CAG on travel: I (Heart) Durham

OK, I'm not sure Durham really counts as travel because it's only about a 15 minute train ride from me, but it certainly does feel like a different world and I'm loving Durham at the moment. A couple of weeks ago there was an actual break in the rain for one glorious Sunday, and I met up with a girlfriend in Durham for the day. We met quite late, and in all honesty you don't need much time to see Durham.

As we made our way down from the train station towards the city centre, we soon found a cute market in a town square. There was clothing and little foodie stalls to sample local goods. We were impressed.

As we continued down through the town, we headed towards Durham Cathedral and hoped to catch a museum while it was still open. The views and architecture are really spectacular in Durham, and most of all, it just felt peaceful.

Durham Cathedral is very beautiful and I refrained (barely) from sneaking a prohibited photo of all the amazing stained glass windows.

Winding our way down from the picturesque area of Durham University and the main city, we suddenly came back to the exact market we had originally come to in a loop that probably would have taken about 15 minutes to walk had we not made our tourist stops along the way. And then it hit me... Durham is tiny! Really beautiful in an Oxford type of way, but with a much more quaint feeling you can't get in the city of Oxford. So I guess I'm glad I don't live there, but I'm glad it's there. The air literally just felt different and smelled fresher. Continuing on this love affair with Durham, stay tuned for my upcoming best pubs in Durham post (it was a really small town, you have to kill time somehow).

CAG on museums: Repatriations of human remains and cultural heritage

Germany is the newest country to join in the trend of museums repatriating human remains to the indigenous communities and former colonies from which they were originally taken. Last month the Charité Hospital in Berlin returned the skeletal remains of Australian and Torres Strait Islanders with a ceremony marking the occasion.

Ngarrindjeri elder performing ceremony at human remains repatriation Exeter 2008

Though repatriation has been a hot topic for museums since the early 1990s in the United States and United Kingdom, it continues to be a source of strife for the source communities who feel they are the cultural carers of their ancestors whose remains are out of their control and out of their homelands. In the New York Times article on this recent repatriation outcome, Torres Strait Island community member Ned David explained that the return of human remains provoked 'moving moments for indigenous people around the world' and 'there are mixed emotions, one obviously of relief…and then the moment is tinged with sadness for what was involved with the removal of the remains'. 

Drawing of a mokomokai from H.G. Robley's Moko or Maori Tattooing 

For people that don't work in museums or have contact with the community members who feel these repatriations are integral to their cultural identity, the existence of skulls and bones in a museum might seem like a normal part of the museum experience. The collection of human remains was often made in the name of science to explore archaeology, medicine, and the natural world sciences in general. Many western museums tend to agree that continuing to hold human remains no longer has much scientific merit, and each repatriation is considered on a case by case basis. For some items like tattooed mokomokai Maori heads, their open display has long been deemed inappropriate in museums in the US and UK and museums have returned these Maori ancestral remains relatively consistently.

Hoa Hakananai'a in transit

Other items of cultural heritage with associated political histories have a much harder time of being accepted into mainstream museum repatriation schemes. For example, Rapa Nuians (Easter Islanders) have asked for the repatriation of the famous moai Hoa Haka from the British Museum, but have not been successful with their request. Other famous cases have also been denied, and in general cultural patrimony will continue to be a difficult subject of negotiation for repatriation efforts in museums due to the fact that many situations of collection involved a set of power relations that do not reflect the present-day state of affairs. 

Parthenon Marble

If we were to account for all of these different power structures in the world retrospectively, the ownership of most museum collections would need to come under question. Of course, perhaps that is what needs to be considered in a postcolonial, postmodern world. Then again, I'm pretty sure I remember the V&A putting on an exhibition that said postmodernism ended in 1990 (http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/postmodernism/), but at least the acceptance of a case by case review is helpful to the repatriation cause.

CAG on museums: Ellen Gallagher at the Tate Modern

Ellen Gallagher in her studio Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

I actually didn't know what to expect for the Ellen Gallagher show at Tate Modern, but I was pleasantly surprised. Gallagher's subjects ranged from textured wigs superimposed onto vintage newspaper ads to artistic representations of Herman Melville novels (which I particularly enjoyed).

Ellen Gallagher, Wiglette from DeLuxe , 2004-05

The oeuvre of Gallagher's work in the exhibition doesn't follow a time continuum, but really displays the diversity of her medium and artistic methods. There was a room of extremely large 'black paintings' and complex amalgamations of penmanship paper with inserted hand cut sheets of rubber called the Morphia series. These compositions were displayed free-standing in the room so one could see both sides of the paper which showed different images on either side.

