CAG on museums: Artist reflections on ethnographic collections- The George Brown collection

 Porcelain labels made in response to the George Brown collection.
Photo credit: Chris McHugh

At Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, there is currently a display on called ‘Community in Clay’ that showcases the work of mixed media artist Chris McHugh. McHugh is a doctoral candidate at Sunderland University with a background in archaeology. He has spent the past years researching historic pottery, Sunderland Museum and collection histories, and has also worked in Japan studying the George Brown collection in Osaka (http://communityinclay.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/community-in-clay-exhibition-of-ceramic.html).

This exhibition explores history and material culture of Sunderland, but also the historical event of the removal of the George Brown collection from the Northeast of England (see the previous post for the history of the GB collection sale) to its current location in the National Museum of Ethnology Osaka, Japan.

The George Brown collection on display at the
National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. Photo credit: Chris McHugh

Trobriand Islands canoe prow at the National Museum of Ethnology
Osaka, Japan. Photo credit: Chris McHugh

The vessels McHugh has created artistically respond to the Solomon Islands lime containers from the Brown collection. The decoration on the vessels echoes the original decoration found on the lime containers in Japan while also referencing the importance of ceramic vessels in 19^th century Sunderland. McHugh reflects that Sunderland ‘was a busy port and pots bearing maritime imagery are common’. The time that George Brown set off to explore the Pacific in the 19^th century was the same time in which the Northeast was a thriving maritime centre. While explorers were discovering new places (to the Western world) and collecting objects to memorialize their experiences, the prosperity of the Northeast influenced the production of a material culture that embodied the wonder and fascination of a world increasingly connected through industry, trade, and colonization.

Details of pieces based on George Brown Collection. The black line imagery
comes from decoration etched into a piece of bamboo from the Solomon Islands.
Title: George Brown Series, porcelain, glaze, stains, decals and pink lustre.
Photo credit: Chris McHugh

Porcelain binoculars from a series of pieces entitled  'Explorer's Kit'.
The text is taken from the Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens'
register from the 1800s. Photo credit: Chris McHugh

The connections drawn between collectors, artistry, and heritage of the Northeast are celebrated in McHugh’s work, and such interactions between artists and the museum are very timely. Several large collaborative artist exhibitions outside of art museums have brought new audiences to cultural institutions and new awareness to a variety of subjects. Re-thinking ethnography collections from an artistic point of view becomes an interesting way of thinking about the intersections between museum history and art, but also imbues objects with an extra layer of history.

A contemporary cabinet of curiosities. Photo credit: Chris McHugh

CAG on museums: The incident of the George Brown collection sale

Reverend Doctor George Brown, missionary and explorer

The George Brown Collection was accumulated through the efforts of Reverend Doctor George Brown. Brown migrated from England to New Zealand in 1855, not originally as a missionary, but he was converted and worked across the Pacific in Samoa, Fiji, New Britain, and New Ireland.  Brown was knowledgeable about the customs, people, and languages of the islands he had worked on as a Wesleyan Methodist missionary for over 48 years, and in that time he also amassed a very important collection of diverse objects. After Brown passed away in 1917, a large portion of his collection was housed in his hometown of Durham and purchased by the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle as a teaching collection. Then acquired by Newcastle University, and not the Natural History Society of Northumbria who owns most other ethnographic collections in the Hancock Museum, curatorial staff helped with the George Brown collection management and in 1974 a few objects were on display.

Late 1970s photograph of the George Brown collection in the Hancock Museum

In 1985 the George Brown Collection was purchased by the National Museum of Ethnology at Osaka, Japan for £600,000 with the exception of some objects that were individually valued at over £16,000 and could not be granted export permits. There were strong objections to sale of such an important collection of Pacific objects from the curators at the museum and anthropologists elsewhere. The Hancock Museum gained an unfortunate reputation and the sale by Newcastle University was criticized for its ‘display of naked philistinism on the part of an otherwise respected university’. Indeed, the collection was deemed by the university as a disposable duplicate collection of sorts with several examples and similar types of objects already existing in the other ethnography collections.

 

Malanggan tatanua mask New Ireland,
George Brown collection © National Museum of Ethnology Osaka, Japan 

 

Tatanua mask of Wellcome Collection origin
currently on display at the Great North Museum: Hancock

The debates about the sale occurred not only in England and Japan, but also across the Pacific about issues of museum ownership, national pride, and issues of depleting cultural resources from newly decolonized countries. Many debates were sparked across museum curator networks and collections management professionals about whether museum collections are disposable assets, what are trustee obligations to protecting collections, and what is the benefit to a collection in storage without access readily available to it, alongside many other issues.

Fijian sperm whale tooth necklace © National Museum of Ethnology Osaka, Japan

Twenty-seven years later these debates still occur in the museum realm and at times ideals of museum collection and object retention seem harder to defend than ever. It costs money, takes a lot of time, and space to only work with a policy of museum retention. With the current state of play, arts budgets in the UK have been cut, employees made redundant, and many museums run mainly on volunteer based help, youth schemes, and short-term contracts. Changes to circumstances, the social makeup of cities, and attitudes mean that disposing of collections in the present can later be a regrettable decision. Art museums especially in America, have long sold artworks in order to purchase new and prestigious works, but there is little parallel to the situation of ethnographic collections in the UK. The Code of Ethics of the American Association of Museums also has a de-accessioning policy that permits the practice in terms of care of the collections, but not for operational costs.

What about the idea of museums as research institutions? Although admittedly serving a smaller community of academics, researchers, and descendants who use collections as a keys to family histories, the benefit of holding on to collections to operate as research institutions must present a valid part of the museum mission. For national and regional UK museums, collections represent heritage held in trust for the benefit of the public. I’m not opposed to letting go of any collections at all, but I would argue that it is very difficult to know enough about individual objects, let alone entire collections, to put a definite values on them that will account for their loss to local communities, researchers, and museum audiences in the present and future.