E-Book, Englisch, 364 Seiten
Bozsa / Schmid / Bucher Each Case Is Different
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-7757-6254-0
Verlag: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Anthropological Provenance Research at the Museum der Kulturen Basel
E-Book, Englisch, 364 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7757-6254-0
Verlag: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Provenance research is so much more than a search for origin: It offers new perspectives on objects, collections, their histories, and the multifaceted relationships embedded within them.
The Museum der Kulturen Basel is systematically examining its collection for coloniality and highlighting the central importance of collaborating with communities in the Global South. This work also reveals how complex and demanding ethnological provenance research is. This volume "raises groundbreaking questions that will shape ethnological provenance research in the decades to come" (George Meiu).
The Museum der Kulturen Basel is one of the five state museums of the Canton of Basel-Stadt and, with a collection of over 340,000 objects from all regions of the world, it is Switzerland's largest ethnological museum. Managing this collection –acquiring, preserving, securing, exhibiting, and mediating the collection – is the core mission around which the museum's activities are centered. In recent years, provenance research and collaboration with so-called "source communities" have played a prominent role.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Ausstellungskataloge, Museumsführer
- Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
Weitere Infos & Material
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Contents
Introduction
Basics and Methodology
Travelling and Collecting
Acquisitions and Appropriation Practices
Trading Practices and Market Logics
Intermediaries and Counterparts
Communities of Implication
Contexts of Violence
Voids and Gaps
Current Relevance
Octopudian
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Appendices
Copyright Page
Sorting, Cataloguing, Classifying — A Structural History of the Museum Basil Bucher
In the 1835 report on the public natural history collections, it is noted that the zoological collection included, apart from reptiles, birds, fish, and mammals “an Egyptian mummy, a gift from the Messrs. Geigy brothers”.1 This mummy and the sarcophagus that came with it are the oldest known holdings of the present-day Museum der Kulturen Basel (mkb). The mummy belongs to the mkb collection, but has been on loan to the Natural History Museum in Basel since 2005, similar to the sarcophagus, which has been on loan to the Basel Antikenmuseum since 2004. The shrouds, in turn, have remained at the Museum der Kulturen. This pattern of distribution is an indicator of the structural changes that the museum has undergone over the years. The mummy has experienced many of the museum’s developments; it was on display in several exhibitions, moved around and handled by dozens of people, and therefore appears time and again at significant milestones in the museum’s history.
Early Legislation: 1821–1836
The beginnings of the public collections of Canton Basel-Stadt trace back to the Amerbach Cabinet, which was acquired by the city and the university in 1661 and shown from 1671 onwards in the public library which was located in the House zur Mücke. When the University of Basel underwent reorganization in 1818, the natural history collection was removed from the library and reassigned to the newly created Chair of Natural History located in the Falkensteinerhof in 1821. For the first time, a special museum bill was drafted for this new Museum of Natural History and approved by the university’s governing body in 1822. The new law regulated the operation of the museum, the composition of the governing commission, and the relationship between the collections and public institutions. It also specified that the Museum Commission was authorized to sell parts of the collection.2 The division of the canton of Basel into the cantons Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft required a new bill concerning the university’s holdings which was passed by the Basel government in 1836. The separation agreement of 1833 stipulated that two thirds of the university’s assets, being part of the state’s assets, should be transferred to Basel-Landschaft in proportion to the size of the population. Consequently, the city had to draw up an inventory of all the university’s assets — including the collections3 — and either cede the corresponding share to Basel-Landschaft or pay compensation.4 Notably, the mummy remained in Basel. In view of a potential financial loss, the new law firmly tied the university’s assets to the location of the city of Basel which is why the historian Flavio Häner speaks of a de facto nationalization of the collection.5 From this moment on, all collections came under the authority of the city’s Board of Education; this meant that any decision regarding their use required the government’s approval. The University of Basel’s governing body was responsible for overseeing the collections and appointed a commission with the duty of reporting annually on their condition and any development.6
A Civic Project: 1836–1849
One of the ramifications of the cantonal split was that the people of the city of Basel became much more aware of the collections’ significance. The years to come saw the establishment of the Historical Society (1836), the Art Association (1839), and the Antiquarian Society (1842).7 With the holdings growing, the increasing lack of space made it clear that, sooner or later, a new museum would be needed. In 1841, a commission was established to push ahead with the new museum project. The initiators, all members of Basel’s wealthy bourgeoisie, were socially and politically well connected and usually active in scholarly and cultural societies.8 In one of the daily newspapers, they called for the “building of a new museum.”9 Their plan was to bring together collections, a library, and lecture halls in a single building on the site of the former Augustinian monastery, and make it a “temple of science and art”.10 The contract for the construction of the new building was awarded to the architect Melchior Berri (1801–1854), who found inspiration in the classicist museum buildings in Berlin. The old Augustinian monastery was torn down in 1843, and the foundation stone laid down a year later. Construction was completed in 1848, and the Universal Museum was ceremoniously inaugurated in November 1849. The aim was to firmly embed the new museum in Basel by engaging the members of the city’s progressive, commercial, and industrial bourgeoisie and making the new “temple of science and art” a part of Basel’s cultural identity.