Display of the two-sided Morphia series

Overall my favorite pieces were her 2006 piece Bird in Hand, which referred to Melville's character in Moby Dick, and an entire room of dark inked overlapping layered collages that included a video installation based on 'whale fall', "the scientific term for dead whales that have fallen to the ocean floor and are consumed by scavengers". I'm not sure I understood the point, but the words 'Polynesian reed mapping' and 'engraved coffin' were used to describe the installation and there was some cool jazzy music being played that is still stuck in my head. I really enjoyed the whole thing...

Bird in Hand 2006

An Experiment of Unusual Opportunity 2008

...especially the glorious Tate Modern bar at end.

CAG on museums: West African art and the Fred Uhlman collection

In exploring the history of a collection of West African art, I’ve discovered a rather interesting story about its collector. In a previous post I talked about my interest in a collection that exists at the Hancock Museum, which was collected with artistic aesthetics in mind and not with an anthropological ethos (http://calianthropologygirl.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/cag-on-museums-african-art-and-artistic_3.html).

Portrait of Fred Uhlman by Kurt Schwitters credit: TWAM

The collector is named Fred Uhlman, and the portrait shown of him above is by famous artist Kurt Schwitters, and belongs to the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums service at the Hatton Gallery. Created in 1940 while both Uhlman and Schwitters were in an internment camp together on the Isle of Man after fleeing from Germany, this portrait is a departure from Schwitters’ more famous artworks and style.

Uhlman was originally a lawyer, but after he was forced to leave Germany he became a painter while living in Paris, which is also where he purchased his first West African art piece. He was interested in the works of Picasso and Modigliani who were influenced by African art, and so he also took part in the movement. He began to love African artworks for their aesthetic value and ability to ‘move him’.

Bambana N'tomo mask

Uhlman lived with his wife Diana in Hampstead in a house that became the centerpoint for discussions and meetings for the anti-Nazi Free German League of Culture group, which he founded. Despite these anti-Nazi activities, he was interned in the Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man where he met many German artists. He continued to collect African art and before his death he donated the 70 carvings, sculptures, masks, and figures from the Bambara, Dogon, Senufo, Gouro, and Baule tribes to Newcastle University out of fear that the collection might be dispersed. Although I’m still working on exploring the more anthropological contexts of this West African art collection, it’s very interesting and helpful to find out the collector history.

Memories and nostalgia for 'home'…California?

Although I try not to indulge my personal ramblings on this blog, sometimes after I’ve been thinking over things for a while I feel I have to write about them. I have been ridiculously homesick for the last month. It tends to happen every year about now, mainly because the sun does not exist in the U.K. and happy posts from friends in the United States about how much they are enjoying their summers constantly makes me question why I live on this gloomy, grey island instead of the warm homelands of Los Angeles!

My favorite thing in Venice http://www.borofsky.com/index.php?album=ballerinaclown

This issue is not helped by the fact that most people I work with and befriend in the U.K. also typically question if I might be slightly insane to consider living here long-term instead of in California.

Besides being in desperate need of a real summer season, I’ve started to wonder if California is really all that it’s been made out to be in my mind. It has literally been ages (not to do myself a disservice) since I lived in LA. Neither history nor memory can ever be exact replicas of time, and mine will always be interpreted constructions of past situations tinged by my personal experiences and emotions. My memories are mainly re-informed by my trips back to visit friends, which are filled with nostalgia for the architecture, the weather, and the attitude of Californians. I still call myself a Californian after all this time. 

The truth is I’ve lived all of my adult life away from California. My intellect and first adult friendships were formed in the bitter frozen tundra of upstate New York. My adventures have taken place all over the world. The personality dust has pretty much settled, and my key characteristics were mainly formed on the cynical streets of London. My surroundings are constantly informing my mood, ideas, and how I relate to my environment, but there are still the roots of some deeply buried feelings that make me nostalgic for the rose-tinted vision I have of growing up in LA.

I want that perfect mix of beach weather, delicious food, and unlimited social possibilities, without the vapid personalities, unending traffic, and non-stop film industry talk. Home is really an embodiment of the ideals we find most important. The things we feel we’re missing out on are really what we tend to long for when we think of home. Little things like nice weather and being outdoors are what I’m missing most, but perhaps it’s time to focus on the virtues of my adopted home for the moment.

LAX Airport