethics, on appropriation and ownership, with media representations often producing stereotypes that reinforce and polarize the terms of the debate. The common, typically polemical, notion is that rapacious museums are merely a final resting point for captive static objects, with repatriation viewed as simply restorative compensation. A robust challenge to this view was developed in the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums signed in 2002 by the directors of 19 leading museums in Europe and North America. The concept of the universal museum asserts that objects are cared for and held in trust for the world, overriding shifting political and ethnic boundaries and enabling the visitor to see “different parts of the world as indissolubly linked.” Although many would be in sympathy with the rhetorical position asserted, critics have argued that the declaration is a thinly veiled attempt to bolster immunity to repatriation claims. On both sides of the debate, the hegemonic position of many museums remains unsettling.