The top floor housed art collections and antiquities. In addition to galleries featuring ancient coins and medals, paintings, drawings, and engravings as well as a room for displaying plaster casts, it also hosted a “Mexican cabinet”, which is probably also where the mummy and the sarcophagus were exhibited.11 The new museum was also mentioned in Karl Baedeker’s travel guide of 1854, but the collections failed to generate much enthusiasm: “Apart from Holbein’s paintings, there is little of interest in the Basel gallery for those familiar with the major collections in German cities. An adjacent room holds ancient Mexican idols, amongst other things. The collections of coins, copperplate engravings, and rarities along with the ethnographic and natural history sections are of little significance.”12
Part of the Universal Museum: 1849–1878
The “Mexican cabinet” featured the collection of Lukas Vischer (1780–1840). The Basel silk ribbon merchant lived in the usa from 1823 to 1828 and then in Mexico until 1837. During his stay there, he assembled a significant collection. His heirs donated a part of the collection to the university in 1844, upon which it was put on display in the museum in Augustinergasse. This pre-Colombian collection was to become the foundation of the ethnographic collection; it was managed13 by the Commission for Antiquarian Collections.14
The people of Basel became frequent visitors to the new Universal Museum, with the result that evermore citizens began to donate items to the museum.15 The growth of the ethnographic collection had a lot to do with local patriotism, but also with global developments. From the 1850s onwards, ethnographic museums began to spring up in major European cities, which, on the one hand, led to the emergence of a new scholarly discipline and, on the other, to a growing interest for such collections on the part of the general public.16 The spread of European imperialism provided access to new markets, not least for Swiss entrepreneurs. Technological developments in shipping, the building of the Suez Canal along with the emergence of travel agencies enabled wealthy Basel citizens to travel the world with more ease, allowing them to bring back items which they then donated to the museum (see Greber 109–112). The establishment of the Basel Mission in 1815 created even more links to distant colonies, from where missionaries also brought items home to Basel.17
Establishing an Ethnographic Collection (Ethnographische Sammlung): 1878–1893
It was through the physician and natural scientist Carl Gustav Bernoulli (1834–1878) that the so-called Tikal lintels came to the museum. Featuring Mayan glyphs and dating back to the 8th-century city of Tikal, they made Basel’s ethnographic collection known beyond the city limits.18 Although the collection kept on growing and had, at least to a certain extent, gained international acclaim through the Tikal lintels, it still played only a subordinate role in the eyes of the Commission for Antiquarian Collections. Two events changed this appreciation significantly: for one thing, a collection assembled by Johann Rudolf Geigy-Schlumberger (1862–1943) and his cousin during their travels around the world, which they bequeathed to the museum in 1888; for the other, the collections compiled by Fritz and Paul Sarasin (1859–1942 and 1856–1929, respectively) which also entered the museum, with the result that, by the end of the 1880s, the ethnographic collection had attained a size which even the Commission for Antiquarian Collections could no longer ignore. In 1888, the Commission entrusted their new member, the geographer Rudolf Hotz (1852–1917), with the task of overseeing the collection.19 For one thing, Hotz demanded, similar to the Antiquarian and Natural History societies, the establishment of an Ethnographic Society, and, for the other, that more attention should be paid to the ethnographic collection. The Commission rejected the first request20 but agreed to the second insofar as Hotz was allocated a budget of two to three hundred Swiss francs for the purchase of further ethnographic objects.21
Despite the initiative and new financial means, Hotz had little influence on the Commission and the collection in the years that followed.22 It was only when the old Barfüsser Church was converted into a historical museum, which also provided a new home for the antiquitarian collection, that a new thinking regarding the future of the ethnographic collection and how to manage it set in.23 In November 1892, the university’s governing body finally set up an independent Ethnographic Commission. The Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic collections as well as items from the Middle Ages and the modern period...
