Bennett - Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution Museums Colonialism

Series editors

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
Flora Kaplan

The museum has been constructed as a symbol in Western society since the Renaissance. This symbol is both complex and multi-layered, acting as a sign for domination and liberation, learning and leisure. As sites for exposition, through their collections, displays and buildings, museums mediate many of society's basic values. But these mediations are subject to contestation, and the museum can also be seen as a site for cultural politics. In post-colonial societies, museums have changed radically, reinventing themselves under pressure from many forces, which include new roles and functions for museums, economic rationalism and moves towards greater democratic access.

Museum Meanings analyses and explores the relationships between museums and their publics. Museums are understood very broadly, to include art galleries, historic sites and historic houses. Relationships with publics is also understood very broadly, including interactions with artefacts, exhibitions and architecture, which may be analysed from a range of theoretical perspectives. These include material culture studies, mass communication and media studies, learning theories and cultural studies. The analysis of the relationship of the museum to its publics shifts the emphasis from the museum as text, to studies grounded in the relationships of bodies and sites, identities and communities.

Also in this series:

Colonialism and the Object
Empire, Material Culture and the Museum
Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn

Learning in the Museum
George E. Hein

Museum, Media, Message
Edited by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Museums, Society, Inequality
Edited by Richard Sandell

Re-Imagining the Museum
Beyond the Mausoleum
Andrea Witcomb

Liberating Culture
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation
and Heritage Preservation
Christina F. Kreps

Pasts Beyond Memory

Evolution, Museums, Colonialism

Tony Bennett

First published 2004
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

2004 Tony Bennett

Typeset in Sabon by
Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bennett, Tony.
Pasts beyond memory: evolution museums colonialism / Tony Bennett.
p. cm. (Museum meanings)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. MuseumsPhilosophy. 2. MuseumsHistoriography. 3. Museum
techniquesHistoriography. 4. Museum exhibitsTechnological
innovations. 5. EvolutionHistory19th century.
6. EvolutionHistory20th century. 7. ScienceHistory19th century.
8. ScienceHistory20th century. 9. ColoniesHistory19th century.
10. ColoniesHistory20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
AM7.B385 2004
069.01dc22
2003024482

ISBN: 0-415-24746-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 0-415-24747-0 (pbk)

To the memory of my mother

This book has, it turns out, been ten years in the making. Not that it's the only thing I've done over that period; but it has, all the same, been on my mind pretty constantly so that, let the world treat it as it will, it is good to be bringing the work that has gone into it to at least an interim sense of closure. And good, too, to be able to thank those who have helped, in various ways, along the way.

Of these, pride of place must go the Australian Research Council for supporting the project through its Research Grants programme. Without that support, the research that has been required for an undertaking of this kind would not have been possible. I am, then, most grateful to the Australian Research Council, and all the more so for the fact that its support made it possible for Robin Trotter to assist me throughout the early stages of the inquiry. Robin's contribution to the research was of inestimable significance: her thoroughness, determination to leave no archival stone unturned, and sheer commitment to the project greatly enriched the research resource that I was able to draw on in writing the book, and provided a continuing momentum for the project when other more pressing commitments distracted my attention from it. I am greatly in her debt.

I owe a debt, too, to the many library staff and archivists who have helped this project, either through their advice to me directly or in the assistance they lent to Robin. I am therefore pleased to record my thanks to the staff of the libraries at the American Museum of Natural History, the Australian Museum in Sydney, the British Museum (Natural History), the Horniman Museum and Library in south London, the National Museum of Victoria, the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, and the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. Special thanks, too, to Louise Tythacott for her generous assistance, when Curator of Ethnology at the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, in guiding me to and through archival materials relating to the early history of the Liverpool Museums. I am similarly indebted to Michael Hanlon, the Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum.