Exchanging Objects: Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution 9781800730533

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Chronology. Lists of Relevant Smithsonian Institution/ US National Museum Personnel
Introduction. A Bowl’s Journey, There and Back Again
Part I. The Museum through the Lens of Specimen Exchange
Chapter 1. The Smithsonian and the Museum: Specimen Exchange as a Bridge between Joseph Henry’s Research Institution and Spencer Baird’s Grand Cabinet
Chapter 2. Spencer Baird’s US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates (1861–1880)
Chapter 3. Networking the US National Museum: Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates (1882–1920)
Chapter 4. Giving and Receiving: Specimen Exchange between Curators, and the Shaping of Anthropological Collections
Part II. The Duplicate
Chapter 5. Duplicates: Specimens in Motion
Chapter 6. Catalogs, Classifi cation, and Contingency: Designating Duplicates
Conclusion. Museum Pasts and Futures
Appendix. Smithsonian Institution/USNM Table of Distributed Specimens (1854–1880)
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Exchanging Objects

Museums and Collections Editors Mary Bouquet, University College Utrecht, and Howard Morphy, The Australian National University, Canberra As houses of memory and sources of information about the world, museums function as a dynamic interface between past, present and future. Museum collections are increasingly being recognized as material archives of human creativity and as invaluable resources for interdisciplinary research. Museums provide powerful forums for the expression of ideas and are central to the production of public culture: they may inspire the imagination, generate heated emotions and express conflicting values in their material form and histories. This series explores the potential of museum collections to transform our knowledge of the world, and for exhibitions to influence the way in which we view and inhabit that world. It offers essential reading for those involved in all aspects of the museum sphere: curators, researchers, collectors, students and the visiting public.

Volume . The Future of Indigenous Museums: Perspectives from the Southwest Pacific Edited by Nick Stanley Volume . The Long Way Home: The Meaning and Values of Repatriation Edited by Paul Turnbull and Michael Pickering Volume . The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display Louise Tythacott Volume . Colonial Collecting and Display: Encounters with Material Culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Claire Wintle Volume . Borders of Belonging: Experiencing History, War and Nation at a Danish Heritage Site Mads Daugbjerg Volume . Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations Wolfram Kaiser, Stefan Krankenhagen, and Kerstin Poehls

Volume . The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums Zuzanna Bogumił, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina Volume . Museum Websites and Social Media: Issues of Participation, Sustainabiity, Trust, and Diversity Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws Volume . Visitors to the House of Memory: Identity and Political Education at the Jewish Museum Berlin Victoria Bishop-Kendzia Volume . The Witness as Object: Video Testimony in Memorial Museums Steffi De Jong Volume . Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls Diana E. Marsh Volume . Exchanging Objects: Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution Catherine A. Nichols

Exchanging Objects Nineteenth-Century Musem Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution

Catherine A. Nichols

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Catherine A. Nichols All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2021930024 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80073-052-6 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-053-3 ebook

To Nancy

Contents List of Illustrations and Tables Acknowledgments

viii xi

List of Abbreviations

xiii

Chronology. Lists of Relevant Smithsonian Institution/ US National Museum Personnel

xiv

Introduction. A Bowl’s Journey, There and Back Again

1

Part I. The Museum through the Lens of Specimen Exchange Chapter 1. The Smithsonian and the Museum: Specimen Exchange as a Bridge between Joseph Henry’s Research Institution and Spencer Baird’s Grand Cabinet

27

Chapter 2. Spencer Baird’s US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates (1861–1880)

63

Chapter 3. Networking the US National Museum: Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates (1882–1920)

93

Chapter 4. Giving and Receiving: Specimen Exchange between Curators, and the Shaping of Anthropological Collections

135

Part II. The Duplicate Chapter 5. Duplicates: Specimens in Motion

163

Chapter 6. Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency: Designating Duplicates

186

Conclusion. Museum Pasts and Futures

219

Appendix. Smithsonian Institution/USNM Table of Distributed Specimens (1854–1880)

231

Bibliography

236

Index

252

Illustrations and Tables Illustrations Figure 1.1. First page of the printed specimen list, “Duplicate Shells collected by The United States Exploring Expedition under Capt. C. Wilkes, U.S.N.” Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org). Contributed by Smithsonian Libraries. 50 Figure 1.2. First page of “List of Marine Invertebrates.” Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org). Contributed by Smithsonian Libraries.

51

Figure 2.1. Comparison of cumulative number of ethnological specimens cataloged to number of ethnological specimens physically retained by the museum (1859–80). Produced on behalf of the author, © Catherine A. Nichols. The amounts on the triangle line were calculated by subtracting the number of specimens distributed each year from the number of objects added each year. The space in between the two slopes are the exchanged duplicates. 78 Figure 5.1a–c. Comparison of quality attributes for kept and exchanged Zuni water vases. Produced on behalf of the author, © Catherine A. Nichols.

182

Figure 6.1. Micmac basket, E30851, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. 205 Figure 6.2. Micmac basket, E30852, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. 205 Figure 6.3. Micmac basket, E30853, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. 205 Figure 6.4. Micmac basket, E30854, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. 205

List of Illustrations and Tables

ix

Figure 6.5. Micmac basket, E30855, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. 205 Figure 6.6. Micmac basket, USNM E30856 / 71.1885.78.226 Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

205

Figure 6.7. Yukon River Delta ivory spear-guard, E35983, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

206

Figure 6.8. Yukon River Delta ivory spear-guard, USNM E35984 / 71.1886.127.24 Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. 206 Figure 6.9. Yukon River Delta ivory spear-guard, E35985, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

206

Figure 6.10. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-0, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.11. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-1, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.12. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-2, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.13. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-3, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.14. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-4, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.15. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-5, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.16. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-6, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.17. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-7, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.18. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-8, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.19. Tlingit woven tablemat, E20727-9, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

207

Figure 6.20. Tlingit woven tablemat, 71.1885.78.330 Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

207

x

List of Illustrations and Tables

Figure 6.21. Relative sizes of Tlingit tablemats. The diamond indicates the mat that was exchanged. Produced on behalf of the author © Catherine A. Nichols.

208

Figure 6.22. Hopi oblong frame, E41942, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

209

Figure 6.23. Hopi oblong frame, 71.1885.78.240 Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

209

Tables Table 2.1. Increase in ethnology specimens cataloged to specimens exchanged per year.

77

Table 2.2. Ratio, in percentage, of the cumulative number of exchanged specimens to the cumulative number of cataloged ethnological specimens, by year.

77

Table 3.1. Incidents and character of transmissions of anthropological specimen exchanges sent by the SI/USNM from 1882 to 1920.

103

Table 5.1. Quality attributes of Zuni ceramic water vases, with values indicating low to high quality.

181

Table 6.1. Status of Indigenous North American rattles accessioned and cataloged into the USNM between 1859 and 1910. 199 Table 6.2. Measurements of Micmac baskets in cm.

205

Table 6.3. Measurements of Yukon River Delta ivory spear-guards in cm.

206

Table 6.4. Measurements of Tlingit tablemats in cm.

207

Table 6.5. Measurements of Hopi oblong frames in cm.

209

Acknowledgments June , , was the first day of orientation for the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History. As the students and faculty sat in a near-circle in the Academic Resources Center, we introduced each other to the research we were hoping to undertake. After talking about my interests in tracing how a single collection had been displayed over time, in an effort to spare me some major methodological headaches Nancy Parezo suggested a novel take on studying collections. During her postdoctoral fellowship, nearly thirty years prior, she had come across files pertaining to specimen distributions in the Smithsonian Institution Archives. We called her husband, Richard Ahlstrom, who excavated the photocopies from a filing cabinet and sent them to Washington the next day. Though I have systematically revisited all the archival record units, I still have the original, aging photocopies she shared with me. They are not only anthropological data, but they also represent a pivotal moment in my life—when I found my doctoral research project, and gained a true mentor, collaborator, and dear friend in Nancy. For the past ten years, I have been fascinated by specimen exchange, first at the Smithsonian and later at the Field Museum. I have Nancy to thank for her generosity in sharing this scholarly gem and her extraordinary knowledge of early anthropology at the Smithsonian, and both Nancy and Rick to thank for their boundless support. I returned to the Smithsonian the following year, and subsequent summers through 2013. I am grateful to the Department of Anthropology staff, fellows, and interns who supported my work intellectually but also practically, especially their persistence in helping me navigate institutional bureaucracies to undertake systematic data collection. My thanks go especially to Gwyneira Isaac, Candace Greene, Suzanne Godby Ingaslbe, Mylène Hengen, Felicia Pickering, Leanda Gahegan, Barbara Watanabe, Gina Rappaport, David Jensen, and Allison Hill. At the Smithsonian Institution Archives, I am grateful to Tad Benicoff, Ellen Alers, and Mary Markey for their assistance and guidance. I conducted research in the archives and collections at numerous museums in North America and Europe, and

xii

Acknowledgments

I owe thanks to several individuals who offered their time, knowledge, and professional hospitality: Susan Crawford, Trudy Nicks, Arni Brownstone, Zena McGreevy, Philip Grover, Fabienne de Pierrebourg, Jean-André Assié, Fabrice Sauvagnargues, Susan Haskell, Mark Shafer, Gene Luedtke, Jodi Evans, Jonathan Reyman, and Kristen Mable. At Arizona State University I had wonderfully supportive advisors, including Kate Duncan, Hjorliefur Jonsson and Richard Toon. Richard’s insights on specimen exchange are woven throughout this work, and I am indebted to his generosity and intellect as I have attempted to position this research in the field of museum studies. I was fortunate to work with a wonderful team of undergraduate research interns, including Teresa Shannon, Andrea Etienne, and Chelsea Ferguson, each of whom contributed many hours of transcription and data organization. I am especially grateful for the support of my colleagues and friends at Loyola University Chicago, in particular Anne Grauer and Kathleen Adams, who provided structural supports for my collections work and teaching, which allowed me to devote time to research. My dear friends Elizabeth Hopwood and Priyanka Jacob have been my day-to-day writing partners, and I have spent many joyful hours in their company, keys clicking away. I am so grateful to my families in all their forms. To my husband, Frederick Lowe, you have always prioritized my work over your own, and done such incredible parental labor for our son, Emmett. I am grateful to my parents, especially my father George Nichols, and extended family for sharing with me a love of reading, history, and hard work. I received a P.E.O. Scholar Award to fund the first phase of this research, for which I am grateful to my great aunt Janet Neuenschwander and North Dakota Chapter G. Other funding to support research and writing was provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and Arizona State University. I extend my thanks to colleagues in museum anthropology, who have generously shared their work and knowledge of the Smithsonian, especially Diana Marsh and Hannah Turner. I have relished the opportunity to learn from and share my work with academics outside of anthropology who are also interested in specimen exchange, namely Felix Driver and Caroline Cornish. My thanks also go to James S. Waters for image preparation. I am grateful to Caryn Berg, Archaeology, Heritage Studies, and Museum Studies Editor at Berghahn Books, external reviewers whose thoughtful suggestions have helped me shape the manuscript, as well as members of the editorial, production, and marketing departments, including Sulaiman Ahmad, Keara Hagerty, Alison Hope, Peggy Ann Schaffer, and Alina Zihharev.

List of Abbreviations BAE

Bureau of American Ethnology

DoA

Department of Anthropology

GPO

Government Printing Office

ICOM

International Council of Museums

IES

International Exchange Service

KE EMu

Electronic museum collections database

NAA

National Anthropological Archives

National Institute National Institute for the Promotion of Science NMNH

National Museum of Natural History

SI

Smithsonian Institution

SIA

Smithsonian Institution Archives

SIAR

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

USNM

US National Museum

Chronology Lists of Relevant Smithsonian Institution/ US National Museum Personnel Secretaries of the Smithsonian Institution Joseph Henry Spencer Fullerton Baird Samuel Pierpont Langley Charles Doolittle Walcott

1846–78 1878–87 1887–1906 1907–27

US National Museum Assistant Secretary in charge of the USNM and Director, USNM Spencer Fullerton Baird George Brown Goode Charles Doolittle Walcott Richard Rathbun

1850–85 1886–96 1897–98 1899–1918

Assistant Director and/or Curator, USNM George Brown Goode

1875–85

Division of Correspondence and Documents Randolph Geare

1882–1917

Executive Curator Frederick William True

1898–1901

Chronology

xv

In Charge of the Ethnological Division or Assistant, Ethnology Edward Foreman Frank Hamilton Cushing

1875–84 1877–80

Assistant, Archaeology/Antiquities Charles Rau E.P Upham

1878–79 1884–91

Curator, Department of Archaeology/Prehistoric Anthropology Charles Rau Thomas Wilson William Henry Holmes

1880–87 1887–1901 1904–18

Curator, Department of American Prehistoric Pottery William Henry Holmes

1884–93

Curator, Department/Division of Ethnology Otis Tufton Mason Walter Hough

1884–1909 1909–35

Assistant/Aid, Ethnology Walter Hough

1888–93

Assistant Curator, Department of Ethnology Walter Hough

1894–1909

Head Curator, Department of Anthropology William Henry Holmes Otis Tufton Mason William Henry Holmes Walter Hough

1897–1902 1903–8 1910–20 1920–35

Curator, Division of Physical Anthropology Aleš Hrdlička

1903–41

Introduction A Bowl’s Journey, There and Back Again

Behind the Scenes As you enter Pod  at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland, you are welcomed by a notice of the most recent insect sighting posted to the double doors. Lights flicker on, revealing the first of three levels. Fire suppression pipes and forced air conduits snake below the ceiling. A twelve-digit alphanumeric code—a storage location—requires you to search for numbers stenciled on the floor, indicating the row and section. Passing carts and crated treasures removed from their storage locations, you turn right into a long, repeated line of inward-facing white metal cabinets. Your finger moves over the code to reach the cabinet number. You use a small brass key to unlock the righthand door, and you quickly check to make sure this cabinet does not require venting due to the accumulation of aerosolized mercury. Your nose senses a change from the ordered monotony of white metal to things that have long endured the passage of time. The shelf number requires a search for a ladder, whose wheels simultaneously jingle and rumble as you roll them over the concrete floor. Climbing two steps grants visual access to objects arranged like puzzle pieces, though you cannot immediately decipher the scene. A tag with a number and barcode clings to each object. Your eyes scan as you repeat the catalog number under your breath, searching for the match. And there it is, E40241, a hand-formed and painted ceramic bowl. With gloved hands you lean in to remove it from the case. It is not entirely remarkable—there are many similar bowls in this case and many of the other cases. But this one’s story—its routes down unusual avenues—is obscured by its ordinary character. For now, nothing about it seems to make it more or less unique than its neighbors.

2

Exchanging Objects

It was more than a year between the time I first encountered, handled, measured, and photographed this object to when I began to unearth details of its past transit. Before the case was ever opened, I knew one fragment of this object’s story. As part of the Smithsonian’s US National Museum (USNM) accession 009899, it was collected in 1879 by the Bureau of American Ethnology’s (BAE) field research team in the American Southwest, headed by Colonel James Stevenson under the direction of Major John Wesley Powell.1 It had been collected at the Pueblo of Zuni, where it most likely had been bartered for manufactured trade goods. It was moved via wagon to the new rail lines creeping across New Mexico, then crated and shipped to Washington, DC. Upon Stevenson’s return to the East Coast, and likely assisted in large part by his wife and fellow anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson, he described this (and many similar bowls) in his illustrated catalog of collections made among the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest.2 After it had been transferred by the BAE to the anthropology department of the USNM, it was assigned a catalog number and its attributes recorded in volume 9 of the catalog ledger book. The cataloger described it as “Earthenware Eating bowl; sal, tsan, na; Expedition of Maj Powell to Pueblos of Zuni; Collected by JS Stevenson and FH Cushing; Entered into [the ledger] 1880 March; 1 specimen.”3 The stories and fates of thousands of objects collected by the BAE remain closely tied to the stories and fates of the institution that preserves them—the Smithsonian Institution, whose natural history and anthropology collections in the USNM became the National Museum of Natural History in 1957. Objects from this collection have been displayed in museum exhibits, have traveled to world’s fairs, been loaned to other museums, been accessed by researchers and source community members, and have been rehoused and stored by museum professionals. Now most are kept in Pod 2 of the Museum Support Center. But this bowl’s itinerary is distinguished by a century-long detour.4 In 1903 a trustee of the public library in Jackson, Tennessee, wrote to Smithsonian secretary Samuel Langley requesting the donation of a collection of natural history and anthropological specimens to be used as an educational display for library patrons. In just over a month’s time, the Smithsonian sent a collection of geologic and ethnologic specimens to Jackson, including this ceramic bowl. The bowl remained in the library likely through the 1960s. Prior to 1980 it found its way into the private collection of local Jacksonian Jaime Towne. Following Towne’s death, his widow donated objects to the Pinson Mounds State Park, where they were displayed in the archaeological visitor’s center display. In 2007 state archaeologists visited the site, inspected these culturally and geographi-

Introduction

3

cally displaced objects, and recognized markings on the objects indicating their BAE provenance. They contacted the anthropology department at the Smithsonian with an offer to return the objects. Smithsonian staff agreed, and the bowl was among six former Smithsonian objects that were returned. The original catalog numbers were retained, and a summary of the events were placed in the accession file and recorded in the electronic museum catalog. After more than a century in Tennessee, the bowl was reinstated into collections at the Smithsonian.5

Studying Museum Collections The itinerary of ceramic bowl E40241 is remarkable, sharing a kind of kinetic kinship with thousands of human remains and objects that museums have, particularly in the decades since the passage of the repatriation legislation in the United States, returned to descendent communities.6 The transit of objects back to their former owners, claimants, and stewards serves as a reminder of the histories of collecting, particularly of anthropological material by museums in the West. Many of the well-known histories of collecting and collections focus on a unidirectional movement—objects from peripheral places travel to museums in the urban metropoles.7 Though museums have then extended objects beyond the physical boundaries of the collection through loans or digitization projects, or even lost objects through intellectual or physical displacement or deterioration, museums have long been understood to be places of accumulation and knowledge production. The fact that the majority of objects have remained in museum collections since the passage of repatriation legislation does not mean knowledge experts have not been engaged in innovative labors to reassemble and reconnect collections to stakeholders, and to activate latent knowledges. The opposite is true. Museum and collections-based work in the past four decades has prioritized source community engagements, while calling for decolonizing methodologies.8 Recent approaches to museum collections have resulted in increased recognition of Indigenous agency, local renegotiations of the potential of digital mediations, developments of collection access protocols, and the training of early career scholars in collections-based methodologies.9 While much of this work still happens within the space of the museum, museum staff have increasingly reevaluated their professional practices to address barriers to access and engagement. Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers note how the handling of fragile objects by “enthusiastic [Haida] delegates” brought on feelings of unease

4

Exchanging Objects

among Pitt Rivers Museum staff, but it was these very sessions that led to the “the most intriguing and revealing encounters,” and subsequent “transfer and confirmation of knowledge across generations and across cultures.”10 Though the benefits of repatriating materials from museum collections is always context dependent, the physical movement of objects back into descendent communities’ hands results in different enactments of use and care.11 Margaret Bruchac’s pioneering work on wampum belts is an aspirational example of how museum collections and archives are critical to creating a deeper understanding of these objects and their histories, in some cases leading to the restoration of wampum to rightful owners.12 Museums with anthropological collections have increased their efforts to connect with descendent communities, while also making those relationships increasingly visible. Much of this happens within the physical and epistemological space of the museum. The basic terms of the relationships are mediated by the modern museum’s emergence within a historical period of colonialism, while the fundamental structures of the museum have centered on collecting, classification, and exhibition.13 Tony Bennett has argued for an understanding of museums as “civic laboratories,” in that they mediate relations between experts and citizens in “the context of programmes of social and civic management.”14 This raises a central question of whom museums have been for, and what purpose they serve in statecraft. Within a settler colonial context, Indigenous scholar Amy Lonetree reminds us that “museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples, as they are intimately tied to the colonization process.”15 Repatriation has been one response to this situation. But the movement of objects out of museums is not new. Museum collections contain enormous potential to reveal the connections and relationships that have hitherto been less visible or illegible. A relational approach to uncovering the social connections woven through collections using network theory and computerized databases invites the characterization of museum collections as “multi-sited, multi-authored, emergent entities.”16 These connections can be visualized and quantified, but, more importantly, they provide new starting points for deeper research into the nature, depth, and intricacies of social connections.17 Methodologically, scholarship of this sort still tends to focus on objects that remain in museums, and I suggest that this serves to reify the accumulative character of museums. In writing about scholarly networks of British colonial science, Tamson Pietsch notes that “specimens did not simply flow back to Europe from collectors on the colonial periphery,” but rather they “moved along lines of personal connection.”18 Social relationships were shaped by scientific institutions, influencing the circulations of

Introduction

5

objects that sometimes flowed into museums. The use of network theories to unpack museum collections has also produced new theoretical engagements focusing on agency and materiality within museum collections. Attention to the agency of creator communities in the exclusion of certain objects from cross-cultural exchange and museum contexts acknowledges the complex dynamics of why some objects evade museum collections.19 The recognition and engagement with the relational qualities of museum objects have opened up new discourses and interventions within the space of the museum and the digital arena, and in descendent communities.20

The Argument What are museums? In his well-known work The Birth of the Museum, Tony Bennett argues that museums, as spaces of representation, are distinguished by being “involved in the practice of ‘showing and telling’: that is, of exhibiting artefacts and/or persons in a manner calculated to embody and communicate specific cultural meaning and values.”21 Like international exhibitions and modern fairs, museums are places that contextualize and display objects, and regulate their visitors’ experiences. In Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1884–1945, Chris Gosden and Frances Larson, with Alison Petch, suggest that the museum is a “repository of social histories in material form,” and approach it as a place around which “innumerable sets of connections between people and objects” extend over time and space.22 The museum holds evidence of social connections and exchanges, manifesting those histories through objects and documents. Taken together, these approaches suggest that the museum is a place where objects are brought together through the collective efforts of many people, recontextualized with respect to past histories and future use. This book considers the archival nature of museums, the partial, yet characteristic function of museums as repositories.23 Michel Foucault’s characterization of museums as heterotopias, places that invite “real sites that can be found within the culture” to be “represented, contested, and inverted,” also draws on the idea of accumulation. Museums accumulate time, forming “a sort of general archive . . . the idea of constituting a place of all times.”24 Similarly, Bruno Latour argues that the emergence of centers of calculation, such as modern museums of natural history, are reliant on the mobility of things that can be extracted from their in situ contexts. Once made mobile, stable, and combinable, objects are brought together as collections, allowing scientists to “see new things.”25 There is no deny-

6

Exchanging Objects

ing that museums do bring objects from distant places into a physical and epistemological space. However, museum histories “tend to focus on processes of concentration: the growth and consolidation of collections,” producing narratives that Felix Driver and Sonia Ashmore argue overlook the mobility of objects, and the various forms of their circulation within and through museums.26 This book suggests that museums are dynamic archives, offering an institutional and cultural context through which objects move. The fact of the common existence of a museum’s collection, composed of material objects and information, further suggests an association between accumulation and archiving. While the existence of objects in repose on or off display may be a common and perhaps definitive feature of the modern museum, this book explores the practices that shaped the nineteenth-century museum’s permanent collection. I consider policies and practices of the movements of museum objects in order to demonstrate how the (im)permanency of particular objects within the museum’s collection are produced through intellectual and practical contingencies. The museum is a compulsive collector, classifier, and exhibitor. It is an archive of things but also norms and values, processes and decisions, that have shaped the contents of its collection over time. Sara Byala emphasizes the haphazard nature of the museum-as-archive, both collecting with intention while accumulating things of apparent disinterest.27 Collection staff will attest to this truth. For as many errant things there are to be found in the bowels of the museum, there are material traces of the absence of former presence, in plain sight of a critical eye on catalogs and registration records. In his critique of the archive, literary scholar David Greetham emphasizes the “contingent, temporary, and culturally self-referential, even self-laudatory” decisions that shape the contents of the archive.28 While Greetham’s critique focuses on those things that are excluded from archival collection to begin with, he also broaches the work of archival editors. Decisions made by archival and museum staff a century ago (or in the not-so-distant past) may seem neglectful, even repressive. But Greetham’s focus on culturally mediated acts of inclusion and exclusion in the formation of the archive remind us that archives are not neutral or passive, but are instead “active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed.”29 Inasmuch as the museum archive collects only certain objects, it ultimately keeps only certain objects. It is not always a penitentiary arresting the movements of objects in the outside world, but rather a context through which some objects are elided; material remnants of those movements have something to say about particular interests, motivations, and values of those working in and around museums.

Introduction

7

This book considers a specific kind of museum practice, what I refer to as specimen exchange. In its most elementary form, it involves the permanent removal of classified and cataloged specimens out of museum collections and into new contexts. These new contexts may be, and often were, other museum collections. But as the story of the ceramic bowl shows, this was not always the case. The USNM used thousands of anthropological specimens as currency with trading partners ranging from politicians and private collectors to primary school teachers.30 There are thousands of little-known pathways of objects out of the museum, unfolding hand in hand with the well-known efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to build an anthropological museum collection reflective of an expanding nation.31 How can a museum’s collections be used to tell new histories of the museum, particularly those histories that address the definitive features of what museums are understood to be? Rather than using the lens of collection and accumulation to understand the museum, this book pursues an optic reversal of seeing the museum through object dispersals in order to emphasize its character as a dynamic archive. The enclosing nature of the museum as archive belies its history as a place not only of keeping, but of giving. The legal and ethical landscapes of claiming ownership and custody are persistent reminders that objects and people have always been on the move.32 Digital cultural heritage archives now seek to connect museum objects and information across organizational boundaries, reflecting the reality that museums may function as repositories, but they are as much centrifugal as they are centripetal.33 Objects in the past have had to traverse their structures, and will continue to do so in the future. Collecting, circulation, and display are cultural practices that unfold across and beyond museums.

Specimen Exchange Defined The story of ceramic bowl E40241 is one of thousands of stories located in anthropological objects that have been removed from the collections of the USNM and sent permanently to other museums, private collections, libraries, high schools, and universities from about the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Taken as a whole, these objects moved out of the Smithsonian through the practice of specimen exchange. This is both a practice and a terminology that anthropological museum curators and collections managers no longer engage in on a regular basis, but one that remains in use in natural history collections.

8

Exchanging Objects

Exchange and transfer are methods of object disposal familiar to museum professionals across all subject areas, but the central concept used to designate the objects exchanged—duplicate specimens—has been applied primarily to natural history and anthropology collections. The data I use to explore the keeping and valuing of objects pertains to the exchange of anthropological specimens, primarily by the Smithsonian Institution in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. The trade and transit of specimens of material culture—that is, human-fashioned objects—occurred in conjunction with the animal, vegetable, and mineral specimens of natural history. Rather than take on this practice across subject areas, I focus on anthropological exchanges in order to brook a deeper engagement with disciplinary history, method, and theory. Developments at the disciplinary level in the use, meaning, and availability of anthropological museum objects during the twentieth century are responsible for the practice of specimen exchange declining within anthropological museum collections. Changes to classification schemas, research questions, and the politics of museum collections have played out in anthropological collections in very different ways from natural history collections. What is specimen exchange? The terminology alone requires an explanation. A specimen is a natural or cultural object that has been described with respect to the scientific system of knowledge. Within museum-based discourse, an object or artifact is transformed into a specimen as human agents bring observational and experimental techniques to generate a category-based description, or classification. Our ceramic bowl is transformed from a utilitarian and decorative artifact formed and used by a Zuni individual to an artifactual illustration in the museum, a representative of a kind-of-thing. Our object’s description is inscribed into the museum catalog using the category of form and function: an eating bowl; of material: ceramic; of its maker(s) and user(s): the Zuni people; of its collectors: James Stevenson and Frank Hamilton Cushing. The specimen may be glossed as a Zuni ceramic eating bowl. The practice of exchange or trading of specimens relies on each partner’s ability to relinquish any claim to the title and physical custody of a specimen, essentially to resign ownership under a Western property model. This requires a valuation be applied to the museum specimens that constitute a kind-of-thing. Stevenson and Cushing collected hundreds of Zuni ceramic eating bowls that vary in size, design, and quality, but all of these bowls constitute one kind-of-thing as determined by the human agent that applies the category-based description that classifies them. The agents involved in the exchange determine which and how many of the Zuni

Introduction

9

ceramic eating bowls should be retained and which and how many may be relinquished through exchange. These decisions involve the valuation of specimens with respect to many factors, but the outcome of this process renders for each trading partner a group of specimens that are kept and a group that may be exchanged. Specimens that constitute the latter group are called “duplicates.” A basic model of specimen exchange occurs when one party (an institution or an individual) trades one or more of its duplicate specimens for an equivalent in duplicate specimens or desired currency with another party. The putative purpose of specimen exchange was to diversify collections under an encyclopedic model. Exchange was therefore a technique used to expand the variety of kinds-of-things held by museums or in discrete collections while reducing the number of redundant, repetitive, or duplicative examples of kinds-of-things. A Zuni ceramic eating bowl that the USNM’s ethnology curator determines to be a duplicate specimen on the basis that it was one of thousands in the category could then be exchanged with another museum offering duplicates from its own collection. These offered specimens were desirable to the USNM because they were not adequately or at all represented in the USNM collection. Anthropologist Jude Philp evokes the widespread and global scale of this practice in the nineteenth century through reference to the “specimen exchange industry.”34 Specimen exchange was a regular practice among collectors, curators, and scientists that spanned natural history and anthropological institutions. A century ago, a request to exchange was as common as a loan or research request would be today. Susan Sheets-Pyenson characterizes specimen exchange as a common mechanism for growing natural history collections.35 Though some museums restricted participation in specimen exchange as a matter of policy, behavioral norms and practices were shared throughout the scientific and collecting communities. Central among these norms and practices was the exchange of duplicate specimens. From an anthropological perspective, this shared community of practice negotiated which specimens were duplicates and, in so doing, mapped value onto these objects through decisions to give or keep them.36 Recent scholarship on specimen exchange has benefitted from engagements with disciplinary and museum histories, as well as interests in circulation and object mobilities. Echoing Philp’s discussion of the specimen exchange industry, Lianne McTavish writes about the “museum marketplace,” where the “international trade of objects between museums constructed a web of social, cultural and economic meanings.”37 Rather than relegate specimen exchange to an accounting of objects given and received, Brooke Penaloza Patzak’s historical investigation of international exchanges

10

Exchanging Objects

beginning in the late nineteenth century considers how museum objects (including duplicates), knowledge, and scholars moved through space and time, contouring intellectual and scientific landscapes.38 Christian Feest’s detailed study of the exodus of Brazilian objects from the exchange reserve of Vienna’s Imperial Museum of Natural History offers a reconstructed history of particular object pathways, and reveals some of the challenges that museum record-keeping systems present to researchers.39 Through a large-scale longitudinal study of archival and registration records pertaining to the exchange and distribution of botanic specimens at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Felix Driver, Caroline Cornish, and Laura Newman offer a reconceptualization of the museum not as a storehouse, but as a clearinghouse for incoming collections, an exchange partner, and a supplier of duplicate specimens to formal educational institutions.40 Specimen exchange has eclipsed mere mention as a museum practice, and has emerged as a new lens through which to understand museums and their collections.

Deaccessioning and Exchanging for Mission In Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, editor Gail Anderson chronicles the upheavals and reevaluations that museums have undergone in the past century. As a cultural institution, the museum has been transformed through a hard look at “fundamental assumptions about museum operations.” This reflexive exercise has brought about a “dramatic paradigm shift” in which the museum has moved from being “collections-driven” to “visitor-centered.” I agree with Anderson’s observation that, “at the heart of the reinvention of the museum is the desire by museum professionals to position the museum to be relevant and to provide the most good in society.”41 But change is easier on paper than it is in practice. Though institutional priorities have shifted from collections to audience, changes in professional practice and organizational structure can feel glacial, and even be generational. And top-down mandates may be alienating for seasoned museum staff and volunteers. Though the reinvented museum reflects prioritization of inclusivity, of audience and community, of the development of new missions and visions, my experience in museums (as both a practitioner and a scholar) leads me to think that this reinvention may be more aspirational than conclusive. Museums implicitly remain beholden to, or even constrained by, their organizational functions. The organizational structure of many museums separates collections from education, and curatorial from the exhibits and education departments.

Introduction

11

This undoubtedly produces tensions that cut straight to the museum’s raison d’être, as Diana Marsh incisively explores in her ethnography of the making of the Smithsonian’s fossil halls.42 Inasmuch as I agree with Richard Handler that the museum is a “social arena” and “not a repository of objects,” it is still an “institution in which social relationships are oriented in terms of a collection of objects.”43 Steven Conn has traced the relative importance and presence of objects in museums over the past century. Though museum type makes a difference, he contends that “the place of objects in museums of all kinds has shrunk dramatically.”44 To their visitors, exhibits are no longer sites of “visual abundance,” and glass cases once chockfull of specimens in natural history museums have been replaced by dioramas and interactives.45 Taken off exhibit, the vast majority of objects are exiled to storage. Storage facilities, argues Conn, are “parallel museum universe[s], access to which is generally quite restricted.”46 Though museums visitors see only a small percentage of a museum’s collection, collections demand constant care and this costs money. Writing about the development of the most recent collections preservation facility for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Kelly Tomajko recounts that in the 1990s the museum began focusing attention on “its collection stewardship obligation” through staff professionalization, equipment upgrades, and “improving storage methods and materials.” Still, by 2008 collections were stored in “forty-nine different rooms” and were “at risk from overcrowding and uncontrolled environmental conditions.” Space to add to collections was “nonexistent.”47 The solution was to build an underground wing, the Avenir Center, a “sustainable state-of-the-art collection preservation facility.”48 Half of the cost of the design and construction of the facility was raised from a bond initiative approved by Denver voters. While Denver has a strong history of municipal support for its museums, the point here is that collections care requires consistent organizational resources, punctuated by major capital campaigns. Collections cost money. Tomajko notes that once the bond measure was approved, the museum undertook the development of the “Long-Term Collections and Research Plan to ensure that the considerable resources required to build and operate a collection facility were devoted to only those collections that advance the museum’s mission.” Curatorial staff outlined “strengths and weaknesses” in the collections, and the plan “outlined future acquisition priorities, and identified targeted deaccession opportunities to bring collections into closer alignment with the museum’s mission.”49 Tomajko does not elaborate further on deaccessioning priorities or principles, since this is the purview of curators. The Long-Term Collections & Research Plan itself indicates

12

Exchanging Objects

that objects subject to deaccession in the American ethnology collections are designated on the basis of being “unethically or illegally obtained.”50 American archaeology curators offered the following statement on deaccessioning: “Collections lacking provenience information, that are not from the greater Rocky Mountain region, that have little or no research value, that are not exhibition-quality, that are on permanent loan from other institutions, that belong to federal agencies, or that can be claimed under NAGPRA, will be proposed for deaccession. We do not believe that any of these collections should be kept for their own sake.”51 Minerals was the only department to mention the deaccessioning of duplicate specimens. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science Plan reflects a mission-driven approach to collections stewardship and care that includes critical topics such as deaccessioning. As Elizabeth Varner notes, financial pressures have precipitated “a need for museums to reevaluate and consolidate their collections, [while] misinformation, confusion and public hostility towards deaccessioning has persisted.”52 Deaccessioning is covered in foundational handbooks and guidelines for the museum field, urging museum professionals to first consider if objects should be removed, followed by the appropriate method for disposal.53 These are usually not easy conversations to have or decisions to make. Steven Miller characterizes deaccessioning as the “most controversial of museum practices.”54 The deaccessioning of economically valuable museum objects makes for a good headline, and questionable practices have had severe consequences for some museums.55 Gwen Corder’s study of deaccessioning in small museums in Kentucky and Indiana indicates that deaccessioning funds were commonly used to finance operational costs, a decision in direct conflict with professional museum standards.56 This a practice that can easily erode trust in institutions that the public sees as being fundamentally and functionally acquisitory in nature.57 Though the term came into wide use in the 1970s, deaccessioning is not new. Malaro defines the term as “the permanent removal of an object that was once accessioned into a museum collection.”58 As evidenced by the story of our bowl, the object was professionally collected, described in a scientific publication, cataloged, and added to the USNM collections where it remained for twenty-three years before being permanently removed and given to the Jackson Free Library. Specimen exchange is deaccessioning by definition; a deep look into its widespread and regular practice has much to tell us about what museums have been, and what they can be. Museums have not only been sites of accumulation, but also their object archives were dynamic, with new and valuable specimens frequently moving in because of the ability to move out duplicative but representative specimens.

Introduction

13

Specimen exchange as deaccessioning in the distant past intersects with recent and provocative scholarship and professional conceptual tools for responding to the problems of expansive collections and their stewardship demands. The Active Collections project is a grassroots effort in the museum field to “develop a new approach to collections,” as best practices in this area have “lagged behind other areas of museum practice” in a field moving toward inclusivity and dialogue, and the centrality of audience.59 Relationship to mission and societal impact are major emphases. Trevor Jones’s collections tier tool lays out the evaluative basis on which objects should be kept and cared for, a shorthand for understanding their relevance to mission and impact. Jones notes that initial discussions for developing his museum’s tier system were “sometimes contentious” but “helped clarify previously unspoken assumptions and shed light on how different departments viewed the role of collections.”60 This process and discourse is extraordinarily important, since it asks museum professionals to articulate their own interests, motivations, and values in doing museum work. Clarity and honesty about one’s own professional values is especially needed for museum staff in all aspects of their labor—from fundraising to external partnerships and collaborations. Similarly, Nick Merriman’s discussion of assessing collections and ascribing value to objects is an essential practice as museums pursue sustainable operations.61 As much as the archival record will allow, this book considers the role of specimen exchange in the formation of the Smithsonian Institution and the USNM, the extent of specimen exchange practice in anthropology, and the interests and motivations of curators and administrators. Exchange has allowed for continual efforts of specialized compilation and accumulation as well as dissemination of ideas through objects serving as visible and tangible evidence that could be referred to for more than a single research project. Specimen exchange is one medium through which we might envision the museum as a dynamic archive, and attention to its practices can offer new ideas drawn from old practices. Duplicate specimens were deaccessioned from the originating museum’s collection while being accessioned into the receiver’s collection. The uses to which these objects were put are variable, but many were responsive to local needs. Described and scientifically authenticated objects were used represent non-local peoples and places. They were used as models for teaching natural history collecting techniques and observational science. They have come to be used in the interpretation of local histories, as a means of telling the stories of notable individuals and institutions associated with the movement of specimens from the Smithsonian to places like Jackson, Tennessee; or Fairfield, Iowa.62

14

Exchanging Objects

While these acts of deaccessioning did shift the content of Smithsonian collections resulting in an untold number of duplicate specimens being excluded from the public trust, the transit of these objects tells us that past museum administrators and curators were both generous and responsive to the requests and needs of international colleagues as well as provincial educators. I interpret these actions as intensely mission-driven, since they were consistently done in a way that exemplified the Smithsonian’s mission of increasing and disseminating knowledge. Though museums often find institutional definition in the collection and preservation of objects, conceptualizing the museum as a dynamic archive brings about new possibilities and terms to initiate mission-driven activities. It is my hope that readers will glean from this telling some of the benefits of specimen exchange—reducing storage needs; encouraging decentralized, object-based education; and extending communities of object-based scholarship and practice. My intent in this work is to invite contemporary museum practitioners and scholars to consider how a historical practice could engender the development of new policies and practices for how museum collections are cared for and used.

Book Layout This book is one among many that presents a partial history of the Smithsonian Institution. This is an extraordinarily daunting task, and one that consistently eludes definitive telling. My focus is on the nineteenth-century Smithsonian: the Institution’s early history unfolds largely through the agendas and actions of the first two secretaries, Joseph Henry and Spencer Baird. By the 1880s, with the blossoming of the scientific departments and a separate building for the USNM, I turn my attention to the major players in the museum’s administration and the Department of Anthropology. The practices and precedents concretized in the late-nineteenth-century of Smithsonian anthropology persisted into the early decades of the twentieth century, primarily through the actions of long-term professional staff— individuals like Walter Hough—that had been influenced and trained by the best-known of the early American anthropologists at the Smithsonian: John Wesley Powell, William Henry Holmes, and Otis Tufton Mason. This book is a history of the Smithsonian’s USNM and Department of Anthropology as told through specimen exchange. Because specimen exchange requires consideration not only of getting and keeping, but also giving, I see it as a productive means of reconsidering a variety of Smithsonian histories: institutional, organizational, disciplinary, and biographical.

Introduction

15

In the first part I consider three areas of scholarly and professional interest in museums: formation and mission, collections-building, and curation. In general, my analysis focuses less on the specific content of individual exchanges—that is, I write very little about the individual objects entangled in moments of circulation. I attend more to exchange events and specimen quantities to discuss how specimen exchange shapes each of these three areas of the museum. In the first two chapters I highlight the role of specimen exchange in building collections at a time when the museum functions of the Smithsonian were in their infancy. Chapter 3 provides a sense of the diversity of exchange partners both in geographic location and social position, and the tenor of exchange negotiations. Chapter 4 examines the dynamics of exchanges between anthropologists and offers an explanation for the decline of anthropological specimen exchange. In the second part I turn my attention to the specific objects circulating through networks of exchange. My analysis focuses on museum objects, which are defined as the physical-material thing plus the metadata: the information about the thing inscribed into catalogs, publications, and archival records. I explore the central concept on which the operation of specimen exchange relies: the duplicate. In chapter 5 I consider the epistemological foundations of the concept of the duplicate within the broad context of natural history as a scientific practice. I consider how factors of object quality and rarity intersected with how curators designated duplicates for exchange. In chapter 6 I further position the exchange of anthropological duplicates within disciplinary knowledge frameworks of the time, especially those espoused by Smithsonian ethnology curator Otis Mason. Through study of duplicates themselves, I triangulate how curators may have operationalized this concept. I consider how category-based similarity is produced through museum technologies such as classification conventions, cataloging procedures, and visual verisimilitude.

Critical Collections Management Every day museum professionals navigate and interact with systems of organization created in the past. Consultation of the century- or decadesold accession file, a cross-check of the electronic database with the card catalog retained for redundancy, or conservation records and condition reports—these records are essential to museum practice in the areas of loans, exhibitions, repatriation, inventory, and research. The ability to translate handwriting and decode abbreviations used by predecessors is a necessary skill. I have often witnessed (and also felt) great frustration

16

Exchanging Objects

at now-departed individuals who failed to keep track of information and procedures, or kept spotty and unorganized records. Institutional memory can be a challenge for museums, especially since they seem to be mostly in the business of keeping-in-perpetuity. Museums are also in the business of remembering through objects; to effectively do so they must also remember their own histories. Although acquisition of knowledge and experience with best practices is important, we should not neglect the history of our institutions. The reverberations of decisions made by our professional predecessors resurface regularly, and must be understood within historical and political contexts, particularly for those individuals interested in decolonizing methodologies. Efforts to form a community of professional museum practice across the United States began in the late nineteenth century, building on growing interest in the public aspects of the museum—exhibitions and education. George Brown Goode, assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in charge of the USNM, is often cited as an influential figure in professionalization. While some of Goode’s principles are foundational, the museum community continues to propel itself forward, developing codes of ethics and statements concerning equity and accessibility, implementing accreditation programs, and making visible the ways in which museums are valuable to the public. While maintaining such foundational principles such as orderly collections and a public focus, there are some practices that we consider outdated, dangerous, or complicit in maintaining structures of power. Specimen exchange might be considered—by some—to be one of those practices. Certainly, it is outdated because it is no longer understood by anthropologists to be a means of growing one’s collection of anthropological objects. Specimen exchange at the Smithsonian resulted in the movement of thousands of anthropological objects out of the permanent collection and into state museums, colleges, public libraries, and even high schools. It has proven difficult to locate former Smithsonian objects at libraries and schools, since the institutional function of both places are not oriented toward the perpetual retention of objects. I have had success only when these objects have found their way back into museums or private collections. In one case, a former Smithsonian object exchanged with congressional representative Joel Heatwole located me when its current owner encountered an abstract of a paper I was giving on the exchange with Heatwole via Google search.63 Whichever side of the argument one gravitates to—that specimen exchange was an embodiment of the Smithsonian’s mission, or that it was a dangerous practice that has resulted in the loss of thousands of natural and

Introduction

17

cultural objects from the public trust—it is important to understand the purpose and extent of the practice, particularly for all those museum professionals who work or endeavor to work in collections.64 It was, in part, an interaction with a collections manager that contributed to my interest in this topic. As I ran my first in-house KE EMu report on accession 009899 at the glacially slow computer terminal in the Museum Support Center, I was urged to first sort by record type. Object records that were marked “Removed” or “Cancelled” should be discarded, since these indicated objects that were no longer in collections storage. Digital humanists might consider this initial sort as a part of cleaning one’s data set. But this missive speaks to a common and reasonable assumption—that a researcher would come to a museum to see things that were physically present and would not be interested in objects that had formerly been part of the collection. Though I was curious about what had gone on to bring about the fact that this would mean deleting hundreds of records from my search, I understood a conversation about deaccessioning might not be the best foot to start off on. It is, after all, a most controversial topic. I pursued my interest steadily, grateful for the old notations directing me to the routes removed objects had embarked on. This venture into the museum’s past opened up not only a fertile area of research, but also contributed to an understanding of the energy and excitement museum curators brought to building their collections, working in a community of practice, and supporting the proliferation of museum and anthropological practice across the world. This is a book written with a particular audience in mind: those individuals that work (and aspire to work) in museums, around museums, and on behalf of museums. Before I undertook the research that led to this book, I worked for five years developing exhibits for a small university museum. Since it was small, I worked on exhibits, but also did a little of everything else. Prior to that position, I worked or interned in collections, education, and museum administration. For the seven years since completing my doctoral work I have directed a small ethnographic teaching and research collection. I have spent many hours sewing tags onto textiles, cutting foam core into the early hours of the morning, guiding tours in which I set beaver traps while clothed in period dress and working with museum board and staff committees to update codes of ethics as well as document retention and destruction policies. I consider myself both a museum ethnographer and a practitioner, and my professional positionality has guided both my interest in and my understanding of specimen exchange and duplicates. My intention is to provide an interpretation of this topic that contributes to ongoing discussions about the relationship between collections and museums as institutions. While all museum professionals need to have

18

Exchanging Objects

a fundamental understanding of collections, some of us work with (or in) collections more closely than others, particularly collections managers, registrars, curators, and conservators. There is a small but growing field of scholarship in museum studies that Cara Krmpotich has called “critical collections management,” a term that follows from Hannah Turner’s “critical collections histories.”65 Their scholarship and practice has sought to call attention to the broader political and institutional contexts which have stabilized and normalized the central technologies and practices associated with collections: the catalog, access, and handling, to name a few.66 Critical collections management asks museum professionals to consider the legacies that have given shape to contemporary ways of behaving and thinking in and about museums. This work intends to join in that conversation and encourage its presence in various professional and professionalizing contexts. I hope that museum professionals (especially those of you that are emerging and aspiring) will engage the histories, interpretations, and new models associated with critical collections management, bringing them to bear on the development of organizational policies and visions at your own museums, as well as accounting for them in mundane practices and everyday decision-making. I believe in the importance of not only knowing the ins and outs of contemporary standards of professional practice, but also what museums have done in the past (the details, not just impressions or suspicions about the good old days or, more usually, the bad old days). I believe there is extraordinary value in considering why best practices exist, and the ways in which they will change in the future as museums and their contexts continue to change. At the end of each chapter I have included a brief section, “Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns,” that highlights what I think are some of the more meaningful and interesting aspects of each chapter, and their relevance to contemporary museum practice. The claims I make and perspectives I advance are born out of my nearly two decades of work in museums as practitioner, as well as an anthropologist interested in museums as cultural institutions.

Notes 1. The Bureau of Ethnology was established in 1879 and the name was changed to the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894. I use Bureau of American Ethnology because of the general familiarity with the latter name and acronym (BAE). 2. James Stevenson, “Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1879,” in Second Annual Report of the

Introduction

3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

19

Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1880–1881 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1883), 307–422. Ledger book, Volume 009 page 030. EZID: http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ m327feece9-1b86-4c78-929e-38e42f89b883 For the choice of the term “itinerary” over the more commonly used “biography” on the basis that itinerary offers a more explicit reference to object mobility, see Rosemary A. Joyce and Susan D. Gillespie, “Making Things Out of Objects That Move,” in Things in Motion: Object Itineraries in Anthropological Practice, eds. Rosemary A. Joyce and Susan D. Gillespie (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2015), 3–20. See Catherine A. Nichols, “A Century of Circulation: The Return of the Smithsonian Institution’s Duplicate Anthropological Specimens,” Museum Anthropology 37, no. 2 (2014): 144–59. For an analysis of repatriation efforts in the United States, see Chip Colwell, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). For an overview of anthropological collecting by the Smithsonian in the American Southwest see, Nancy J. Parezo, “The Formation of Ethnographic Collections: The Smithsonian Institution in the American Southwest,” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 10 (1987): 1–47. For anthropological collecting in the Northwest Coast see, Douglas Cole, Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995). See, e.g., Laura Peers and Alison Brown, eds., Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader (London: Routledge, 2003); Jennifer Shannon, Our Lives: Collaboration, Native Voice, and the Making of the National Museum of the American Indian (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2014); Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers, This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum Practice (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014); Neal Matherne and Hannah Quaintance, “Meaningful Donations and Shared Governance: Growing the Philippine Heritage Collection through Co-Curation at the Field Museum,” Museum Anthropology 42, no. 1 (2019): 14–27; Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Charlotte: UNC Press, 2012); Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips, eds., Museum Transformations: Decolonization and Democratization (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2020). See, e.g., Rodney Harrison, Sarah Byrne, and Anne Clarke, eds., Reassembling the Collection: Ethnographic Museum and Indigenous Agency (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2013); Heidi Bohaker, Alan Ojiig Corbiere, and Ruth B. Phillips, “Wampum Unites Us: Digital Access, Interdisciplinarity and Indigenous Knowledge—Situating the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing Database,” in Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges, ed. Raymond A. Silverman (New York: Routledge, 2015), 44–66; Graeme Were, “Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks, and Source Communities: Understanding Digital Objects in a Melanesian Society,” Museum Anthropology 37, no. 2

20

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Exchanging Objects

(2014): 133–43; Jane Anderson, “Options for the Future Protection of GRTKTCES: The Traditional Knowledge License and Labels Initiative,” Journal of the World Intellectual Property Organization 4, no. 1 (2012): 73–82; Catherine A. Nichols and Christopher Lowman, “A Common Thread: Recognizing the Contributions of the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology to Graduate Training with Anthropological Museum Collections,” Museum Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2018): 5–12. Krmpotich and Peers, This Is Our Life, 153. Martha Graham and Nell Murphy, “NAGPRA at 20: Museum Collections and Reconnections,” Museum Anthropology 33, no. 2 (2010): 105–24. Margaret M. Bruchac, “Broken Chains of Custody: Possessing, Dispossessing, and Repossessing Lost Wampum Belts,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 162, no. 1 (March 2018): 56–105. Tim Barringer, “The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project,” in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, eds. Tim J. Barringer and Tom Flynn (London: Routledge, 1998), 11–27. Tony Bennett, “Civic Laboratories: Museums, Cultural Objecthood and the Governance of the Social,” Cultural Studies 19, no. 5 (2005): 523. Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums, 1. Chris Gosden, Frances Larson, with Alison Petch. Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1884–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 52. Frances Larson, Alison Petch, and David Zeitlyn, “Social Networks and the Creation of the Pitt Rivers Museum,” Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 3 (2007): 211–39. Tamson Pietsch, “Between the Nation and the World: J. T. Wilson and Scientific Networks in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 1800–1970, eds. Brett M. Bennett and Joseph M. Hodge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 151. Sarah Byrne, Anne Clarke, Rodney Harrison, and Robin Torrence, eds., Unpacking the Collection: Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2011). Joshua A. Bell, “A Bundle of Relations: Collections, Collecting, and Communities,” Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (2017): 241–59; Fiona Cameron, “Object-Oriented Democracies: Conceptualising Museum Collections in Networks,” Museum Management and Curatorship 23, no. 3 (2008): 229–43. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge 1995), 6. Gosden and Larson, with Petch, Knowing Things, 3, 1. Marlene Manoff, “Theories of the Archive from Across Disciplines,” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 4, no. 1 (2004): 9–25. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 26. Emphasis in original. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 225.

Introduction

21

26. Felix Driver and Sonia Ashmore, “The Mobile Museum: Collecting and Circulating Indian Textiles in Victorian Britain,” Victorian Studies 52, no. 3 (2010): 354. 27. Sara Byala, A Place That Matters Yet: John Gubbins’s MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 3. 28. David Greetham, “ ‘Who’s In, Who’s Out’: The Cultural Poetics of Archival Exclusion,” Studies in Literary Imagination 32, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 9. 29. Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 1. 30. Jane McLaren Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 44 (2002): 205. 31. William Fitzhugh, “Origins of Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution and Beyond,” Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 44 (2002): 179–200; Don D. Fowler, A Laboratory for Anthropology: Science and Romanticism in the American Southwest, 1846–1930 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000). 32. Contemporary debates over cultural property demonstrate the continual and persistent nature of these issues. See Alexander A. Bauer, “New Ways of Thinking about Cultural Property: A Critical Appraisal of the Antiquities Trade Debates,” Fordham International Law Journal 31 (2008): 690–724. 33. Cesare Concordia, Stegan Gradman, and Sjoerd Siebinga, “Not Just Another Portal, Not Just Another Digital Library: A Portrait of Europeana As an Application Program Interface,” IFLA Journal 36, no. 1 (2010): 61–69. 34. Jude Philp, “Hedley Takes a Holiday: Collections from Kanak People in the Australian Museum,” Byrne et al., Unpacking the Collection, 270. 35. Susan Sheets-Pyenson, “How to ‘Grow’ a Natural History Museum: The Building of Colonial Collections, 1850–1900,” Archives of Natural History 15, no. 2 (1988): 121–47. 36. Robert L. Welsch and Kevin Mooiman, “The Ongoing Social Life of Museum Collections: Reflections on Objects Exchange with Chicago’s Field Museum in 1939,” Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 42 (2015): 113–23. 37. Lianne McTavish, Defining the Modern Museum: A Case Study in the Challenges of Exchange (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 23. 38. C. Brooke Penaloza Patzak, “Guiding the Diffusion of Knowledge: The Mobilization of People and Things in the Development of US Anthropology, 1883–1933” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 2018). 39. Christian Feest, “The Ethnographic Collection of Johann Natterer and the Other Austrian Naturalists in Brazil: A Documentary History,” Archiv Weltmuseum Wien 63–64 (2013–2014): 60–95. 40. Caroline Cornish and Felix Driver, “ ‘Specimens Distributed’: The Circulation of Objects from Kew’s Museum of Economic Botany 1847–1914,” Journal of the History of Collections 32, no. 2 (2020): 327–340; Laura Newman and Felix Driver, “Kew Gardens and the Emergence of the School Museum in Britain, 1880–1930,” The Historical Journal 63, no. 5 (2020): 1204–30.

22

Exchanging Objects

41. Gail Anderson, “Introduction: Reinventing the Museum,” in Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2004), 1–8; quotes on p. 1. 42. Diana E. Marsh, Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of the Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019). 43. Emphasis mine. Richard Handler, “An Anthropological Definition of the Museum and its Purpose,” Museum Anthropology 17, no. 1 (1993): 33. 44. Steven Conn, Do Museums Still Need Objects? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 22. 45. Ibid., 23. 46. Ibid., 23. 47. Kelly Tomajko, “Collection Preservation Facilities: One Approach to Sustainable Design, Construction, and Operations,” in Collections Care and Stewardship: Innovative Approaches for Museums, ed. Juliee Decker (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), 19. 48. Ibid., 20. 49. Emphasis mine. Ibid., 21. 50. Kirk Johnson, Ken Carpenter, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Bridget Coughlin, Paula Cushing, John Demboski, David Grinspoon, Kathie Gully, Kris Haglund, Steve Holen, Frank Krell, Steven Lee, Marta Lindsay, Ian Miller, Paul Morgan, Stephen Nash, René Payne, Richard Stucky, Greg Wilson, and KaChun Yu, Long-Term Collections & Research Plan 2008–2012, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Technical Report 2008-1, https://science.dmns .org/media/364742/tr2008-1.pdf, 41. 51. Ibid., 44. 52. Elizabeth Varner, “Deaccessioning in Museums: Evaluating Legal, Ethical and Practical Dilemmas,” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 9, no. 2 (2013): 209. 53. Marie Malaro, A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1998), 52–53. 54. Steven Miller, “Deaccessioning; Sales or Transfers?,” Museum Management and Curatorship 10 (1991): 245. 55. For example, see Gary Ghioto, “MNA Art Sale Called Unethical,” Arizona Daily Sun, 21 June 2003, https://azdailysun.com/mna-art-sale-called-uneth ical/article_81f085be-9e59-5bd7-8a45-26b5e2d808ac.html. The Museum of Northern Arizona’s American Alliance of Museums (AAM) accreditation was revoked following the sale of twenty-one western artworks and Navajo weavings. 56. Gwen Corder, “The Deaccessioning and Disposal Practices of Small Museums in Kentucky and Indiana,” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 8, no. 2 (2012): 151. 57. Steven Miller, Deaccessioning Today (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), 6. 58. Marie Malaro, “Deaccessioning: The American Perspective,” Museum Management and Curatorship 10 (1991): 273.

Introduction

23

59. Trevor Jones, Rainey Tisdale, and Elizabeth Wood, “Introduction,” in Active Collections, eds. Trevor Jones, Rainey Tisdale, and Elizabeth Wood (New York: Routledge, 2018), 1. 60. Trevor Jones, “Tier Your Collections: A Practical Tool for Making Clear Decisions in Collections Management,” in Jones, Tisdale, and Wood, Active Collections, 104. 61. Nick Merriman, “Museum Collections and Sustainability,” Cultural Trends 17, no. 1 (2008): 3–21. 62. Catherine A. Nichols, “Shared Values, Gifted Objects: The Smithsonian Institution’s Anthropological Duplicates,” Collaborative Anthropologies 7, no. 2 (2015): 32–71. 63. Catherine A. Nichols, “Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates at the Smithsonian Institution” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 1 (2016): 144. 64. Catherine A. Nichols, “Lost in Museums: The Ethical Dimensions of Historical Practices of Anthropological Specimen Exchange,” Curator: The Museum Journal 57, no. 2 (2014): 225–36. 65. Cara Krmpotich, “Unsettling Museum Catalogues,” in Indigenous Collections Symposium, Ontario Museum Association, 23–4, March 2017, https://mem bers.museumsontario.ca/sites/default/files/2018_04_OMASymposiumPro ceedings_Eng.pdf, 39–54; Hannah Turner, “Critical Histories of Museum Catalogues,” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 102–10. 66. Hannah Turner, Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020); Krmpotich and Peers, This Is Our Life; Hannah Turner, “The Computerization of Material Culture Catalogues: Objects and Infrastructure in the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology,” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 163–77; Candace Greene, “Material Connections: ‘The Smithsonian Effect’ in Anthropological Cataloguing,” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 147–62; Cara Krmpotich and Alexander Somerville, “Affective Presence: The Metonymical Catalogue,” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 178–91; Cara Krmpotich, “Teaching Collections Management Anthropologically,” Museum Anthropology 38, no. 2 (2015): 112–22; Miriam Clavir, “Heritage Preservation: Museum Conservation and First Nations Perspectives,” Ethnologies 24, no. 2 (2002): 33–45.

Part I

The Museum through the Lens of Specimen Exchange

Chapter 1

The Smithsonian and the Museum Specimen Exchange as a Bridge between Joseph Henry’s Research Institution and Spencer Baird’s Grand Cabinet The more we give away, the richer we are.

Joseph Henry to Asa Gray, May 29, 18701

The museum edifice defines the contemporary character of the Smithsonian Institution in the popular imagination. It is the largest museum complex in the modern world, with over 155 million specimens and works of art.2 Flanking both sides of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian is its museums. But suspension of these presentist interpretations reveals the reluctance with which the Smithsonian Institution entered into the museum enterprise of collecting and exhibiting. Its first secretary, Joseph Henry, who led the development of the Institution for more than three decades (1846–78), harbored a sense of ambivalence and measured caution toward the growth of a grand national museum. Though not a champion of a Smithsonian museum, Henry was also not an obstructionist. His discipline was physics and he had little scholarly interest in amassing extensive natural history collections. He was concerned that the cost of supporting a grand museum would deplete the Smithsonian endowment and inextricably tie the Institution to the purse-strings and political wills of congressional appropriators. Henry’s true allegiance was to James Smithson’s original directive, inscribed in his will: “an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”3 A museum was not enumerated in Smithson’s bequest, but rather mandated by Congress in the 1846 act establishing the Institution. The true driving

28

Exchanging Objects

force behind the development of the national museum was the second Smithsonian secretary, Spencer Baird.4 The implementation and growth of specimen exchange at the Smithsonian began with Baird’s tenure. He relentlessly pursued the development of a national museum—one that both carried out scientific research and created exhibitions for public edification. During the majority of Henry’s tenure, Baird relied heavily on the labor and support of professional naturalists as well as of avocational government agents; Baird provided little to no monetary compensation but rather offered institutional affiliation for their scientific and collecting efforts. A robust museum infrastructure with distinct disciplinary departments emerged incrementally over time, though it was punctuated and propelled by particular events. The modest accumulation of specimens by Baird for the USNM was greatly expanded following the acquisition of collections from both the US Exploring Expedition (1838–42) and the Centennial International Exhibition (1876).5 This chapter explores how Baird used specimen exchange to form and develop museum activities in the Smithsonian’s early history. Though Henry supported collecting efforts and collections-based research, for financial reasons he sought to limit activities associated with the long-term care and public display of specimens. At the outset, specimen exchange functioned to distribute specimens, promising to ease storage costs while both increasing and disseminating knowledge. Its implementation was designed to soften the ever-looming threat of the Smithsonian being overrun with specimens and the ensuing financial exigencies. Over time, specimen exchange emerged as an essential mechanism for the practice of natural history research at the Smithsonian. It led to the incubation of a network of scientific and museum exchange partners, expanding the scope of the Smithsonian’s natural history and anthropology collections from provincial to global. Baird’s efforts to realize a grand national museum during his tenure as Assistant Secretary (1850–78) and Secretary (1878–87) were due in part to his extensive collecting and research network, and his efforts to institutionalize specimen exchange.

American Science in the Nineteenth Century As the initial producers of scientific knowledge in America, learned societies were based on a European model, designed to “make the new nation a respected part of the international learned community.”6 Boston’s American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780, and by 1830 the

The Smithsonian and the Museum

29

Boston Society of Natural History was established. In the early nineteenth century learned societies had mainly local and regional influence and networks, but few mechanisms to support full-time professional scientists. By the time the Smithsonian was founded, there were thirty-two scientific societies, fourteen of them in New England.7 Transportation and communication improvements resulted in the founding of a national organization in 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Hunter Dupree has characterized American learned societies as agents of cultural nationalism operating in an intellectual context, functioning as “information systems” organized to gather, process, and disseminate information and knowledge.8 They incubated activities critical to building professional networks through the circulation of member rolls and scientific information. Societies’ scientific publications, such as proceedings or memoirs, initiated knowledge-sharing on a national scale. The growing specialization of learned societies gave way to disciplinary distinctions and professional positions. The economic boom of the 1820s and 30s sparked an opportunity for travel to Europe for emerging American scientists, where they attended scientific meetings, met prominent scholars, observed and used laboratories, and visited collections. Henry was one of these scientific pilgrims. After securing a professorship in natural philosophy at Princeton in 1832, he sailed for Europe in 1837 while on sabbatical. Joined by friend and professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania, Alexander Dallas Bache, the two attended lectures and demonstrations, and Henry shared his experimental knowledge of electricity with Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatstone. Their experiences overseas impacted how these men would shape American science in the following decades.9 By the time of Henry’s appointment as Smithsonian secretary, Bache was head of the United States Coast Survey. As historian Hugh Slotten notes, Bache worked to introduce European scientific standards and institutional patterns, restructure American science to be controlled by the scientific elite, and ensure government support for original research would be free of political meddling.10 As a Smithsonian regent, he was instrumental in securing Henry’s appointment as secretary and profoundly influenced Henry’s conception and plans for the Smithsonian. The nineteenth-century history of the Smithsonian Institution is consistent with the shift from a generalist, learned society to a professional, discipline-based scientific institution. The former’s purpose was to produce and disseminate knowledge. Over time, societies accumulated materials from which this knowledge was derived; these materials were eventually transformed into collections that required long-term care and preservation.

30

Exchanging Objects

The museum associated with Philadelphia’s American Philosophical Society holds object collections related to their document and photographic archive and library, but these were not the result of planned systematic collecting activities.11 Secretary Henry’s vision for the Smithsonian had more in common with the organization and function of learned societies, including their networking character, than it did with museum-building. It was largely Baird whose actions ultimately realized the mandate for a national collecting and exhibiting institution akin to the national museums in Europe, and mobilized the large-scale systematic accumulation of field collections resulting from the Institution’s knowledge production and dissemination mission. By the 1880s, the Smithsonian’s USNM had become the most wellknown natural history museum in the United States, though the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago would soon ramp up competition for collections’ grandeur and scope. It was the Smithsonian that became the United States’ premier scientific institution on the international stage in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Henry understood that knowledge sharing and exchange between the United States and Europe would expand and elevate scientific practice in America. While in Europe in 1837, Henry found that, not only did American science exert little influence, but that it also had an “unflattering” reputation.12 Henry and other American scientists including Bache felt a sense of responsibility for changing European attitudes toward American scientists and institutions. Acting as a central clearinghouse and knowledge broker, the Smithsonian connected scientists throughout the nation, provided access to foreign publications, and initiated the flow of specimens to museums outside the United States. Smithsonian specimen exchange conformed to shared practices in collecting and museum spheres, particularly the trade of equivalent duplicate specimens. What set it apart was the distribution of duplicates to educational institutions throughout the United States, a product of both the Smithsonian’s knowledge dissemination mission and Henry’s reticence toward the costs associated with perpetual care of vast natural history collections.13 In the Smithsonian’s early history—those years under Henry’s leadership (1846–78)—attention to specimen exchange offers a more nuanced understanding of Baird’s natural history practice and museum development. Prior to the establishment of the BAE in 1879 (the first federally funded anthropological research and collecting unit), the anthropological collections were well-ensconced in Baird’s natural history methodologies, particularly cataloging and classification practices informed by taxonomic schemas.

The Smithsonian and the Museum

31

The National Institute: Models for Nationalizing the Museum through Specimen Exchange In the late 1830s a group of politicians led by Congressman Joel Poinsett, an amateur naturalist and secretary of war, lobbied for the formation of a national museum.14 Poinsett was responsible for placing naturalists aboard the US Exploring Expedition (1838–42) who were tasked with making collections of natural history and ethnological specimens during the voyage’s circumnavigation of the globe. In an effort to divert the Smithson bequest to a national museum, Poinsett and his supporters formed the National Institute for the Promotion of Science in 1840. The National Institute was a private organization that solicited donated collections and at times oversaw the curation of the Exploring Expedition collections. Its collections grew steadily from donations and gifts from foreign governments and institutions, private citizens, and from National Institute trustees. The National Institute’s museum pursued an explicitly national character. To compete with museums in Europe and those both in existence and being contemplated on the East Coast, trustees cited specimen exchange as a practical means of collections growth and refinement. Exchanges would first allow the National Institute to centralize scientific materials from within the nation itself, uniting collectors and scientists from the nation’s expanding territory. It would then transact scientific materials on behalf of the entire nation, rather than of one locality or region. A centralized, national museum was required for the United States to gain credibility on the international scientific stage and to participate as an exchange partner with comparable institutions. In early 1841, to facilitate both professional networking and specimen acquisition, the National Institute distributed a circular to solicit correspondence with the principal scientific institutions of Europe. Returned correspondence included propositions to exchange specimens and offers of donation from abroad. First priority was given to exchanges that expanded the National Institute’s holdings of natural history specimens from within the United States. In December 1841 Dr. Edward Foreman (who would later work as an assistant for Baird cataloging the Smithsonian ethnological collections) proposed developing a collection of conchological specimens from all parts of the United States via exchange. The National Institute’s proponents argued that American naturalists, and the local scientific societies that were the main suppliers of domestic specimens, would benefit by having at their disposal “a central depository” to “enlarge and vary their own collections.”15 Exchanges were seen as a potentially effective method to disperse the Exploring Expedition’s duplicates. This would fulfill the intentions of

32

Exchanging Objects

the voyage and “justify the liberality of government which supported it.”16 The plan called for duplicate specimens to first be separated, then selected and labeled for exchange. The curator would maintain records of transactions, noting what was given and received. A negotiating committee was appointed to ensure equivalencies in return. In 1844, after failing to secure control of the Smithson bequest and an annual congressional appropriation, the National Institute lost its bid to become a federally supported national museum.17 Reliance on membership dues to fund its operations, which were insufficient to support the increase and care of collections, coupled with the declining political power of its supporters, resulted in a slow shuttering. It was the Patent Office itself that functioned as the first public, federally funded museum in the United States, since it received annual and special appropriations for the care and exhibition of the Exploring Expedition collections.18 In 1858, when Patent Office officials demanded the storage room be made available to display patent models, the natural history and anthropological collections of the Exploring Expedition were transferred to the Smithsonian, followed by the remainder of the National Institute’s collection in 1861.19 Though the 1840s saw strong support for a museum in Washington, politicians were ultimately unable to marshal the political capital for Congress to commit to an annual appropriation or endowment to support a national museum. The bulk of federal discretionary funds were directed to financing territorial and coastal surveys, and publishing exploration reports and maps as means of establishing intellectual control over the new borders of the expanding nation. Disseminating this knowledge took precedence over funding a museum.

The Disposition of the Smithson Bequest and the Museum Mandate On August 10, 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was established through a congressional act using the language of James Smithson’s bequest, for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”20 Because of strong interest in a national museum, the Act mandated that the Smithsonian Board of Regents erect a building “with suitable rooms or halls for the reception and arrangement, upon a liberal scale, of objects of natural history, including a geological and mineralogical cabinet; also a chemical laboratory, a library, a gallery of art, and the necessary lecture rooms.”21 Section 6 of the Act required the formal transfer of government owned collections to

The Smithsonian and the Museum

33

the Smithsonian. It detailed modes of acquiring specimens, citing deposit by government agencies, exchange of duplicates, and donation. All objects of natural history, plants, and geological and mineralogical specimens belonging, or hereafter to belong, to the United States, which may be in the city of Washington, in whosesoever custody the same may be, shall be delivered to such persons as may be authorized by the board of regents or receive them, and shall be arranged in such order, and so classed, as best [to] facilitate the examination and study of them, in the building so as aforesaid to be erected for the institution; and the regents of said institution shall afterwards, as new specimens in natural history, geology, or mineralogy, may be obtained for the museum of the institution, by exchanges of duplicate specimens belonging to the institution (which they are hereby authorized to make,) or by donation, which they may receive, or otherwise, cause such new specimens to be also appropriately classed and arranged.22

Specimen exchange was an accepted scientific collections-building practice. Its extent and practical implementation would be subject to Baird’s skill as a scientist, curator, and administrator. Progress in the areas of collections and museum operations were slow to begin, as the building (that is now the Smithsonian Castle) to house all that Congress required was not opened until 1855. Nominated by the Smithsonian Board of Regents and approved by Congress, President James Polk appointed Joseph Henry as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry’s nomination by the regents was the result of a compromise between various factions vying for the Smithsonian to be national library, a teacher training school, a museum, or a scientific research institute. Regent Bache won over the library faction on the condition that Henry appoint Charles Jewett as assistant secretary in charge of the library. Henry was a staunch advocate for a knowledge production and dissemination mission, of forming an institution devoted to basic scientific research. His language in articulating these plans, including the “Programme of Organization,” was “rigid and uncompromising.”23 This was a shrewd political tactic that gave the impression of single-mindedness, but often produced “adroit compromise.”24 Though Henry would have preferred the Smithsonian to be solely dedicated to research, his ability to be conciliatory was crucial in appeasing some of the regents and politicians to allow him some gains. The first major compromise was brokered in January 1847. The regents voted to divide half the Institution’s income— after the completion of the building—between the library and museum collections on the one hand, and Henry’s basic scientific research program on the other. Reflected in the two sections of the “Programme,” the first concerned the increase of knowledge through publication series and direct

34

Exchanging Objects

research support, and dissemination of knowledge through the publication of the “state of current knowledge” in different scientific fields, with translations published in the annual reports.25 Several publication series were initiated: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Annual Reports and later the Miscellaneous Collections (including Bulletins and Proceedings of the National Museum), which contained original research in the sciences, including ethnology.26 Henry’s reticence to the latter section, outlining the mandated library and museum, was expressed in the early years through efforts to slow the completion of the building, which also served to increase the endowment through the addition of interest from the building fund.27 In 1849 Henry established the International Exchange Service (IES) to promote the exchange of publications, and thus scientific knowledge, between scientific institutions, societies, and scholars. Limited first to domestic exchanges and publication of correspondents’ names and publications, the service grew to include foreign nations.28 Waived foreign importduties and shipping fees by “public-spirited companies” combined with congressional funds served to increase the exchange and dissemination of scientific publications, positioning the Smithsonian at the forefront of the promotion and international dissemination of scientific knowledge.29 At the time, the IES’s function was similar to the archival and information accessibility functions of contemporary libraries. Henry believed that low-overhead, research-oriented activities that were international in character would serve to provide “the intellectual advancement of mankind,” which was the true “liberal intention of Smithson.”30 In the fall of 1850, impressed by the young man’s record of scholarship and research ability, Henry hired Spencer Baird as assistant secretary and placed him in charge of managing the IES and the museum. An avid naturalist, Baird brought with him two boxcars of scientific specimens, which he added to the museum’s collections. Baird was interested in building up the Smithsonian natural history collections, an activity he cast to Henry in terms of its research value, and the scientific publications that would result. Baird initially tempered his plans in light of Henry’s fiscal conservatism and fear of what a large specimen collection requiring perpetual care and space would cost to establish and maintain. Baird floated the idea of specimen exchange to Henry as a means of distributing scientific data in the form of duplicate specimens as an intermediary step in the production of scientific knowledge, and as a way to keep the natural history collections from increasing exponentially. As the editors of The Papers of Joseph Henry suggest, Baird “placed the Smithsonian on a path much different from that chosen by Henry. Disciplinary balance and grants to individual scientists

The Smithsonian and the Museum

35

would gradually give way to an emphasis on natural history and museum exhibitions. Ironically [in hiring Baird], Henry planted the seeds of the destruction of his dream.”31

Reticence toward the Smithsonian’s National Museum Henry consistently used two rationales as arguments against the Smithsonian developing a grand, national museum: cost and limited influence.32 Henry was concerned that the support of a national museum would ruin the Institution’s finances. If the collection grew unchecked, the cost of an additional building could reduce the endowment by half. Henry wanted a financially independent scientific institution. Uncertain that Congress would consistently provide an operating budget, Henry wished to keep the Smithsonian “entirely free” from political influence.33 Attempts to replicate the size and scope of similar European museums would exhaust the endowment, which was not to be used to reproduce “collections of objects which are to be found in every museum of the country.”34 Only a museum supported by government appropriations, which Henry viewed as “a necessary establishment at the seat of government of every civilized nation” could freely pursue the development of a “general collection,” and mount expansive displays.35 Henry’s second objection to a grand, national museum was that the local character of a museum limited its ability to diffuse knowledge to broad audiences, and this was not the national and international profile for the Smithsonian that Henry desired. Henry wanted the Smithsonian to limit collections whose value was to be established through each objects’ ability to “lead to the discovery of new truths,” or “serve to verify or disprove existing or proposed scientific generalizations.”36 The collection’s ties to scientific research were paramount. A “promiscuous collection” of all manner of natural history, ethnology, and art was incongruent with the Smithsonian Institution’s “Programme.”37 After the 1865 fire in the Castle building, which added considerable costs in building repairs and destroyed many of the collections, Henry penned an impassioned plea in the Smithsonian’s annual report: An important distinction has been made between the collections of the Institution intended for the immediate advance and diffusion of a knowledge of natural history, and the museum intended for popular exhibition; while the former is in strict conformity with the catholic spirit of the bequest, and can be prosecuted in due relation to the various other branches of knowledge, having each an equal claim on the bounty of the fund, the latter is principally local in its character, and demands a

36

Exchanging Objects

perpetual outlay of a portion of the annual income, which tends continually to increase with the additions to the number of objects exhibited, and finally to absorb all the resources of the establishment. I do not intend to disparage the value of public museums; so far from this, I can freely say that I consider them of great importance as a means of intellectual improvement, of rational enjoyment, and as receptacles of interesting materials for the use of the student in any branch of learning. . . . I merely wish to urge the fact that an establishment of this kind, worthy of the seat of government of the United States, can only be supported by appropriations from Congress.38

Until Henry could convince Congress to fund a separate museum, library, and gallery of art, he proposed an intermediary plan to lessen the financial impacts of caring for and exhibiting collections.39 In 1855, he suggested that the Smithsonian keep its offices in the Castle but be freed from the obligation to use endowment income for building maintenance and museum operations. This subvention scheme was similar to the miniscule monetary amounts cities like New York and Chicago charged their major museums to “rent” the buildings and land on which they were built. The “more legitimate objects of the bequest” for the Smithsonian Institution; that is, the support, publication, and dissemination of original research, could easily be conducted from only two wings of the Castle.40 This plan emerged from an internal crisis three years earlier as Henry moved to rescind the 1847 compromise that promised, upon the building’s completion, a split in the budget between the library and collections, and scientific research. Fearful that the new budget scheme would diminish the library, Jewett attacked Henry and the regents publicly. Henry fired Jewett in 1855 and the regents rescinded the compromise. Henry now exerted more control over spending on Baird’s natural history activities.41 With the constant influx of government exploration collections as well as his own network of collectors, Baird needed to find ways to lessen the financial burden of the care of the museum’s collections. Though Henry had no professional experience as a naturalist, he used the Institution’s fund to support field collecting, a basic methodology of natural history research.42 Though he hoped to attenuate the number of specimens entering the Institution, he funded focused collecting, “original explorations,” and preparation of scientific illustrations, which yielded high-quality research manuscripts for Smithsonian publications.43 Henry advocated what historian Robert Bruce has called a “seedbed approach,” funding and supporting scientific endeavors that other organizations would not or could not support, until the seedlings could be “transplanted elsewhere or became self-sustaining.”44 Henry’s frugality was not toward the collection and study of specimens, but only toward their long-term care

The Smithsonian and the Museum

37

and compounding costs from large-scale research expeditions. He hoped that modest displays of specimens would satisfy popular and congressional expectations of the Institution’s museum and be financially prudent. Henry and the regents managed the endowment judiciously, and there was never a time when the Institution was threatened with bankruptcy. This conservative fiscal approach shifted after Henry’s death, and Secretary Baird and his contemporaries—Republicans like John Wesley Powell and James Stevenson—actively and surreptitiously lobbied Congress for direct support of government science. The more-direct link to national politics also affected exchanges. One solution to the costs of caring for large field collections was to distribute the identified, described, classified, and labeled specimens to true collecting institutions that would preserve them in perpetuity. Through the existing specimen exchange industry, the Smithsonian could send their duplicate (described) specimens to museums, scholarly associations, and educational institutions across the United States, with no equivalent return required. This practice would reduce storage requirements and unburden the Smithsonian from perpetual care costs, while also disseminating knowledge through the form of publications and scientifically identified and authenticated specimens. Moreover, this practice strengthened the Smithsonian’s reputation in American scientific networks as a leader of national scientific agendas, and a provider of validated scientific knowledge.

Baird’s Specimen Exchange in the 1850s Baird’s initial charge as assistant secretary was managing the Natural History Department, which consisted of the collections, explorations, research, and exchanges.45 Following an inventory and assessment, he proposed a set of principles to guide the collection’s development.46 The Smithsonian’s permanent collection should reflect the practices and values of scientific research, rather than public education through display. In line with Henry’s wishes, the collection was not to encompass a “complete collection of all natural objects,” but instead was to concentrate on objects that had been “comparatively neglected by others.”47 This meant limiting the scope of collections to North America. Focused collecting areas were to be made comprehensive through systematic assemblage of specimens. Baird was an “insatiable” collector, rejoicing in every new correspondent or connection that could contribute specimens.48 Government and military agents, many of whom were stationed in the newly acquired areas of the expanding nation, were recruited to collect in addition to their pri-

38

Exchanging Objects

mary duties.49 Within one locality, collectors were instructed to be generalists, gathering all manner of flora, fauna, mineral, and human-made objects. Baird published collecting manuals and outfitted men participating in government expeditions and surveys, as well as military officers, and especially medical doctors.50 Directly supervised by both Baird and Henry, Smithsonian funds were also made available for independent collectors and naturalists to conduct field research and assemble collections. As specimen numbers increased, exchanges began. In its establishing act, the Smithsonian was designated as a recipient of US government collections, which were to be studied, classified, published, then either retained or distributed. Baird’s work centered on the initial centralization of scientific material. He envisioned that field collections assembled by compliant nonspecialists attentive to his collecting and documentation instructions would be incorporated into the Smithsonian collection for initial classification, and then made available locally or sent to trained naturalists who would prepare a scientific treatise to be published by the Institution. Baird’s guidelines emphasized the importance of permanently retaining a collection of representative specimens to ensure that the North American collections were comprehensive. The Institution’s scientific profile could be augmented through the possession of type specimens, serving as a “national voucher collection for all researchers to consult and to compare specimens with.”51 Naturalists working up collections were asked to present a “series of objects described” for the purpose of “authenticating the species” in tandem with their monograph.52 Type specimens from Smithsonian publications and those published elsewhere were to be retained and preserved. The motivation for keeping type specimens was firmly rooted in the scientific method. In view of the future progress of science, it is important, irrespective of their use for the purposes of education, that these [type] specimens should be carefully preserved, in order that they may be referred to as the original objects from which the descriptions were drawn. It often happens that in the subsequent study of similar specimens from other localities doubts arise as to some points of the published descriptions, which can only be solved by a reference to the original materials, and it is also frequently desirable to re-examine the specimens in relation to some new point of interest which may have been developed in the course of more extended investigation.53

Type specimens were essential to forming the Smithsonian’s scientific reputation. By 1860 Baird estimated that there were few collections with more published type specimens. America’s scientific journals were replete

The Smithsonian and the Museum

39

with “frequent and constant references” to the Smithsonian’s type specimens, which were “guarded with jealous care, and considered of much more value than new and undescribed materials.”54 Type specimens indexed scientific agreement from which new knowledge was produced or revised. Having worked as a field naturalist and collector, Baird understood how participation in the exchange industry increased the comprehensiveness and geographic diversity of collections. Duplicates were included in his personal collections: “Eggs of about one hundred and fifty species of North American Birds. Duplicates of many of them, in some cases amounting to over a hundred of a single species.”55 Experienced with negotiating exchanges, he recommended it as a principal method of collections-building and refinement. To the individual collector, exchange with other individuals or with societies, forms the principal mode of forming his cabinet, beyond what may be personally procurable. This of course, implies that the specimens be gathered in larger quantities than would be necessary for a single collection. By a judicious system of exchange, based upon a large stock of duplicates, it becomes possible to procure almost any species, domestic or foreign, at little expense beyond that of transportation. To this end it is desirable to secure large numbers of such objects as may be specified hereafter.56

Specimen exchange, government-owned deposits, and donations were typical collections-building methods, but Baird cautioned that purchase should be limited to collections assembled by trained naturalists. The richness of the great European museums stemmed from collectors who gathered large numbers of duplicates that they subsequently exchanged with other institutions.57 This was a model Baird sought to emulate. The Exploring Expedition collections contained many duplicates of rare and new species. If used for exchange, Baird predicted that the Smithsonian could eschew purchase as a method of acquisition altogether.58 The 1850s brought sustained growth in specimen numbers, including a substantial number of duplicates. If Baird’s exchange system required the receipt of equivalent duplicate specimens, the returns would have exceeded the available space in the building.59 By 1854 preliminary policies had been adopted. No return equivalents were required (though some were received), and some duplicates were exchanged for “similar favors received or promised.”60 Domestic educational institutions received distributions of Smithsonian duplicates. Baird and some of the regents believed that these distributions created future debts to be repaid, like political favors, and would be useful when the time came to realize the vision of a grand, national museum.

40

Exchanging Objects

Exchanges were one in Baird’s suite of duties and progressed slowly. In 1852 Baird noted a number of applications had been made by individuals with interests in exchange for “information and assistance,” which resulted in the establishment of “important relationships.”61 The Smithsonian was carving out a foothold in the specimen exchange industry, accumulating information and using the IES for logistical infrastructure. As collections centralized in Washington, Baird recruited scientists for specialized research. Duplicates—identified and labeled—were distributed to naturalists outside major scientific centers to facilitate comparison with possible new species. In 1853 Baird entered into an agreement where the Smithsonian would receive miscellaneous collections from institutions and would return specimens “properly labelled, with the addition of such other species as can conveniently be spared.”62 The Smithsonian supported natural history research by providing new, unstudied collections to scientists, scientifically classified duplicates to naturalists and educators, publishing opportunities, and access to international and domestic publications. As the Smithsonian’s participation in the exchange industry grew, Henry and Baird began to quantify and reflect on its role in developing the progress of natural history in America and abroad.63 As exchange became a regular practice, notable exchanges were listed in the annual reports, providing a snapshot of what and with whom was being exchanged. In 1854, 145 species of North American birds (199 specimens) were sent to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm in exchange for a valuable collection of northern European mammals. Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology received 104 lots of fishes and invertebrates in return for “numerous donations of duplicates from his pre-eminently valuable collection.”64 Duplicates were sent to both individuals and institutions to aid in studies and publications, or to fill gaps in the collections of associations or institutions. A collection of Massachusetts fishes was distributed to Dr. D. H. Storer of Boston to assist in the preparation of a scientific treatise, and duplicates of birds and quadrupeds were transmitted to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.65 Concerned that the Institution would become overrun with requests, it would no longer be possible to “indiscriminately undertake systematic exchange of specimens with other parties—with individuals especially.”66 Scientific investigators, rather than mere collectors, were prioritized to receive duplicates, and though the Smithsonian would limit its role in actual distributions, it would still facilitate scientific exchanges. As distributions continued, the enumerated recipients of duplicate specimens were all well-known scientists.67 Correspondence and publication exchange allowed the Smithsonian to facilitate connecting scholars with intersecting interests. In some instances, the desiderata of the Smithsonian,

The Smithsonian and the Museum

41

European museums, and collectors were listed in the annual reports as a way to forge connections between those seeking and those with specimens to trade.68 Though Baird viewed exchange as a collections-building mechanism, he positioned it within Henry’s efforts to participate in an international network of scientists. The major limitation was the North American focus. The majority of Baird’s network of field collectors and trained naturalists were based in the United States, though his network included some European names. He missed opportunities to fully execute specimen exchanges with European museums. Baird was able to send North American specimens but unable to receive many exotic specimens in return because of the Institution’s limited geographical scope and storage limitations. In these early days, before the Smithsonian’s collecting scope expanded, the Institution played an integral role in uniting local collectors and learned societies in the United States, facilitating the exchange of information and personal introductions, communicating who was studying what, and acting as a supplier for scientists whose work would benefit from additional specimens and information. The national character of the Smithsonian was not in its geographical location in the capital, but rather in its place in the network of scientists and institutions that were performing scientific work in the Unites States, the precursors to the large federally funded scientific projects in the latter parts of the nineteenth century.

Preparation and Acquisition of the Exploring Expedition Museum Though museum activities at the Smithsonian progressed slowly, the 1858 acquisition of the Patent Office collections were a significant development. Until 1857 there was scant exhibition space for scientific specimens in the Castle. In 1850 the existing collections along with Baird’s personal additions were arranged in one of the basement rooms, but this 250-by50-foot-wide area was accessible only to researchers. Baird thought the collections were “not very attractive to the general visitor, in the absence of cases of mounted birds, mammalia, shells, etc., but the student of Natural History will find much that will be sought in vain elsewhere.”69 In 1852 the Smithsonian assigned a “large room in the west wing” for the purposes of displaying artwork.70 The first works exhibited in this Gallery of Art were a loaned series of 152 portraits of North American Indians painted by John Mix Stanley. Henry feared a museum and gallery exhibit would leave the Smithsonian bereft of space, and with no congressional appropriation to fund a building addition.71 Henry’s reticence toward supporting a museum did not slow the accumulation of field collections that Baird, his assistants, and research collaborators classified and published. New North

42

Exchanging Objects

American material from west of the Mississippi to the Pacific coast steadily rolled in from government scientific expeditions that were mapping the West in order to extend the rail lines. Expedition reports and scientific publications stimulated further collecting. Space was tight and specimens were packed away. In 1854 Henry estimated the value of the museum at $30,000, which exhibited a “valuable and extensive cabinet of apparatus, consisting of instruments of illustration and research.”72 The completion of the Castle building yielded a large hall to store and display the natural history research collections. Foreshadowing the space’s potential, Baird wrote, No single room in the country is, perhaps, equal to it in capacity or adaptation to its purposes, as, by the proposed arrangement, it is capable of receiving twice as large a surface of cases as the old Patent Office hall, and three times that of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In this room, then, there will be abundant opportunity to arrange all the collections which have been made or may be expected for some time to come in the order best suited to the wants of the student and most interesting to the casual visitor.73

Specimens were taxidermied in anticipation. As storage conditions improved, Baird noted that all the collections of vertebrates except the fishes were “re-arranged systematically on shelves or in drawers, so as to bring together all the specimens of a species.”74 Baird’s appraisals of the comprehensive scope of the collection make it clear that it was unrivaled, although without cases it remained a research collection unsuited for display. As Tony Bennett notes, the ability of scientific museums to centralize specimens allow for scientists to visualize relationships and patterns between specimens from disparate geographies or temporalities.75 The offer made in 1856 for the Smithsonian Institution to assume the care of the Exploring Expedition Museum housed in the Patent Office prompted Henry to reiterate his plea that the Smithsonian be released from the museum business altogether. If Congress would take over the Castle building and establish a separate museum to display government collections, Smithsonian scientists, paid from the endowment, could still act as curators. This plan would free the Smithsonian purse strings of the cost of maintaining the building and the storage and preservation of fast-growing government collections.76 Congress had been providing $5,000 per year for the maintenance of the Exploring Expedition Museum, but Henry wanted to avoid having to lobby for the continuance of this annual appropriation or cover expenses using funds from the Smithsonian’s endowment.77 Baird quietly disagreed and advocated to have the museum under Smithsonian control.

The Smithsonian and the Museum

43

Historians have debated the reasons that Henry approved the transfer of the Exploring Expedition Museum in 1857, after previously rejecting its offer. As the editors of The Papers of Joseph Henry argue, there were two factors that led to this development. Though Henry requested funds for curation from the Army and Navy departments, as collections poured in, the Institution covered the majority of costs. Acceptance of the Exploring Expedition Museum included the annual congressional appropriation for its care, which could be extended to cover all the government collections. The second factor was related to Henry’s need to fund his meteorological program. At the time, the Patent Office was responsible for agricultural statistics, and meteorology and climatology had clear bearing on agriculture. Henry struck a deal with Patent Office commissioner Charles Mason to fund this program in return for the transfer of the Exploring Expedition Museum. This was a timely development, as the growth of the Department of the Interior put pressure on the Patent Office to relocate the museum in order to provide additional space.78 The decision to accept the Exploring Expedition Museum did not signal a true change in Henry’s thinking, and he continued to lobby Congress to relieve the Smithsonian from all museum activities, a hope that never came to pass. Following the completion of the transfer, Henry created two categories of collections. These categories referred to both a public exhibition series and a research series for scholars: the National Museum (those specimens displayed for public gratification of the people of Washington, DC) and the Natural History Collections (the Exploring Expedition and Smithsonian’s type specimens). The USNM collections were displayed and intended to be kept, along with the valuable type specimens. Significant portions of the natural history collections were constituted through deposits of government scientific expeditions and Smithsonian-funded research. After these raw materials underwent scientific study and description, and removal and retention of type specimens, duplicates were available for labeling and exchange. In principle, this system meant that the number of objects required to be kept by the Smithsonian for scientific research and public display would be limited.79 The transfer was accompanied by a one-time congressional appropriation for the construction of new cases to display the collections in the Castle. Though there had been earlier displays of scientific instruments and artworks, 1858 marks the watershed moment in which natural history specimens were encased and prepared for public viewing in the Castle as the national museum, though the museum itself did not open until 1859. Baird envisioned that the Smithsonian’s collecting focus on North America would show visitors a “full series of natural objects belonging to

44

Exchanging Objects

each State.”80 This strategy would provide a united view of regional natural resources and national diversity, and add to the Smithsonian’s national character as an institution that collected from and served the entire nation. The work of cataloging and identifying the Exploring Expedition collections was considerable; unfortunately, very little curatorial work had been completed by the Patent Office. Provisional displays needed to be mounted, but Baird had more-ambitious plans than simply showing specimens from each state, a worthy yet descriptive enterprise. Baird’s ultimate educational aim was to erect displays that reflected systematic relationships between specimens. Published catalogs would interpret the results of natural history taxonomy and systematics, demonstrating to visitors and students how specimens should be understood.81 The following years saw progress toward Baird’s vision, as displays were updated.82 A push to study and classify the shells was begun in 1859 and Baird articulated his plan for their eventual arrangement and display. In the proposed method of arrangement of the shells, the types of descriptions, and a good representative of each species in different ages and varieties, will be cemented to square plates of glass; the series, illustrating geographical distribution, being kept in trays. A specimen of each species of North American shell will be exhibited on the glass plates in table cases, lined on the bottom with black paper; but of exotic shells there will only be table surface enough for a type of each genus. The other portions of the series will be kept in drawers below the tables. It is also proposed, for the more ready appreciation of points connected with geographical distribution, to keep in separate series the shells of northern China, Japan, and the North Pacific; the boreal shells of the west coast as far south as San Diego; the marine shells from San Diego to Panama; the marine shells of the west coast of South America; the marine shells of the Atlantic coast to Fernandina, Florida; the marine shells of Florida, the West Indies, and the Gulf of Mexico; and the different American land and fresh water species. The shells of the rest of the world, with a few exceptions, will probably be arranged in one systematic series.83

The majority of displayed shells were to be from North America. Exotic or foreign specimens were used primarily for comparison at the more abstract genus level of classification. The production of scientific knowledge and its dissemination—through exhibits and exchange of duplicates—remained limited to North American natural history.84

The Smithsonian Specimen Exchange System As the nation headed toward a civil war, collections continued to flow into the Institution. The Exploring Expedition specimens increased the Smithso-

The Smithsonian and the Museum

45

nian’s collections by 20 percent. As an intellectual clearinghouse, the Smithsonian centralized raw natural history data into a single location and recruited research collaborators to classify and publish taxonomic knowledge. Henry’s aim was not to employ a great number of scientists, but to facilitate access to scientific data and facilities, provide a venue for publication, and integrate American scientific networks into those in Europe. His support for natural history research was contingent on the relocation of collections to permanent repositories following study, which would “diffuse knowledge” by providing colleges and other educational establishments with “the labelled specimens necessary to give definite ideas of the relations and diversities of the various productions of nature.”85 But scientific study and publication took time, and duplicate outflows did not align with collecting inflows, which were dependent on funding, scientific expeditions, the availability of government personnel, and both foreign and domestic competition. Baird used exchange to hedge, promising that specimen exchange would eventually reduce the large collections of natural history and ethnological specimens. The scientific profile of the Smithsonian flourished, as study and classification of new collections increased the number of type specimens and comparative collections. In 1858 Baird estimated that the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences was the Smithsonian’s only national competitor, having superior collections only in the subjects of exotic birds, shells, fossils, and minerals.86 Known for his taxonomic work on North American birds, Baird’s science required a large collection to produce comparative, comprehensive, and rigorous publications, and to revise old knowledge as new discoveries were made.87 Baird was not a theoretician; rather, he focused on publications that offered detailed descriptions of specimens sent in from the field, and voluminous catalogs of the museum’s collections.88 Henry’s science—physics—displaced old knowledge with new. Natural history and anthropological data are cumulative, based on iterative study and revision. As research questions, observational methods and technologies change, specimens are often revisited. If these descriptions were exhaustive, the original specimens would no longer be required for further scientific investigation; but, unfortunately, the characteristics and peculiarities of the specimens are only partially recognized and represented at any one period, and hence it becomes necessary from time to time to go over the same ground in order to verify or disprove new and ingenious suggestions as to peculiarities and relations not hitherto recognized; the specimens must therefore be preserved, especially if they are of such a character as cannot readily be replaced.89

What was considered a duplicate specimen had shifted among collectors in the nineteenth century, and it had become increasingly important to

46

Exchanging Objects

retain more specimens to preserve geographic variation.90 Henry and Baird agreed some specimens should be kept, but how many was the question. Baird’s pace of exchange was measured, following Henry’s stipulations for knowledge dissemination. Accurate labeling, which cost time and labor, was necessary for duplicates to serve as research and educational aides. In 1861 Henry published formal policies with a bearing on specimen exchange, initially making a distinction between described and undescribed specimens.91 Described specimens were those that had been studied, classified, and published by a trained scientist, and included types and duplicates. Undescribed specimens were the raw data of field collections, essential to naturalists striving to extend natural history through study, classification, and description. The principles for the exchange of described specimens reflected the Smithsonian Institution’s positionality as a supplier of scientifically authenticated materials, serving public and educational institutions. First. To advance original science, the duplicate type specimens are to be distributed as widely as possible to scientific institutions in this country and abroad, in order that they may be used in identifying the species and genera which have been described. Second. To promote education, as full sets as possible of general duplicates, properly labelled, are to be presented to colleges and other institutions of learning that profess to teach the principal branches of natural history. Third. It must be distinctly understood that due credit is to be given to the Institution in the labelling of the specimens, and in all accounts which may be published of them, since such credit is not only due to the name of Smithson, but also to the directors of the establishment, as vouchers to the world that they are faithfully carrying out the intention of the bequest. Fourth. It may be proper, in the distribution to institutions abroad, as a general rule, to require, in case type specimens to illustrate species which have been described by foreign authors may be wanted for comparison or other uses in this country, that they be furnished at any time they may be required. Fifth. In return for specimens, which may be presented to colleges and other educational establishments, collections from localities in their vicinity, which may be desirable, shall be furnished when required.92

Duplicate type specimens were specimens on which the taxonomic or typological description was based, while general duplicates were representative examples of the taxonomic category. It was not until the late nineteenth century that taxonomic descriptions were tied to a single type specimen or holotype, so there were multiple type specimens for different taxa.93 Type specimens were highly valued and reserved for scientific research, and their exchange was meant to build up comparative collections. Allowing type specimens to be physically relocated through loan would ex-

The Smithsonian and the Museum

47

tend the Smithsonian’s knowledge production function, though this policy was later amended after a number of type specimens were damaged while out on loan. Crediting the Smithsonian was essential to bolstering the Institution’s reputation. Exchanges were vital to initiating and renewing scientific networks: “Through its exchanges the Institution holds friendly correspondence with all the principal scientific and literary establishments of the Old World, with a number of them it maintains relations of mutual co-operation in the way of affording assistance by sending rare specimens and furnishing required data in cases of special investigations.”94 These networks were not limited to established scholars and institutions, as the receipt of general duplicates by educational institutions allowed Baird to recruit new collectors. While strict rules governed the distribution of described specimens, “governing principles” for the undescribed specimens were more flexible: 1. The original specimens ought not to be intrusted [sic] to inexperienced persons, or to those who have not given evidence of their ability properly to accomplish the task they have undertaken. 2. Preference should be given to those who are engaged in the laborious and difficult task of preparing complete monographs. 3. As it would be illiberal to restrict the use of the specimens, and confine the study of them to persons who can visit Washington, the investigator should be allowed to take them to his place of residence, and to retain them for a reasonable time. 4. The investigator must give assurance that he will prepare a set of type specimens for the Smithsonian museum, and will return all the duplicates, if required. 5. In any publication which may be made of the results of the investigation, full credit must be accorded to the Institution for the facilities which have been afforded.95

Undescribed specimens were meant for experienced scientists to perform scientific labor, increasing knowledge under the Smithsonian’s name. These policies provide a lens to understand the value of museum specimens. Henry wanted to curtail the costs associated with collections storage and channel funds to research and publication, while Baird’s desire to acquire and maintain collections would increase spending. The compromise articulated how and why specimens would be kept. A specimen’s value was first negotiated in terms of the nature of scientific knowledge production. The fields of taxonomy and systematics require multiple examples of a potential classification to delimit acceptable variation. (In the botanical and zoological sciences this classification is typically the species.) Publication provides stability for the classification, but classifications are not immutable—iterative revisions are based on the growth of comparative data

48

Exchanging Objects

and changes in observational techniques. Baird’s insistence on specimen accumulation and retention spoke to a deeper epistemological concern about the future transformation of scientific methods and questions. Museums keep their objects based on perceptions of value; at the Smithsonian specimens were differentiated with respect to the organization’s mission of the increase of knowledge and its diffusion. American science was still in its infancy, producing logistical tensions between the mobility of specimens and the immobility of scientists. Fewer restrictions on the movement of specimens could result in loss or damage, threatening scientific validity. But specimen mobility also promised, and in some ways depended on, the increase in natural history research and education. In practice, the Smithsonian kept more than type specimens, never even approaching the resources needed to distribute all the duplicates. Baird also understood that a national museum must be constituted with more than types, that comparative and classificatory science required expansive collections. The Smithsonian’s interest in promoting popular education contributed to the expansion of science teaching and learning. Distributing general duplicates indicates that their value for teaching science outweighed their future potential research value. Many of the general duplicates that made their way to non-museum educational institutions saw short-term use for science education, and now have largely been lost from scientific contexts. Eschewing the repository function of the museum opens up the contexts through which museum objects are valued.

Doing Natural History: Labeling The labor required to study, classify, and describe field collections centralized under the Smithsonian was performed by research collaborators. Unable to offer a salary, Baird could provide an official title, use of letterhead, and office space. This was attractive to young and avocational scientists who lacked institutional affiliation, and allowed them to bolster their reputation and standing. Nearly every prominent American naturalist in the latter half of the nineteenth century participated as a Smithsonian collaborator, and they were often credited in the annual reports. The assortment and labeling of the larger part of the shells is still in progress under Mr. Philip P. Carpenter, of Warrington, England, assisted by Dr. Alcock. Certain marine families have been sent to Professor Agassiz; a part of the fresh water shells has been named by Mr. Isaac Lea, of Philadelphia; another part by Mr. W. G. Binney, of New Jersey; another class of mollusks has been consigned to Mr. Busk, of England; and a third has been sent to Dr. Steenstrup, of Copenhagen.96

The Smithsonian and the Museum

49

Collaborators were asked to prepare a set of type specimens, a research monograph for publication, and to sort the remaining specimens into general duplicates and duplicate type specimens. Prior to exchange or distribution, the duplicates required labeling. In 1861, Congress appropriated funds to assist with exchanges since educational institutions were to receive only properly labeled specimens, which would serve as “auxiliaries in the study of natural history, and indirectly in the advance of this branch of knowledge itself.”97 Label information varied, but could include collector, geographic provenience, and/or scientific and common name. Duplicates functioned as indexical illustrations of taxonomies, so an unlabeled object would carry no scientific value. Objects were specimens when they were appropriately labeled, and distributing or exchanging unlabeled objects “would be little better than scattering them to the winds.”98 Labeling was time-intensive, and delays were compounded by the fact that unpaid research collaborators oversaw (and sometimes performed) the onerous task. Baird outlined how the process was expected to work. Following study, a “complete series, consisting of a full representation of each species” would be selected and labeled for each collection.99 Species, the analytical unit referring to the most refined level of classification, were materially realized through type specimens. These specimens formed what was called the reserve series. Once the reserve series was separated, duplicates were sorted into bins, so that each bin contained a single species. While multiple type specimens indexed the species at Smithsonian, a single (duplicate) specimen did so for exchange recipients. To increase efficiency, specimens in the bins were marked with a number that corresponded to a printed list of descriptions. Recipients would receive two copies of the list. One would be kept for reference, the other could be cut up into individual labels and physically attached to each specimen. Further efficiencies developed. Depending on their quality, representativeness and completeness, duplicates were divided into series. First-class series likely contained duplicate type specimens, whereas educational series were made up of lower-quality general duplicates. Each series contained some number of sets, and each set contained some number of species, represented by a duplicate specimen. Production costs of creating printed lists had to be weighed against the time costs of labeling by hand. Marine invertebrates, geological specimens, and shells were numerous enough to merit printed lists, and were included in Smithsonian publications (see figures 1.1 and 1.2). The organization of the Smithsonian’s collections into series—groups of specimens for distinct purposes—suggests a “deliberate fragmentation” of the collections.100 Interpreting the collection as series, “a certain order or sequence that confers on the sum an additional weight or

50

Exchanging Objects

Figure 1.1. First page of the printed specimen list, “Duplicate Shells collected by The United States Exploring Expedition under Capt. C. Wilkes, U.S.N.” Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org). Contributed by Smithsonian Libraries.

The Smithsonian and the Museum

51

Figure 1.2. First page of “List of Marine Invertebrates.” Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org). Contributed by Smithsonian Libraries.

52

Exchanging Objects

impact,” suggests that its effect would be extensive and diffuse, via duplicates moving into diverse contexts of scientific inquiry and education.101 By 1865 the majority of work on the shells was completed and the “first-class” duplicates, which had “a special scientific value . . . for original comparison” because they had been selected and labeled by experts in conchology, were distributed to institutions where they would be most useful, including Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences, among others.102 A list for the Exploring Expedition duplicate shells was published in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections in 1865, listing only a corresponding number and scientific name (figure 1.1).103 The Proceedings of the United States National Museum offers another example of this type of list (figure 1.2). This list provides scientific and common names, collector, and minimal ecological information (depth from which the specimens were collected). This document positions the duplicate set of specimens primarily within a taxonomic context, where students would learn specimen identification via observation of physical features and use of scientific names. Lists were used for labeling, but were also used to publicize what the Smithsonian had in duplicate.

Smithsonian Partners in the Exchange Industry Before the full force of the Civil War was felt, Henry and Baird predicted that the 1860s would see a significant increase in the distribution of specimens, while limiting most returns, meager as they were, to North American specimens. Exchange would redistribute the scientific wealth, nurtured by the Smithsonian, through the nation and world. The Smithsonian would not directly compete with private natural history dealers, since duplicates transmitted through exchange were not seen in terms of their market value, but rather for their ability to resource original investigations and increase the institution’s reputation, similar to prestige gifting.104 The scientific material thus collected is very valuable, and, in number and variety of specimens and duplicates to illustrate the natural productions of the North American continent, far excels any other collection ever made. It is not the policy of the Institution to hoard up specimens for the exclusive study of those immediately connected with the establishment, or to consider the duplicates merely as articles of commercial value, only to be exchanged for marketable equivalents, but to render them available as widely as possible for the advance of knowledge.105

The quality of duplicates sent by Smithsonian were dependent on the type and reputation of the receiver.106 Duplicates diversified existing collections

The Smithsonian and the Museum

53

and stimulated the formation of new museums in the expanding United States.107 Henry went so far as to suggest that the effects of specimen exchange on scientific knowledge production were greater than collections kept by the Institution.108 Both giving and keeping were dual strategies to increase scientific knowledge and institutional reputations, and specimen exchange was crucial to these developments. The early Smithsonian model of receiving government-owned collections and distributing duplicates without mandating returns was unusual within the global exchange industry.109 Most natural history museums used duplicates to more directly benefit their own collections. In contrast, the British Museum was believed to have never parted with a duplicate and as a consequence was “oppressed by the weight of its surplus material.”110 Henry and Baird were in the unique position to see how such a policy could cause harm. If the Smithsonian adopted such a policy, it would be “crushed by the weight of its own riches.”111 Exchange efforts were meant to develop sustainable operations, but there was an increasing backlog of expanding numbers of undescribed specimens taking up storage space while awaiting study. The Smithsonian’s initial policy was to exchange specimens without soliciting immediate material returns, though specimens sent out could at a future date be used as currency to prompt an equivalent return.112 Though still hopeful that the political tide would turn toward the separation of the USNM from the Smithsonian and its establishment as a congressionally funded institution, in 1867 the regents, following Henry’s lead, decided that, if left much longer, European museums that had received described specimens from the Smithsonian would never reciprocate with their duplicates. In a time when the United States had decided to ensure that Europe saw them as an equal player in the international arena, giving but receiving nothing in return smacked of earlier colonialism. It was Henry and the regents’ view that European museums had a “great outstanding debt.” This had to be collected “before the recipients of these manifold gifts have passed away, and the benefits thus conferred by the Smithsonian are altogether forgotten; when the Institution might find it difficult to obtain, without new offerings, that which at this moment it may claim as its due.”113 The secretary’s report for 1868 declared there would be no more exchanges without an equivalent return to foreign institutions with the means to reciprocate. Though the museums were the official recipients of exchanged objects, the conduct of exchanges depended on relationships between individuals. If too long a period lapsed during the transaction, personnel changes might hinder reciprocation. Rather than only supply European museums with native specimens from a former colonial hinterland, the Smithsonian’s policy change from that

54

Exchanging Objects

of distribution to reciprocal exchange signaled a shift. Within the scientific and museum community, the Smithsonian was now an equal trading partner that sought to build a global collection, a true competitor among peers.114

The Impact of Smithsonian Specimen Exchange for American Museums Smithsonian policy of transmitting specimens in exchange without requiring an equivalent return differentiates it from other natural history museums in the United States. In light of the rapid acquisition of field collections coupled with space constraints, Smithsonian specimen exchange was not initially used as a mechanism of building collections. It was a policy that redistributed scientifically valuable objects to other repositories while still retaining the most valuable specimens—the type specimens. This effectively built up the Institution’s capacity to serve as a source of both scientific knowledge and corresponding materials, to interact with natural history museums and naturalists on an international and domestic scale, and to supply emerging domestic educational institutions. Unlike the European museums, whose richness was measured by the depth and range of their collections, the Smithsonian’s richness was expressed through its exchange networks and publications. These initial policies would continue to influence the USNM in the late nineteenth century. The specimen exchange system had national and international impact. In 1897 Curator of Mammals Frederick True (later Executive Curator Frederick True) commented, “Collections which would have remained useless for years were rapidly classified by competent naturalists and separated into series, some to be reserved by the Institution, and others to be distributed to kindred scientific establishments and to colleges and schools.”115 The Smithsonian did retain many specimens in its collections, but its role in the promotion of natural history research and education in the nation was extended through the program of exchanges. The burgeoning recognition of American science could, in part, be attributed to exchanges. Duplicate type specimens were “presented to the principal museums of Europe, and to the different societies for the promotion of natural history.” Thus, “in every part of the civilized world, wherever natural history is cultivated, the name of the Institution has become a household word.”116 The early history of the Smithsonian’s approach toward the formation of permanent collections raises important considerations. Much of the material that became part of the USNM’s collection was slated not to be

The Smithsonian and the Museum

55

kept by the Institution, though it would likely be given to museums and educational establishments that would keep and make use of the specimens for scientific study or public edification. But Baird was able to retain a significant portion that might have been exchanged using scientifically sound reasoning—a large data set must be amassed in order for the categories of knowledge to be established. Once species were described and indexed through type specimens, the duplicates could be exchanged. This process was necessarily lengthy, and Baird was able to hold onto many specimens with the potential to be distributed until that time when there would be large-scale federal support for a national museum, tempering Henry’s frustration regarding the cost and space requirements of curating scientific collections.

Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns At the same time, museums both are and are not places that keep objects. In this chapter, I challenge and complicate the de facto view of museums as places where collections are held. Of course, I rely on a particular organizational history to do this, but while the Smithsonian may be different in important ways from other museums, digging deep into museum histories from new angles is sometimes unexpectedly revealing. It is true that Congress mandated a museum to be a building and its contents, but the historical realities and strategies reveal that in order for this to come into being, the proto-museum of the Smithsonian Institution relied on both the centralized accumulation of objects and their dissemination through exchange and distribution practices. The centrality and importance of mission in determining the practices that increase the legibility of an organization as an institutional form is a crucial implication of this partial telling of the Smithsonian’s early history. The Smithsonian as a scientific facilitator, provider of scientific data, and publication venue were activities well aligned with Henry’s intention to elevate American science while avoiding political entanglements. The emergence of a museum from this process demonstrates that enterprising and creative leaders can implement practices that speak to cost reduction while elevating organizational profiles. But they must be knowledgeable about practices and conventions that span a wider orbit than what are considered contemporary best practices for museum work, and that are deeply engaged in adjacent epistemologies. Our museum leaders need to understand both museum history and contemporary practices, and must also bring other knowledges to bear. These knowledges are not necessarily

56

Exchanging Objects

disciplinary but emanate from diverse lived experiences outside the museum profession. Time and again, specimen exchange has been used to achieve an institutional goal. Henry and Baird carefully considered which specimens to exchange and what goals these actions would achieve. In this case, described or scientifically valuable specimens moved out of the institution not as an expeditious and short-sighted means of alleviating space concerns, but as products of a careful and intensely mission-driven plan. Specimen exchange was key to the expansion of American scientific institutions. Baird’s limiting of his exchange network in the beginning allowed for the incubation of scientific organizations characterized by being collection repositories. When encountering vestiges of these aspects of institutional history, the exchange of museum specimens need not be seen as a distinct or outdated mechanism of collections building, but rather as a strategic means of growing a community of scientific institutions that now powerfully and tacitly locate the social recognition and valuation of museums in the public consciousness. Perhaps our past practices can inspire new ideas as the weight of collections grow as we forge ahead.

Notes 1. “Joseph Henry to Asa Gray, 29 May 1870, Document 146,” in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007), 297–301. 2. “The Smithsonian Institution Fact Sheet,” SI, accessed 8 May 2020, https:// www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/smithsonian-institution-fact-sheet. 3. “Last Will and Testament, October 23, 1826,” SIA, accessed 8 May 2020, https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/stories/last-will-and-testam ent-october-23-1826. 4. SI historiography ranges from institutional development to biographic approaches to prominent figures. Attention to the role of specimen exchange in the institution’s development has been discussed by Jane Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 201–10. My analysis makes use of the Smithsonian’s annual reports, since these document Henry and Baird’s approaches to scientific activities to both Congress and the international scientific community. They contain fairly consistent longitudinal data about the progress and extent of specimen exchange on an organizational level. For histories of the SI and the USNM, see George Brown Goode, “The Genesis of the United States National Museum,” in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1897 Report of the US National Museum Part II (Washington,

The Smithsonian and the Museum

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

57

DC: GPO, 1901), 83–192; George Brown Goode, ed., The Smithsonian Institution 1846–1896 A History of its First Half Century (Washington, DC: Devinne, 1897); Pamela Henson, “A National Science and A National Museum,” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 55, Supplement I, no. 3 (2004): 34–57; Pamela Henson, “ ‘A Nursery of Living Thoughts’: G. Brown Goode’s Vision for a National Museum in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States,” in Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America, eds. Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), 165–87; Pamela Henson, “Spencer Baird’s Dream: A US National Museum,” in Cultures and Institutions of Natural History, eds. Michael T. Ghiselin and Alan E. Leviton (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 2000), 101–26; Paul H. Oehser, Sons of Science: The Story of the Smithsonian Institution and its Leaders (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949); Paul H. Oehser, The Smithsonian Institution (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970); “From Smithson to Smithsonian: The Birth of an Institution,” SIA, accessed 7 April 2014, http://siarchives .si.edu/history/exhibits/smithson-smithsonian; Frederick True, “The United States National Museum,” in The Smithsonian Institution 1846–1896: A History of its First Half Century, ed. George Brown Goode (Washington, DC: Devinne, 1897), 303–66. The Annual Reports refer to the Smithsonian’s museum as the National Museum until SIAR for 1873 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1874), where there is then regular reference to both the National Museum and the United States National Museum (USNM). There was no formal beginning for the USNM. The first incident of the term “United States National Museum” by Congress was in 1875, in conjunction with postage stamps; see Ellis Yochelson, “More than 150 years of Administrative Ups and Down for Natural History in Washington,” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 55, Supplement I, no. 6 (2004): 118. I use the abbreviation “USNM” to refer to the National Museum and the US National Museum throughout this book. Alexandra Oleson, “Introduction: To Build a New Intellectual Order,” in The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War, eds. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), xv. Robert V. Bruce, The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 36. Hunter Dupree, “The National Pattern of American Learned Societies, 1769–1863,” in Oleson and Brown, The Pursuit of Knowledge, 21. Bruce, Launching, 15–18. Hugh Slotten, “The Dilemmas of Science in the United States: Alexander Dallas Bache and the US Coast Survey,” Isis 84 (1993): 26–49. “Museum Collections,” American Philosophical Society, accessed 8 May 2020, https://www.amphilsoc.org/museum-collections.

58

Exchanging Objects

12. Bruce Sinclair, “Americans Abroad: Science and Cultural Nationalism in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives, ed. Nathan Reingold (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), quoted text 42; Henson, “A National Science,” 41–43. 13. This exchange and distribution approach was unique to the Smithsonian in the United States. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew followed a similar model for the British Isles; see Newman and Driver, “Kew Gardens.” 14. The increasing number of scientific collections and historical objects drew attention to the absence of a central storage and display facility in the nation’s capital. Collections from scientific expeditions and work by naturalists in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were concentrated largely in Philadelphia at the American Philosophical Society and Peale’s Philadelphia Museum; see Sally G. Kohlstedt and Paul Brinkman, “Framing Nature: The Formative Years of Natural History Museum Development in the United States,” in Museums and Other Institutions of Natural History: Past, Present, and Future, eds. Alan E. Leviton and Michele L. Aldrich (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 2004), 7–33. 15. George Boehmer, “History of the Smithsonian System of Exchanges,” in SIAR for 1881 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1883), 709. 16. Ibid. 17. Congress directed the money to the SI in 1846. See Goode, “Genesis,” 109–42. 18. See Antony Adler, “From the Pacific to the Patent Office: The US Exploring Expedition and the Origins of America’s First National Museum,” Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 1 (2011): 49–74; Goode, “Genesis,” 113; True, “United States National Museum,” 308. 19. True, “United States National Museum,” 321. 20. An Act to Establish the “Smithsonian Institution,” for the Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge among Men, US Statues at Large, 29th Congress, 1st Session (1846): 102. 21. Ibid., 104. Henry slowed collecting and display activities until the Castle building was completed in 1855; see True, “United States National Museum,” 311–12. 22. An Act to Establish, 105 (Sec. 6); emphasis added. 23. Marc Rothenberg, “Introduction,” in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, DC: SI Press, 1996), quoted text on pages xvi, xv. 24. Ibid., xv. 25. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, xvi. See also, Wilcomb E. Washburn, “Joseph Henry’s Conception of the Purpose of the Smithsonian Institution,” in A Cabinet of Curiosities: Five Episodes in the Evolution of American Museums, ed. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr. (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1967), 106–66. The “Programme of Organization” was published in many annual reports and provides evidence of the stability of Henry’s arguments over time. 26. In the nineteenth century “ethnology” referred to the study of the develop-

The Smithsonian and the Museum

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

59

ment of human history, specifically how social/national groups underwent processes of change from “primitive” to “civilized” societies. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, xxiii. See Nancy Gwinn, “The Origins and Development of International Publication Exchange in Nineteenth-Century America” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1996). Bruce, Launching, 195. SIAR for 1876 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1877), 7. See also Marc Rothenberg, “Introduction,” in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 8, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, DC: SI Press, 1998), xxv. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, xxxvii. Henry’s position and rationales used to argue against the Smithsonian supporting a national museum are consistent through the 1847–77 annual reports. SIAR for 1851 (Washington, DC: A. Boyd Hamilton, 1852), 24; SIAR for 1870 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1871), 14; Curtis Hinsley, Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology 1846–1910 (Washington, DC: SI Press), 66. SIAR for 1851, 24. Ibid., 25. SIAR for 1850 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1851), 21. SIAR for 1851, 24. SIAR for 1865 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1866), 59–60. Until Congress agreed to fund a separate museum, Henry promised to care for government collections. See SIAR for 1854 (Washington, DC: Beverly Tucker, Senate Printer, 1855), 25. SIAR for 1855 (Washington, DC: A.P.O. Nicholson, 1856), 16. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 8, xiii–xxi; E. F. Rivinus and E. M. Youssef, Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian (Washington, DC: SI Press, 1992), 68–80. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, xix. SIAR for 1850, 21–22. Bruce, Launching, 200. SIAR for 1851, 108. Baird was placed in charge of the museum, which at this time, referred to the Natural History collections. SIAR for 1850, 45. Ibid. Bruce, Launching, 198. Rivinus and Youssef, Spencer Baird, 81–97. For example, see George Gibbs, “Instructions for Research Relative to the Ethnology and Philology of America,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 160 (1863): 1–51. Henson, “Baird’s Dream,” 109. SIAR for 1850, 50. SIAR for 1862 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1863), 37.

60

Exchanging Objects

54. SIAR for 1860 (Washington, DC: George H. Bowman, 1861), 76–77. 55. SIAR for 1850, 40–43, quoted text 43. See also Rivinus and Youssef, Spencer Baird, 70; Diane Smith, Yellowstone and the Smithsonian: Centers of Wildlife Conservation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), 17. 56. SIAR for 1850, 48. 57. Ibid., 50. 58. SIAR for 1858 (Washington, DC: James B. Steedman, 1859), 55. 59. SIAR for 1860, 49. 60. SIAR for 1854, 41. 61. SIAR for 1852, 57. 62. SIAR for 1853 (Washington, DC: Beverly Tucker, Senate Printer, 1854), 55. These states had institutions with such relationships: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and South Carolina. 63. SIAR for 1854, 25. 64. SIAR for 1854, 42. 65. See David Storer, A History of the Fishes of Massachusetts (Cambridge and Boston: Welch & Bigelow and Dakin & Metcalf, 1867). The document notes this was originally published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 66. SIAR for 1854, 42. 67. SIAR for 1855, 56. 68. For example, see SIAR for 1852, 57. This practice was later discontinued, likely due to the number of correspondents and their desiderata. 69. SIAR for 1851, 45. 70. SIAR for 1852, 27. 71. SIAR for 1851, 24. 72. SIAR for 1854, 9. 73. Ibid., 41. 74. SIAR for 1855, 52. 75. Tony Bennett, Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museum, Colonialism (London: Routledge, 2004). 76. The Exploring Expedition collection had been offered previously, but the regents argued that the Smithsonian could reject the transfer if it would be a detriment to the institution. See Marc Rothenberg, “Introduction,” in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 9, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, DC: SI Press, 2002), xxix. 77. SIAR for 1856, 22. In SIAR for 1857 (Washington, DC: William A. Harris, 1858), 14, Henry hoped that the regents would be able to request $4,000 annually (the cost of maintaining the Exploring Expedition Museum) from the secretary of the interior for costs associated with the museum, thereby sidestepping a congressional appropriation. The annual appropriation was received and expended under the Department of the Interior. In 1858 the amount was $3,650; for 1859 and the eight years following the amount was $4,000; see True, “United States National Museum,” 322.

The Smithsonian and the Museum

61

78. See Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 9, xxvi– xxxii, for the historical debates and details of Henry’s decisions to transfer the museum. 79. SIAR for 1864 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1865), 59–60. 80. SIAR for 1858, 55. 81. Ibid., 56. Baird intended to include anthropology in his plan but there were very few professional or avocational anthropologists available to assist him or provide intellectual guidance. In the interim, Baird attributed the display of ethnological collections in the west end of the hall to a Mr. Varden, likely a reference to John Varden, proprietor of the Washington City Museum and curator of the National Institute. 82. In 1859 and 1860 the Smithsonian taxidermist updated the case mounts and added many new bird specimens that had been recently collected, as well as large quadrupeds. SIAR for 1859 (Washington, DC: Thomas H. Ford, 1860), 68–69. 83. SIAR for 1859, 70. 84. In 1860 the entire osteological collection and geological collections principally of the Pacific railroad survey were placed on exhibit, while more additions were made to the displays of birds and mammals. Attention to display quality became more evident as disintegrating specimens were replaced. SIAR for 1860, 74; True, “United States National Museum,” 315. 85. SIAR for 1862, 34. 86. SIAR for 1858, 55. 87. Rivinus and Youssef, Spencer Baird, 65. 88. Henson, “Baird’s Dream,” 114. 89. SIAR for 1870, 32. 90. Within the context of North American birds, see Mark V. Barrow, A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology after Audubon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 78. 91. In 1857 Henry outlined a formal plan for the distribution of duplicate specimens in the annual report. These principles were revised in the 1860 report and are most completely articulated in the 1861 report. SIAR for 1861 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1862), 41–44. 92. Ibid., 41–42. 93. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 109–111. According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, the word “holotype” saw its first cited used in 1897, and is defined as, “Biol. A specimen chosen as the basis of the first description of a new species.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, n. “holotype,” accessed 7 April 2014, http://www.oed.com. 94. SIAR for 1868 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1869), 16. 95. SIAR for 1861, 42. 96. SIAR for 1861, quoted text 43; True, “United States National Museum,” 321. 97. SIAR for 1861, 42. 98. Ibid. 99. SIAR for 1860, 46.

62

Exchanging Objects

100. Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer, and Jim Secord, “Seriality and Scientific Objects in the Nineteenth Century,” History of Science 48, no. 3–4 (2010): 268. 101. Nathan Schlanger, “Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology,” History of Science 48, no. 3–4 (2010): 343. 102. SIAR for 1865, 65–66. Other recipients included the State Cabinet of Natural History in Albany, NY; Geological Survey of Canada, Montreal; and the Academy of Natural Sciences, San Francisco. The designation of SI agents in major European cities also hastened the exchange and distribution of both publications and specimens. In 1865 the following agents were listed: Dr. Felix Flugel, Leipsic [Leipzig, Germany]; Gustavo Bossange, Paris; William Wesley, London; Fred Muller, Amsterdam. See SIAR for 1865, 74. 103. SIAR for 1862, 36, also notes that a general list of mineral species to facilitate labeling and exchange of specimens would be printed and distributed to correspondents. 104. See Christopher Gregory, Gifts and Commodities, 2nd ed. (Chicago: HAU Books, 2015). 105. SIAR for 1860, 44. 106. SIAR for 1864, 31, 51. 107. SIAR for 1861, 51. 108. SIAR for 1864, 31. 109. The Government Geological Museum in Vienna, Austria, also followed this model. 110. SIAR for 1873, 49. 111. Ibid. The British Museum changed its policy in the 1880s and began exchanging and distributing duplicate specimens. The number of the British Museum’s duplicates were far smaller in proportion to its reserve series than those of the USNM. 112. See Smith, Yellowstone, 21, for a discussion of how Baird viewed the value of duplicates. 113. SIAR for 1867 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1872), 111. 114. Foreign institutions that were willing to supply the Smithsonian’s desiderata included the following: British Museum & Royal College of Surgeons, London; Archaeological Museum, Zurich; Public Museum, Berne; Museum of Lausanne; Academy of Sciences and Botanical Garden, St. Petersburg; Royal Museum, Lisbon; Ethnological Museum, Moscow; Ethnological Museum of University of Christiania (Norway); Zoological Museum, Copenhagen; Zoological Museum of University of Berlin; Academy of Sciences and National Museum of Antiquity, Stockholm; Imperial Geological Institute, Vienna; University of Chile; Philosophical Society, Leeds (England); Ethnological Museum, Paris; Melbourne Museum, Australia. See SIAR for 1868, 36. 115. True, “United States National Museum,” 319. 116. SIAR for 1861, 41–42.

Chapter 2

Spencer Baird’s US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates (–) At the Smithsonian Institution anthropology found disciplinary form within the epistemologies, practices, and infrastructures of natural history. In addition to natural objects, Baird’s network of collectors were asked to acquire materials made by local or Indigenous peoples. Collecting instructions for ethnological materials were published and circulated, and much of the initial work in the field was undertaken by men trained in natural history who had gained field collecting experience in the territorial surveys of the American West.1 Anthropological collections were cataloged under a natural history model, and anthropological duplicates were regularly exchanged by Baird.2 The 1860s and early 1870s was a time of growth for the USNM. The pace of incoming collections quickened following the Civil War and more exhibits were under way, sparking public interest. But in 1865 a devastating fire in the Castle threatened the Institution’s financial well-being. As anthropological duplicates were increasingly included in exchanges, it was during these decades that the Smithsonian specimen exchange system would be tested. Though initially designed to minimize the number of specimens under the Smithsonian’s perpetual care, Baird managed to stave off massive reductions as a series of events transpired: a long-awaited investment by Congress in collecting and collections care, and the scientific and exhibitionary activities of the 1876 Centennial. Contextualized within the development of the USNM and natural history at the Smithsonian, this chapter focuses on how specimen exchange unfolded from the early 1860s to the 1880s.

64

Exchanging Objects

Costs of the US National Museum In 1861 the nation was at war. The USNM served as “a never-failing source of pleasure and instruction” for a great number of soldiers gathered in the capital, who were encouraged to visit as often as possible.3 The war caused contractions in Baird’s network of research collaborators and collectors, so he shifted efforts to addressing the USNM’s cataloging backlog and improving displays. Donations increased the art collection, and updated cases and labels were made for the large bird and shell collections.4 In 1864 the USNM displayed a series of casts of Mexican masks and antiquities, with the originals held by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.5 Collections care and security improved, including pesticide application and new aesthetically pleasing display arrangements. The Castle fire in 1865 left the Natural History Collections and Museum largely unscathed, though significant labor was required to mitigate the smoke, water, and mold damage, preventing additions to the displays until 1867. Valuable documents and the Stanley Indian portraits were destroyed, and the cost of repairs threatened the endowment.6 It had cost more than $300,000 to construct the building, and repairs would come in at an additional $100,000, including building improvements needed to better accommodate the library and museum.7 Though beset by the financial costs of war, Henry wanted Congress to fund the repairs and fireproofing.8 In 1866, at Henry’s behest, Congress approved the transfer of the Smithsonian Library to the Library of Congress. Though built up with Smithsonian funds, Henry approved. He hoped to use this momentum to rid the Institution of the financial responsibility of the USNM. Moreover, while thus relieving the Institution from a charge [the library] which has borne so heavily on its resources, Congress has afforded most encouraging evidence of an important advance in public opinion regarding the right interpretation of the terms of the Smithson bequest. It is substantially a recognition by the national legislature of the fact that the Smithson fund ought not to be burdened with the support of objects which, while they absorb the income, are locally restricted in their influence, and neither essentially connected with the design, nor authorized by the language of the trust. Since Congress has eventually thought proper to assume the care of the library we may cherish the hope that in due time it will also make provision for the separate maintenance of a collection of objects of “nature and art,” not unworthy of the National Capital; and that the proceeds of a fund, now generally recognized as having been intended by the testator for objects of a higher order than those confined to local or even national benefit, will be entirely devoted to the system of operations which an experience of nearly twenty years has abundantly shown to be the best and most practical means of realizing the design of the testator.9

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

65

With the transfer of the Exploring Expedition Museum to the Smithsonian, Congress had obligated an annual appropriation of $4,000 to offset the expense of maintaining the USNM. This sum soon proved inadequate to defray costs related to visitors, displays, and building maintenance. Congress had recently appropriated money to form both the Army Medical Museum and a museum within the Department of Agriculture. Henry hoped Congress would establish an endowment and organization for a separate national museum or annual appropriation to the Smithsonian sufficient to run the USNM, though he was too politically astute to specify exactly what amount was necessary.10 The government had taken on the costs associated with the care of the Smithsonian grounds, incorporating them into the National Mall; following the war, the building erected by William Corcoran (the Corcoran Gallery of Art) was freed of military stores and agreed to the transfer of Smithsonian-held artworks. This relieved the Smithsonian of its mandate to support an art gallery, leaving only the natural history, including anthropology, collections still under its care. In 1867 Congress increased the appropriation for care of collections to $10,000 for that year. Hopeful that this amount would continue, in 1868 Henry and the regents petitioned Congress to repeat the sum of $10,000 for the care of collections and to appropriate $25,000 to outfit the second story of the Castle building to store the government collections.11 Congress reversed course and decreased the appropriation to $4,000, though Henry’s conservative estimate was that the museum cost $20,000 per year to operate.12 While Henry fought for funding, Baird turned his attention to the cataloging and display of ethnological collections, separating out duplicates to include in exchanges.13 While the Exploring Expedition materials remained in cases on the main floor, ethnological objects from Central America, the Far East, “Esquimaux” clothing, and small pipes and stone implements were displayed in an apartment-style room in the northern part of the building.14 Baird and his assistant Dr. Edward Foreman were occupied with the ethnological materials collected by noted botanical collector and taxonomist Edward Palmer. Tags denoting collector and locality were attached to specimens designated for display or study.15 The building’s west wing, which had previously housed the library, was used as storage for specimens preserved in alcohol and duplicates awaiting exchange.16 While Baird had his hands full with the daily labors of cataloging and exhibitions, Henry advocated for a policy of “co-operation not monopoly”: the transfer of Smithsonian collections to new facilities in the capital.17 Like the library, the botanical collections in the herbarium were transferred to the Department of Agriculture to contribute to a more comprehensive collection under the curation of a botanist. The Smithsonian’s collection

66

Exchanging Objects

of human crania and materia medica were transferred to the Army Medical Museum in exchange for the Army’s ethnological collection, the latter a field of long-standing interest for Henry.18 Stipulations were put in place that required that the Smithsonian would both be credited for its specimens and would retain a measure of control over them.19 The transfers were possible only due to augmented funding for federal scientific bureaus, which increased in the latter half of the nineteenth century as the United States scaled up activities related to natural resource-based economic development, transcontinental transportation, and geographic survey and study of the new national territory. But as soon as collections were transferred to other government agencies, new collections poured in to fill every inch of available space in the Castle.

The US National Museum Grows After repeated failed attempts to garner external funds from Congress for support of the USNM, the congressional session of 1870 allowed the annual appropriation to increase temporarily to $10,000 per year; still, actual expenses exceed this amount. In 1872 Henry proposed that the Institution be compensated for portions of the endowment already spent on the building, which by this time was over $600,000. Henry wanted Congress to assume direct ownership of the building and financial responsibility for the USNM. In return $300,000 would be repaid to the Institution.20 In response to Henry’s lobbying, Congress raised the curatorial appropriation to $15,000 per year and designated additional appropriations of $25,000 for the renovation and preparation of display areas and $12,000 for the installation of a heating apparatus.21 In 1874 the annual appropriation increased to $20,000 with an additional $10,000 for display cases.22 The significant increases provided Henry with hope that the government would cover the majority of museum expenses and ultimately free the Institution from the opinion (in Henry’s view a misconception) by lawmakers and the public that the Smithsonian should financially support a museum. But appropriations were never guaranteed, and Henry still viewed the museum as the major obstacle preventing the Smithsonian Institution from realizing the aims of its benefactor.23 While the USNM grew, the remainder of the Smithsonian Institution was confined to the east wing, and included administrative offices, space to sort and package scientific and literary publications for exchange, and the chemical laboratory.24 The expansion of the USNM within the Castle, with large halls for display and basement rooms for storage of incom-

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

67

ing collections and duplicates earmarked for exchange, was due in part to Henry’s decision to not rebuild the art gallery, apparatus room, and lecture hall after the fire.25 By 1871 the whole of the main building, west wing, and towers housed the USNM, tripling the square footage previously allotted. Baird planned to exhibit archaeological material and restorations of North American megafauna contemporaneously with “primitive man.”26 This was followed by a series of photographs given by the British Museum showing “man’s gradual advance” from prehistory.27 In 1874 the Board of Regents conducted an appraisal of the museum’s methods of display and scope of collections. The ethnological portion seemed to be more popular with visitors than natural history. Curiosity may have driven this popular interest, but the regents observed that the collection’s arrangement using an “intelligible principle” and a comprehensive scale was ultimately necessary for public edification.28 The conceptual style was “technological rather than geographical,” an organizational method based on comparisons on object form and function.29 Displays included clothing, food and food preparation implements, domestic articles, cradleboards, and weapons. The regents recommended series of prehistoric and historic stone implements be developed, though there would be difficulty in distinguishing what was made prehistorically and what was made post-contact. Photographs were also seen as useful mediums for recording ethnological knowledge, particularly of dress, transportation, and housing structures. The regents recommended a large series of documentary photographs be made as well as a series of plaster figures of racial types. Their final recommendation was that visitors to the USNM be counted.30 The regents’ report included remarks on the division of specimens in terms of their usefulness and value for the USNM’s mission of both scientific research and public education. Exchange of duplicates was mentioned within a more extensive discussion of which specimens required retention. A great number of duplicates will soon be ready for exchange. Besides proper duplicates, freely available for exchange, there is, wherever the materials and the subject admit of it, a selected series carefully packed away in the lower part of the cases, or directly underneath the typical specimens or specimens selected for exhibition. For public inspection in very large museums it is now a recognized principle that the half is better than the whole; that typical specimens, those that best exemplify the leading forms or plans, should be exhibited in preference to full series of gradations and modifications. But the serious investigator needs all the forms, and this selected students’ series, which is mostly out of sight, is carefully preserved for, and is accessible to, his use.31

This initial categorization schema would later be articulated as distinct museum series: type and display specimens, study specimens, and dupli-

68

Exchanging Objects

cates. Typical specimens exhibited the most common or enduring form, or method of manufacture. Specimens that expressed variation and documented the range of forms within the category constituted the study series. No further explanation was provided for proper duplicate, but it is reasonable to assume that ethnological duplicates were specimens that were seen as repetitive within the knowledge category, which was materialized through specimens designated as type, display, and study specimens. If there were twenty bird arrows in a quiver from the Nez Perce Indians, the most characteristic and best preserved would be the type specimens. Arrow variation, likely in a natural history–based morphological or formal sense, would be preserved in the study series, and would likely encompass arrows with exhibit-quality aesthetics and completeness. The arrows representative of the type but of either a redundant or slightly lower quality would be duplicates.

A Typology of Museums Henry had traveled to Europe in 1870 where he reported giving “considerable attention to public museums.”32 In the annual report Henry presented his observations via a typological model of museums, demonstrating the diversity of museum formats present in the nineteenth century. Museums were differentiated in terms of specimen collections, audience and educational goals, and funding models. He presented the typologies as means of articulating a vision for the USNM and to argue for a clearer separation from the Smithsonian. His initial typological division was between small, local, and privately funded museums, and large, publicly funded museums.33 According to Henry, local museums were to be funded by voluntary aid (individual or societies). Museums of this type were observed to be increasing in number. They should make complete natural history collections of surrounding areas. Their purpose was instruction of the members of the supporting society and “to diffuse a taste for the refined, intellectual pleasure” which derives from minute observation of the natural world.34 In addition, they should record inventories of local flora, fauna, and geology. Small, local museums contributed to the production of knowledge by studying and collecting at the local level. Henry articulated three types of large central museums supported by government appropriations. The first was scientific: exclusively for scientific research and the advance of science. These museums contained large numbers of specimens and duplicates “of the raw materials of science” of

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

69

unexplored areas to be used in scientific investigations.35 These institutions were not intended for public visitation or exhibition so specimens need not be mounted, and should be kept in storage until needed for investigation. The second was university-based: their object was to combine scientific investigation with collegiate instruction through three methods, (a) preserving large specimen collections to facilitate original research, (b) presenting series of known and described specimens expertly arranged for natural history students to acquire subject area knowledge, and (c) exhibiting specimens arranged in a series to illustrate lectures on general principles of natural history as part of a liberal education. The third museum type was popular—intended for popular instruction and amusement. Generic specimens were to be mounted and arranged to exhibit basic relationships with distinct labels. Visitors may build on this knowledge through further reading and observation. The distinct benefit of a popular museum is for visitors to view specimens and experience a sense of discovery. It was Henry’s view that the USNM, without detracting from its scientific character, should aspire toward the popular type and be supported wholly by the federal government. The North American scientific collections were to be retained for use by the scientific community, functioning like a scientific museum. For popular exhibitions, the USNM should fully illustrate the “prominent divisions of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.”36 Their arrangement would be informed by contemporary principles of classification to show relationships between species, their modes of temporal, individual and group organization, and special peculiarities. Arrangement would follow aesthetic principles, provide “copious legible descriptions,” and contain no more specimens than was minimally necessary.37 Models, illustrations, and magnifications were to be used to facilitate visual experience. Under these general proscriptions, Henry recommended that the USNM exhibit skeletons (original or plaster cast) of “all the larger fossil animals,” “sections and scenic representations . . . of geological periods,” and “modeled figures of the different races of men and species of animals.”38 These approaches to museum content and display articulated by Henry have endured to the present day. Henry’s typology also indicates that, in the nineteenth century, scientific museums were the primary source of scientifically authenticated duplicates, since these museums brought field collections under the control of scientific investigators on a large scale. Upon exchange with similar scientific and university museums, duplicates retained their potential to be exchanged again, as more scientific work was done, or as collections grew and diversified. These circulations were marked by the association of specimens with scientific knowledge, usually expressed in labels or documen-

70

Exchanging Objects

tation. When transmitted to local or popular museums, duplicates shed this status and gained a more permanent status as objects of display or for use in educational programs. The accumulation of similar specimens over time by local and popular museums would likely result in deaccessioning as specimens disintegrated through educational use or as their association with scientific knowledge lapsed due to dissociation with documentation. Specimen exchange is therefore a practice that reveals one of the ways in which networks of museums interacted to realize the educational system of the nation-state, whereby populations would be transformed and constituted as “citizens of the state” through exposure to “newly available symbols of civilization” in the space of their local museum.39

An Overview of Smithsonian Specimen Exchange: A Shift from Distribution to Reciprocal Exchange Early Smithsonian specimen exchange was designed to reduce storage costs and allow for the prudent selection of duplicates to promote scientific literacy and natural history research. The 1860 annual report estimated exchanges would reduce the number of specimens at the Smithsonian by one-quarter to one-half.40 The Civil War had diminished the Smithsonian’s budget, and had effectively halted the collection of natural history specimens in the West by the Army.41 Not wanting to delay field research, Baird directed his modest funds north, sending collectors like Robert Kennicott to the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. Collection growth rates slowed, but incoming materials added to the backlog of specimens awaiting study, cataloging, and exchange. While Baird cataloged, his volunteer labor force of naturalists was temporarily diminished by military service, which slowed the labeling of duplicate specimens.42 The war’s end saw resumption of field collecting, research, and preparation of duplicates. The year 1867 marked the beginning of the four great Western surveys. Coupled with individual donations, the growth of the collections was exponential. From 1850 to 1877, the Smithsonian received collections from more than 245 expeditions, both within and outside US territories.43 By 1869 the building was “filled to overflowing,” with barely any storage space or room for study.44 Principles of exchange were maintained, specifically the careful selection and labeling of duplicates, bolstered by funding specially obligated for exchange within the collections care appropriations.45 In 1872 the Smithsonian borrowed many rare stone implements from museums around the United States to make a series of casts to exchange, demonstrating that Smithsonian specimen exchange did not only seek to

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

71

reduce collection numbers, but also to supply others with collections to facilitate research.46 In Henry’s assessment, the exchanges of the 1860s, mainly distributions without the requirement of reciprocation, were limited in influence. A dependable labor force was needed to undertake the work of selecting and labeling duplicates at scale, and Baird had only unpaid collaborators. However, the retention of a large variety of specimen classes had benefitted knowledge production. Naturalists were able to make “comparisons which would have been otherwise impossible, to mark peculiarities connected with age, sex, food, climate, etc., and to observe the diversities of form and structure due to the varying conditions of life.”47 With nearly 60,000 North American bird specimens at the Smithsonian, Baird’s research was of exemplary quality. Expeditious and large-scale specimen exchanges were not without impact on scholarship. By the 1870s, support for a grand national museum was spreading and Baird expected reciprocation from his broad network of exchange partners. The value of duplicates was now three-fold: to reduce the redundant specimens in the USNM, to advance natural history through the dissemination of labeled specimens, and as currency to elicit valuable returns.48 Over time, the Smithsonian was barred from selling or giving away specimens to foreign countries. Exchange was a form of scientific cooperation, implemented as a mechanism to grow and refine the collection while supplying specimens needed by other museums. As Curator of Ethnology Otis Mason commented, “We are not allowed to sell or give away government property, but are very glad to help our friends in every possible way.”49 By 1872 the annual reports identify exchange as one of three principal methods of specimen acquisition aside from purchase.50 Unlike other museums with deeper pockets, Henry noted that the USNM had only purchased an animal “at market” or a single ethnological implement “under favorable circumstances.”51 Preparations for the government and Smithsonian exhibits at the Centennial Exposition diverted the majority of labor from collections study and labeling duplicates, as well as soliciting and corresponding with exchange partners and preparing shipments. Collections resulting from the Centennial increased the total specimen numbers, but lack of storage and processing space impeded the study of collections and the movement of duplicates, vital activities that could not be resumed at scale until a new building was available. In particular, duplicates of minerals, rocks, and fossils were nearly unreachable.52 Collections care appropriations regularly included funds earmarked for exchanges. Following the Centennial, duplicate sets continued to be sent out, though many potential duplicates remained unorganized and packed away in storage.

72

Exchanging Objects

Exchanges by the Numbers Numbers of exchanged specimens were grouped based on correspondence with the Smithsonian’s scientific departments and divisions.53 Birds were one group, reptiles another. Beginning in 1863, the annual reports included tabulated amounts of exchanged specimens, which have been synthesized through 1880 in the Appendix.54 Baird recorded species and specimens amounts across all scientific divisions. For biological materials, species numbers were equal to or less than specimen numbers. For nonbiological collections, such as ethnology and geology, discrete objects were specimens, and species referred to a meaningful unit of disciplinary classification. According to Baird’s reporting, in 1864 there were 2,708 specimens of duplicate bird specimens exchanged, representing 1,490 species. For ethnology in 1873, there were 230 specimens exchanged, representing 210 species, or object types/categories. In total, from 1851 to 1880 around 400,000 duplicate specimens were sent out of the Smithsonian Institution.55 About half of the 400,000 duplicates were shells. Half of those, about 100,000, were shells from the US Exploring Expedition collections, exchanged between 1861 to 1863, and in 1866. The 1850s saw hundreds of duplicates exchanged per year, reaching an average of 2,500/year from 1854 to 1863, excluding the Exploring Expedition shells. Exchanged specimens ranged between 10,000 to 20,000/year beginning in 1864, with dips below 10,000 in 1868 and 1872, and excluding the 102,551 duplicate shells sent out in 1866.56 In 1873 the number of duplicates exchanged reach approximately 28,775 but steadily declined for the remainder of the 1870s due to the labor required for work on the Centennial. Duplicates exchanged returned to the 10,000 to 20,000/year range in 1880. As soon as they were organized, some in sets, duplicates were sent out expeditiously without rationing over time. Returns could come later, if at all. For example, at an annual interval from 1864 to 1874, the number of fish duplicate specimens distributed were: 0, 1,200, 1, 50, 0, 10, 1, 100, 87, 350, 67.57 Exchanges reached their height in the 1860s and began to decline as the USNM expanded with addition of the Centennial collections. As they have in the past, many natural history museums struggle to quantify the size of their collections. The lot method, or the use of single catalog numbers for multiple specimens, was used extensively by some departments while others used it sparingly or not at all.58 A single catalog number was assigned to multiple specimens when those specimens were of the same kind, from one locality, collected at one time, by the same donor. In 1865 Baird estimated that lot catalog numbers averaged around five specimens per entry. While the cumulative number of cataloged specimens

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

73

in 1865 was 111,847, Baird estimated the number of actual specimens at more than half a million.59 The number of catalog entries was not an accurate representation of the amount of specimens in custody of the Institution, due to the large cataloging backlog in the late nineteenth century, a problem that still plagues museums. By 1880 there were approximately 280,000 entries in the USNM’s catalog. Though shells constituted over half of the exchanged duplicates (nearly 200,000 specimens), they represented only 33,000 catalog entries. The use of the lot cataloging method meant that duplicates could be drawn from catalog numbers with multiple specimens, but this extraction did not necessarily zero out the total specimens that carried the catalog number in the Smithsonian’s collection. Conversely, if the catalog entry was for only one specimen, and that specimen was categorized as a duplicate and exchanged, there would be no specimen associated with the catalog number in the Smithsonian’s collection. Both of these scenarios apply to anthropological duplicates. Despite Henry’s preferences, Baird envisioned himself as head of a great natural history museum, and worked strategically to realize such an institution, hopeful that there would come a tipping point in the national intellectual and political landscape that would allow this vision to come to fruition. Baird’s answer eventually came in the form of the Centennial, which all but overwhelmed the Smithsonian, already reeling from the incoming collections from government scientific expeditions in the West.

Ethnological Exchanges Prior to the Centennial The exchanges of the 1860s and 70s created a “large debt” that foreign museums receiving exchanged specimens would eventually need to repay as soon as Congress committed to funding a museum “on a more extended scale.”60 Baird’s exchange style was to efficiently move large numbers of duplicates; he used exchanges to free up storage space in the Smithsonian and network with numerous museums and collectors, ultimately resulting in a collection with global scope. Though similar in most aspects to exchanges in the 1880s, exchanges of ethnological specimens in the 1860s and 1870s were carried out by Baird, since there were no curators of ethnology or archaeology until 1875.61 Baird used a natural history model to categorize anthropological specimens as duplicates. The rhetoric of Baird’s reports and notes reveals his strong disposition toward building an encyclopedic museum collection, a desire that underpinned his decisions, practices, and policies, including those surrounding exchanges.

74

Exchanging Objects

In her article, “Collections as Currency,” Jane Walsh succinctly characterizes Baird’s exchange practices and the early history of anthropological exchanges.62 The 1858 transfer of the government collections at the Patent Office, made up largely of the Exploring Expedition collection, significantly increased the amount of ethnological material at the Smithsonian by more than 300 percent.63 These objects were documented and illustrated in an immense published narrative of the voyages authored by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1844). But this text differed from scientific representational conventions in which cataloged specimens were arranged typologically. Using Baird’s natural history classification model, the ethnological collection was systematically cataloged and arranged beginning in 1859, and duplicates were separated out.64 In 1856 Baird outlined preliminary plans for the disposition of the Patent Office collection before the Smithsonian ever acquired it. After visiting the Patent Office and seeing the collection “only visible through the cases,” he emphasized the need to centralize government collections, provide them to naturalists for study, and then reduce the collection’s size by distributing duplicates. The rationale for combining all the government collections “in one,” was the idea that because “each collection has in part what the other possesses,” their combination and arrangement “in a series, all available for study, [with] duplicates eliminated,” would mean that “much space will be saved, [the] expense of mounting much reduced, [and] more specimens [available] for distribution to Am[erican] institutions.” In addition to classification and cataloging, the collections should be labeled, “so as to be intelligible to all.” The Castle promised twice as much display space, providing opportunities for scientific and lay audiences to visibly see classifications. The museum idea was concurrent with Baird’s intellectual schema of natural history at the Smithsonian. He mused that “handbooks or manuals of the different collections prepared for more critical study and understanding of specimens,” where “each visitor can see peculiarities of his section of country will constitute a feature of great attraction to the City.” To surpass the local character of museum display, “any association or individual can send collections and have labelled series returned.”65 The government collections, kept and arranged according to Baird’s model, would allow the Smithsonian to maintain the most extensive, comprehensive, and valuable collection of North American natural history specimens and solidify the Institution’s domestic and international reputation as a center of scientific knowledge. Baird and his assistants carried out much of the categorization of the anthropological material prior to the employment of curators in archaeol-

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

75

ogy and ethnology. Specimens were often referred to as being part of series, such as the duplicate series, or the reserve series, which was composed of the study series and exhibitions series.66 Walsh notes that in 1867 Baird supervised the assemblage of duplicate sets of natural history and ethnological materials for exchange.67 While the organization of duplicates into sets was practiced consistently for natural history specimens, which increased exchanged specimen volume and efficiency due to the similarity of the sets’ contents, later anthropology curators did not assemble duplicate sets for exchange.68 The guiding principle for the duplicate set was provision of a sample of specimens. Sent to museums, natural history societies, and universities, each set was meant to contain approximately the same kinds of objects. Characterized by Walsh as “museum starter kit[s],” there were several ethnological and natural history sets assembled by Baird in 1867, including sets of “mammal skins,” “Pacific fishes,” “shells,” “bird skins,” etc. and sets of “Esquimaux curiosities” and “Feejee curiosities,” which were sent out to American and Canadian institutions.69 She describes the contents of sets of the latter, composed nearly completely of Exploring Expedition duplicates: As a sampler it [the set] was meant to illustrate the expedition’s around-the-world voyage, but in actuality the institution sent the objects it had in greatest supply, its most exotic specimens. Each set contained about 15 objects, including a bow and arrow from Oregon Territory or from northern California, some halibut or eel hooks from the Northwest Coast, and a variety of items from Pacific islands, principally Fiji. This portion of the selection included samples of Samoan, Hawaiian, and Fijian bark cloth; a Samoan or a Hawaiian fish hook; a basket; a grass skirt; three to five spears; four to six war clubs; and a number of shell ornaments from Fiji.70

The set concept can be understood as a core group of specimens to which other specimens could be added or subtracted depending on the recipient. Baird was interested in an exchange partner’s ability to reciprocate specimens valuable to the USNM on the basis of their high quality or ability to fill gaps in underrepresented knowledge categories. The transmission of duplicates was part of the broader process of building scientific networks, but Baird was increasingly interested in what duplicates could be sent in return. In 1872 the Smithsonian distributed five sets of casts of ethnological specimens. A full set was thirty-eight specimens and only the Blackmore Museum in Salisbury, England, received the total amount. Thomas Christy of London received thirty-five, Harvard’s Peabody Museum received thirty-four, the Royal Museum of Portugal received twenty-three, and Brown University received nineteen specimens.71 Eight years prior, in

76

Exchanging Objects

1864, the Blackmore Museum had acquired the Davis collection, which contained the artifacts illustrated in the first Smithsonian publication of archaeological research, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848), published in the inaugural Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Davis first offered the collection for sale to the Smithsonian, but their limited funds could not cover the purchase price of $10,000. This was a critical loss, since it meant the Smithsonian would not possess and control specimens illustrated in its publication. In 1868, prior to the Smithsonian’s shipment, the Blackmore Museum sent the Smithsonian “a complete set of facsimiles in plaster” of the archaeological specimens from the publication that were “nearly as valuable” as the originals.72 Though Blackmore retained the originals, the Smithsonian was at least in possession of casts of specimens illustrated in the publication and it was prudent that the Smithsonian reciprocate. Viewed as a well-moneyed supporter and lay practitioner of ethnological research, Blackmore also sent a series of photographs of American Indians, a model of Stonehenge, electrotype copies of ancient medals, and a related publication. That same year the Smithsonian made preparations to secure artifacts from the Swiss lake dwellers through exchanges, demonstrating that exchanges with European museums and scientists were essential in developing comparative collections on which to base empirical studies in archaeology.73 Most ethnological sets were transmitted to US and Canadian museums. International exchanges were larger affairs. The exchange with the Royal Museum in Copenhagen contained nearly 200 specimens, many of similar content (based on inventory descriptions retained in the archives) to specimens contained in the sets of “Feejee curiosities,” “Esquimaux curiosities,” and general “Ethnologica” that were sent to US and Canadian institutions.74 Sent in 1867, it was a return for Danish prehistoric stone tools sent by C. C. Rafn in 1852.75 As Walsh notes, in the twenty-five years since its establishment, the majority of the Smithsonian’s anthropological collections were sourced from North America. Robert Kennicott, Bernard Ross, and Roderick MacFarlane collected in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, James Swan and Victor Evans collected in the Northwest Coast, and the wide swathes of the Western Plains were covered by the Wheeler and Hayden Surveys, Lieutenant George K. Warren, and others including soldiers, Indian agents, and doctors. The Exploring Expedition collections contained objects from the Americas as well as the Pacific islands.76 The Copenhagen exchange contained objects from all these regions, by nearly all the major collectors. Based on the record of dates in the Smithsonian catalog ledger books, these specimens were not cataloged using the lot method, and were entered into the catalog ledgers prior to being removed for exchange.

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

Table 2.1. Increase in ethnology specimens cataloged to specimens exchanged per year.

77

Table 2.2. Ratio, in percentage, of the cumulative number of exchanged specimens to the cumulative number of cataloged ethnological specimens, by year.

Year

Specimens Cataloged

Specimens Exchanged

Year

Specimens Exchanged

1860

550

0

1860

0%

1861

0

0

1861

0%

1862

275

0

1862

0%

1863

50

0

1863

0%

1864

173

58

1864

5.5%

1865

77

0

1865

5.2%

1866

1135

92

1866

6.6%

1867

3140

898

1867

19.4%

1868

2000

59

1868

15%

1869

1833

47

1869

12.5%

1870

767

36

1870

12%

1871

931

152

1871

12.3%

1872

676

397

1872

15%

1873

1477

230

1873

15%

1874

3331

100

1874

12.6%

1875

3887

206

1875

11.2%

1876

7578

206

1876

9%

1877

3003

200

1877

9%

1878

3717

3623

1878

18.2%

1879

4417

226

1879

16.7%

1880

6553

289

1880

15%

Total

45570

6819

Tables 2.1 and 2.2 and figure 2.1 offer quantifications of the specimens cataloged and exchanged. Between 1867 and 1880 the percentage of the cataloged ethnological collection exchanged as duplicates ranged between 9 and 19 percent/year. The cumulative number of specimens exchanged never exceeded 20 percent of the cumulative number of cataloged specimens (see table 2.2). Exchanges never effectively reduced the total number of ethnological specimens in size, but they served to limit the rate of total aggregate increase. In 1880 the ratio of specimens cataloged to specimens

78

Exchanging Objects

Figure 2.1. Comparison of cumulative number of ethnological specimens cataloged to number of ethnological specimens physically retained by the museum (1859–80). Produced on behalf of the author, © Catherine A. Nichols. The amounts on the triangle line were calculated by subtracting the number of specimens distributed each year from the number of objects added each year. The space in between the two slopes are the exchanged duplicates.

exchanged was 15 percent.77 The numbers illustrate other characteristics of the USNM’s ethnological collection, particularly its exponential growth rate (figure 2.1), which is supported by non-numerical assessments and comments in the annual reports. The number of specimens cataloged, however, do not include the actual amounts in the possession of the Smithsonian, which were voluminous. Increases in specimens cataloged involved scientific labor, as did preparation of exchanges. A comparison of the number of specimens cataloged to specimens exchanged demonstrates that high numbers of specimens exchanged would usually follow periods of increased cataloging (table 2.1). For example, the 898 specimens exchanged in 1867 were preceded by 1,135 specimens cataloged in 1866 and 3,140 cataloged in 1867. One might imagine that the scientific labor would focus on cataloging, turn to exchanges, and then return to cataloging. The years 1867 and 1878 saw the exchange of a significant number

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

79

of ethnological sets. The years where the total number of exchanged specimens are relatively low indicate that there were few to no sets exchanged.

The Centennial International Exposition of 1876 In 1876 the United States hosted its first world’s fair to commemorate a century of independence, providing an opportunity for fair-goers to “reaffirm their collective national identity.”78 The Centennial marked the United States as a progressive society, seeking to establish an international profile based on its inventions and commerce, as well as in scientific and intellectual arenas. Congressional funds were provided to federal departments and bureaus for the development of exhibits, and the Smithsonian was allocated $67,000. Baird, who had been made head of the US Fish Commission in 1871, was appointed as the Smithsonian representative, and worked closely with other federal bureaus to organize the exhibits.79 The Centennial was a great success in building popular name recognition for the Smithsonian Institution. The Centennial furthered the institutional development of anthropology in the United States. Under the guise of natural history research, the Smithsonian had supported and encouraged anthropological field research through the provision of funds and materials, curation of the resulting collections, and dissemination of anthropological knowledge through various publication series. Government surveys, particularly those of Frederick Hayden and John Wesley Powell, produced significant collections of ethnological specimens and texts. The USNM’s exhibits on ethnology and archaeology were popular with visitors, though curated by Baird and his assistants, none of whom specialized in anthropology. Cataloging and display conventions were heavily influenced by natural history methodologies. In 1874 Professor Otis Tufton Mason was named resident collaborator of ethnology, to be joined by Professor Charles Rau in 1875. Both men began to bring increasingly specialized knowledge to the classification, study, and development of the anthropological material housed in the USNM. Rau was educated in Germany and began publishing anthropological studies in 1864. Henry hired him in 1875 to prepare ethnological specimens for the Centennial, followed by work as an assistant, eventually becoming curator of antiquities in 1881.80 Mason attended and later taught at Columbian College in Washington, DC. He was awarded advanced degrees for “his loyal services to the college” and by 1884, when he began paid employment at the USNM, he was listed as professor of anthropology at Columbian University.81 Mason learned classification from Baird, “absorb-

80

Exchanging Objects

ing the fundamentals of natural science taxonomy” and applying them to the ethnological collections.82 Mason and Rau worked in different capacities. In preparation for the Centennial exhibition, Mason evaluated the gaps in the USNM’s ethnological collection. Because the Department of the Interior’s plan for their Centennial exhibition focused heavily on displays of North American Indian ethnology, Baird arranged for the Smithsonian to work jointly with the Department of the Interior to mount a united display. The Department of the Interior’s representative, John Wesley Powell, planned to procure some objects through systematic collection; other pieces would come from Indian Service agents. Baird would supply expertise in museum display. To use the appropriations most effectively, collecting would need to avoid duplicating ethnological specimens already well represented in the USNM’s collections. To streamline collecting, the Smithsonian worked with the Department of the Interior’s Indian Service to establish categories of anthropological data, which would guide the collecting efforts of Indian Service agents as well as of Smithsonian correspondents. To this end, Mason authored a pamphlet in 1875, “Ethnological Directions Relative to Indian Tribes of the United States,” that was printed and distributed. Agents and correspondents were instructed to indicate which objects they would be able to acquire, and decisions were then made in Washington on what should be obtained for the Centennial. Mason’s directives emphasized the collection of objects, contextual data, and intangible cultural knowledge. The instructions promoted a comprehensive collecting approach common in natural history. To guard against collecting bias, collectors should “not exclude specimens because they are either rude or homely,” resist collecting “with a view to artistic effect merely,” and avoid relying “too much on one’s own judgment as to what things are desirable for ethnological study.” Documentation was essential and collectors were urged to systematically number and label all objects, record native and common names, locality, tribe, use, and date of collection—“in short, the full history of the object in as few words as possible.”83 Collectors’ experience would range greatly so Mason urged objectivity and detailed recording, asking collectors to provide him with well-documented materials from the field, which would be centralized by the Smithsonian and classified within an anthropological schema. In the first part of the directions, Mason generated a schema for categories of ethnological specimens in three major classes: man, surroundings/ environment, and culture. The major classes of “man” referred to persons (bodies, head casts, and photographs), “surroundings” to natural objects, and “culture” to material culture including the raw materials, models, and

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

81

objects in former or current use.84 Within the culture class, Mason listed seventeen subclasses with further divisions, including 1) Food or Aliment in General . . . 2) Habitations and Other Structures in Miniature, Together with their Appurtenances . . . 3) Vessels and Other Utensils of Household Use, Embracing the Material, the Natural Model, and the Product . . . 4) Clothing of Male and Female Adults, and of Children, at Different Seasons and on Different Occasions . . . 5) Personal Adornments . . . 6) Implements of General Use, of War and the Chase, and of Special Crafts; Including those furnished by Nature, Natural Models, Raw Materials, Manufactured Implements, both Prehistoric and Historic, the Process of Using Them and the Product of their Use, (If Not a Finished Object Belonging to Some Other Class,) of Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal Substances . . . 7) Means of Locomotion and Transportation . . . 8) Measuring and Valuing . . . 9) Writing . . . 10) Games and Pastimes . . . 11) Music . . . 12) Art, Embracing Specimens of Raw Material, Models, Designs . . . 13) Language and Literature . . . 14) Domestic Life, Embracing All Objects Connected with the Customs and Rites of: Marriage . . . [and] Children . . . 15) Social Life . . . 16) Government and Political Economy . . . 17) Religion.85

In the second part, following the same three classes, Mason outlined the contextual information to be gathered in order to understand objects and intangible cultural knowledge. These ethnological inquiries were to be recorded in the form of photographs, drawings, and written descriptions. For example, in the class “Culture,” subclass 2 (“Habitations [and Other Structures in Miniature, Together with their Appurtenances]”), collectors were to collect and convey the following information: “Are they permanent or moveable? Natural refuge and habitations of degraded tribes. Location and laying out. Labor of construction. Plans of arrangement. Structures at different seasons. Ancient structures.”86 This schema represents a view of standardized and comprehensive and anthropological data sets to which objects and information could be added over time. In preparation for the Centennial exhibition, Rau focused on the classification of archaeological material and selection of specimens for the displays. The focus was on the division of anthropological materials into precontact and postcontact categories through the use of the comparative

82

Exchanging Objects

method. Working with mainly excavated archaeological material, Rau attempted to deduce the function and use of objects with limited records of cultural context through comparison to similar objects in use by contemporary Indigenous peoples. As an initial effort to establish a system of classification for the archaeological collections, Rau published a descriptive catalog of the collection in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. The specimens were arranged typologically, and the most typical specimens were illustrated. He included the categories from Mason’s collecting pamphlet in the appendix, demonstrating a desire to bring all anthropological material under one intellectual and classificatory schema.87 The involvement of Mason and Rau marked a change in the nature of anthropological work at the Smithsonian and USNM, where it was increasingly undertaken by individuals with disciplinary interests. George Brown Goode, assistant curator at the USNM, provided general oversight of the Smithsonian exhibitions, and was charged with the development of the animal and fisheries displays. Ethnological displays were developed by Rau, Edward Foreman (one of Baird’s long-time assistants responsible for cataloging much of the early ethnological collections), and the young ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing. The ethnological displays sought to represent past and present social conditions of the Indigenous inhabitants of North America and the West Indies. To this end, a large collection of stone implements was displayed, as well as a series of lay figures. These life-size figures representing various Indian tribes were clothed with articles of dress and adornment collected to demonstrate cultural variation with regard to social rank, age, and gender. Models and visual representations of dwellings were also featured. The fair’s planning phases had envisioned bringing representatives of the principal Indian tribes, where four to eight persons of various ages and genders would be exhibited on the fairgrounds. Each group of tribal representatives would demonstrate traditional lifeways and arts, for example Pueblo pottery-making, Navajo weaving, and Blackfeet skin tanning. Congress’s appropriations could not cover the expense for this idealized living exhibit. Nevertheless, the exhibits that were mounted remained entrenched in the rhetoric of salvage anthropology. Assimilation was a forgone conclusion and the planners emphasized the increasing value of ethnological collections and displays especially since such objects would increase in rarity with time.88 The Centennial’s effect on the relationship between the USNM and the Smithsonian cannot be overstated. Government expenditures to fund collecting and exhibits for the Centennial resulted in massive collections that would “find their final resting-place” in the USNM.89 Of the forty exhibits from foreign governments, thirty-four were given to the United States

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

83

government to be transferred to the USNM. These exhibits expanded the scope of the USNM’s collections beyond North America, allowing Baird the ability to mount more geographically comprehensive displays.90 Exhibits from states and “private parties” were also added “to the general increase.”91 This included many duplicate specimens, to be distributed once the collections were processed back in Washington. Baird characterized the Castle as being “entirely inadequate” to accommodate the Centennial’s collections, and urged Congress to make a “proper provision for this emergency.”92 There was simply no space to store or display the collections, and the United States would effectively not have a national museum if a new building was not provided. A tipping point had been reached.

Money and Politics: The Centennial’s Legacy At the close of the fair, Henry estimated that the USNM would need to increase its current space threefold in order to display and store the new collections. Baird had already begun plans for a separate building to house the USNM’s collections in 1875.93 Henry again urged that the government take over and expand the Castle building, sever the USNM’s financial ties to the Smithsonian, and reimburse the Institution’s endowment for part of the total cost (estimated at $500,000) of the Castle building. Concerned that the endowment would be used to fund the building expansion, the USNM loomed as a financial albatross. Though a sizeable sum had been allocated for the fair, the annual appropriation from Congress for the care of collections was slashed to $10,000 in 1876. Fiscal cuts brought a reduction in museum personnel. The skeleton crew that remained worked to preserve specimens and maintain displays. Preparation of duplicate specimen sets, which required intensive labor, was suspended for the year.94 In 1877 Congress increased the annual appropriation to $18,000 (still below the previous $20,000 mark) and added a separate amount of $5,000 specifically for the preparation and exchange of duplicate specimens. Exchanges ranged between a large number of single specimens to small series, some with “extremely rare and desirable objects.”95 A series of fishes were assembled: 25 sets containing 75 to 150 species. Other series included birds’ eggs, shells, bird-skins, and diatomaceous earth. By itemizing the exchange funding, which had previously been subsumed in the care of collections appropriation, the Smithsonian was able to raise the total to $23,000 for that year. To strengthen his argument that the Smithsonian and USNM should be separate, Henry asserted that the USNM, supported by federal funds, should not be associated with an institution memorializing an individual.

84

Exchanging Objects

The function of the museum and the Smithsonian were fundamentally at odds. Emphasizing the value of the institution’s publications, Henry argued that the Smithsonian “does not offer the results of its operations to the physical eye, but presents them to the mind in the form of new discoveries, derived from new investigations and an extended exchange of new ideas with all parts of the world.”96 Museums, designed to collect specimens of nature and art while displaying them in an educational manner to the public, were expensive. Small but independent funds from the endowment meant fewer political entanglements, but also limited the cultivation of research. Though positioned within the practices of collecting, accumulation, and display, exchange was more consistent with the Smithsonian’s mission, which should “institute investigations in various branches of science and explorations for the collection of specimens in natural history and ethnology to be distributed to museums and other establishments.”97 It was not collecting and study Henry opposed but rather the cost of perpetual keeping. Though Henry clearly understood the necessity of large, scientific collections for natural history research, he was not willing to sacrifice the independence of the Institution on the altar of politics. Baird accepted that the modest endowment income was insufficient for progress in natural history and ethnological research. Public funds, if solicited skillfully, could keep pace with the growing collections, but this required public concessions in the form of exhibitions for popular edification and enjoyment. Eventually, Henry agreed to lobby for a large congressional appropriation to make permanent provision for the perpetual care of the collections acquired from the Centennial in Washington, while keeping the USNM under the Smithsonian. An appropriation of $250,000 for the construction of a permanent building was solicited in 1876 but not approved until 1879.98 In the interim, Centennial collections were stored in the Armory Building in Washington. This building was not fire-proof and temporary storage conditions threatened the stability of many objects. In addition to the Centennial material, new (and often unexpected) collections arrived regularly. In 1878 Baird estimated that the number of specimens in storage was five times as great as that on display.99

Henry’s Smithsonian On May 13, 1878, Henry died and Baird was elected secretary. Under the supervision of the regents, Baird declared his intention to maintain a sense of continuity with Henry’s principles, for which he offered a synthesis.

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

85

The characteristics of the policy adopted by Professor Henry at the beginning of his administration, and sanctioned by the Board of Regents, were, first, never to attempt to do with the funds and appliances of the Institution what could equally well be done by other appropriate agencies; secondly, to attempt nothing which might not strictly be considered as coming within the department of science, theoretical or applied; thirdly to keep all expenditures within the income of the Institution, and never to allow the operations of one year to be hampered by indebtedness carried over from the preceding; and, finally, not to restrict the operations of the institution to Washington, or even to the United States; but to extend its benefits to the whole world, in view of the proper interpretation of the will of Mr. Smithson that the main functions of the institution should be “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”100

Baird’s ensuing decisions were responsive to the intellectual, political, and scientific contexts of the following decade. The most significant divergence, which even Henry was unable to forestall, was the expansion of the USNM and the corresponding annual appropriations required from Congress. While Henry worked to separate the direct and independent funding of scientific work by the Smithsonian from public funds, Baird enmeshed and expanded the relationship. The forty-fifth Congress (1879) authorized seven separate appropriations for the USNM, including $250,000 for the construction of a new building, $23,000 for care of collections, $5,000 for exchange of duplicates, $2,500 for care of collections in the Armory Building, $3,000 for fire-proofing the Castle, and $4,000 for the preservation of specimens resulting from government explorations and surveys in 1879. Included in this session was $20,000 for “completing and preparing for publication the contributions to North American Ethnology, under the Smithsonian Institution”—the formation of John Wesley Powell’s Bureau of [American] Ethnology.101 Baird’s tenure as secretary resulted in the expansion of the USNM: a new building was erected, collections continued to increase, George Brown Goode pioneered innovations in display, and permanent curatorial staff positions contributed to the formation of disciplinary loci in Washington.102 Baird embraced the solicitation of congressional appropriations for scientific research administered by the Smithsonian, and he continued the exchange program as a means of expanding the scope of the USNM’s collections and the scientific influence of the Smithsonian Institution. For more than three decades Joseph Henry resisted the support and association of the USNM with the Smithsonian Institution. Though mandated in its act of establishment, Henry was able to shed the library and gallery of art, as well as transfer collections and scientific activity to other government departments.103 Under Baird, the ties between the USNM

86

Exchanging Objects

and the Smithsonian Institution were strengthened and the two became inseparable. The designation of natural history and anthropological specimens as duplicates, and their ensuing exchange, functioned as a compromise between Henry’s position and Baird’s position. Baird implemented the exchange of duplicates as a means of assuaging Henry’s reticence toward the unchecked growth (and financial needs) of natural history collections. Duplicates allowed collections in the door by promising temporary occupation with the goal of increasing scientific knowledge. Baird was able to expand his network of collectors and fund scientific research because the exchange program promised to reduce the bulk of specimens kept in perpetuity. The publication of descriptive catalogs and theoretical treatises was part of this field-based research program based on the following processes: observe, collect, document, centralize, compare, classify, publish, and disseminate. Though initially seeing publication exchange as the primary means of scientific knowledge dissemination, Henry took steps to ensure that the exchange of duplicate specimens also served this aim. Duplicates were evidentiary representations of scientific knowledge. Much to Baird’s benefit, the exchange of duplicates was contingent on comprehensive scientific museum-based organizational methods. Duplicates were an end product that resulted from resources invested in collecting, study, and classificatory activities. To reach the point where there were specimens to relinquish, resources were required to create the collections, pack them for shipping, ship them to Washington, unpack and store them (possibly transfer them to a nonlocal research collaborator), study and classify them, physically separate types from duplicates, individually label duplicates, organize duplicates into sets, identify recipients, and pack and ship the specimens. This process was not without financial requirements, though Henry must have preferred exchange expenses to perpetual preservation. In reality, though thousands of specimens were exchanged, roadblocks such as the time necessary to label and prepare shipments, interruptions in personnel and funds due to the war, and storage issues connected with the fire slowed distributions. Space was a perpetual problem. Had the USNM pursued an encyclopedic and global scope of collections, rather than initially limiting to North America, specimen exchange with foreign museums would have been more robust. During the 1860s and 1870s, the exchange of ethnological duplicates— their amount and the character of specimens—were entrenched in the broader practices of natural history, even as Rau and Mason exercised more direct control. Evidence of this is seen in the conformity of curatorial and scientific practice across departments. Baird’s legacy guided and provided a foundation for later practice. The use of the natural history species-specimen

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

87

convention was applied to all specimens institution-wide. There is no indication that Baird considered if ethnological specimens were duplicates, but rather which ethnological specimens were duplicates. Before the Smithsonian fully embraced the social contract of the museum—to collect and preserve, to exhibit and educate—the movement of materials in the process of becoming scientific specimens bears a direct connection to the Institution’s mission of knowledge production (through the temporary distribution of undescribed specimens to experts who would bring them into an ordered schema) and knowledge dissemination (through the permanent exchange of described specimens to institutions and individuals whose purpose would benefit from comparative or representative objects). This centralization and subsequent movement of specimens was contingent on relationships between individuals, whose status and position as trading partners depended on their institutional affiliation and reputation.

Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns In their capacity as agents in the production of scientific and cultural knowledge, objects circulate through a variety of institutional contexts. Museums may be one of these contexts, but they are not the only one. Museums may keep objects, indeed they excel at keeping objects, which allows for the repeated access needed for the growth of scientific knowledge. But because museums do not categorically keep objects, acts of keeping (or giving) must not be accepted without consideration of the justification for these actions. Our understanding of the museum as a social apparatus that keeps objects does hold true, yet the manner of its keeping is contingent on activities related to the aims of its practitioners. In this case, the Smithsonian’s emphasis on knowledge production and dissemination required that natural and cultural materials be centralized into an institution where individuals could redistribute them in service of this goal, while keeping a portion to retain in perpetuity as a requirement of scientific methodologies. The point here is not to fixate on the function of museums—that they collect, preserve, exhibit, and educate—but rather to attempt to understand their purpose, which is necessarily contingent on the aims, values, and methods of the people who are involved in them. The museum’s purpose is exemplified brilliantly in Henry and Baird’s approach to distributing and exchanging duplicate specimens. Both men knew that distributions undertaken with a scientific and educational purpose in mind would not be a quick fix for overflowing shelves. Deacces-

88

Exchanging Objects

sioning done properly takes time, knowledge, and reflective consideration of a museum’s purpose and social contribution. The recipients of duplicates were enriched through their participation in a network of organizations connected through mutually beneficial exchange. Just as the Smithsonian did, each recipient and giver must identify the benefits and costs of both giving and receiving. As collections expand, their quantification may be challenging but a triage approach—much like the division of the Smithsonian specimens into series—can be a first step in evaluating and articulating the relevance of objects to a museum’s mission. When objects fall outside content scope or might be more fruitfully moved to a new stewardship context, this allows museum professionals to not only consider how best to refine their own collections, but also how a broader and connected network of museums, heritage organizations, collectors, and source communities can enliven the conversations and meanings surrounding objects. Managing and curating a museum’s collections may be seen as caring for objects that are here for now, rather than assuming particular objects will always be part of a museum’s collection.

Notes 1. See Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 68–71. For collecting instructions at the Smithsonian, see Hannah Turner, “Information Infrastructures in the Museum: Documenting, Digitizing, and Practising Ethnographic Objects in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2015), 90–99. George Gibbs published the first collecting guides specific to archaeological and ethnological materials at the Smithsonian, and had been employed as a geologist in Oregon’s federal boundary commission, later becoming interested in American Indian linguistics. John Wesley Powell, James Stevenson, and William Henry Holmes, all associated with the BAE, had been previously involved in territorial surveys. 2. Greene, “Material Connections.” 3. SIAR for 1861, 44. 4. Ibid., 63. 5. SIAR for 1864, 85. 6. The Stanley portraits were replaced by a similar set painted by George Catlin. 7. SIAR for 1864, 60. The SIAR for 1866, 18, indicates that $150,000 was required for building repair. 8. SIAR for 1865, 22. 9. SIAR for 1866, 15–16. 10. Ibid., 17. 11. SIAR for 1868, 13.

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

89

12. Ibid., 34. 13. SIAR for 1867, 55. 14. SIAR for 1869 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1872), 26. Chinese and Japanese specimens were gifts to the US president. Prehistoric specimens from French caverns provided by Edouard Lartet were also displayed. 15. SIAR for 1869, 27. 16. SIAR for 1868, 34. 17. SIAR for 1868, 14. 18. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, xxvii. 19. SIAR for 1868, 14–15. See also Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, xxviii. 20. SIAR for 1872 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1873), 16. 21. SIAR for 1873, 144. 22. SIAR for 1874 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1875), 121. This appropriation was continued in 1875 with an additional $2,500 for extending the heating system; see SIAR for 1875 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1876), 8. 23. SIAR for 1870, 14. 24. SIAR for 1871 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1873), 38. 25. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, xxxiii. 26. SIAR for 1870, 35. 27. SIAR for 1873, 53. These photographs were likely returns sent by the British Museum for the duplicate specimens sent by the Smithsonian. In the 1870s, the British Museum did not allow specimens to be exchanged, and instead exchanged photographs of objects in their collection. 28. SIAR for 1874, 126. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 126–28. 31. Ibid., 127. 32. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, xxxii. 33. SIAR for 1870, 31–34. 34. Ibid., 32. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 34. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1992), 182. 40. SIAR for 1860, 75–76. Specimens in poor condition were considered unworthy for exchange and discarded. 41. Marc Rothenberg, “Introduction,” in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 10, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2004), xxxi. 42. SIAR for 1862, 36. 43. Henson, “Baird’s Dream,” 112. 44. See SIAR for 1869, quoted text 26; SIAR for 1868, 36.

90

Exchanging Objects

45. SIAR for 1875, 71. Receiving institutions were required to pay transportation charges to receive specimens. 46. SIAR for 1872, 50. Molds were made of the implements, from which the Smithsonian produced casts. 47. SIAR for 1870, 32. 48. SIAR for 1872, 51. 49. Mason to C. H. Robinson, 27 March 1905, Box 1, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 50. SIAR for 1872, 51; SIAR for 1873, 36–37. Government expeditions and individual donations were the others. 51. SIAR for 1877 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1878), 37. 52. SIAR for 1878 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1879), 55. 53. USNM scientific units were organized into divisions and/or departments, and present a changing and complex structure when viewed longitudinally. Reorganizations were based on the availability of personnel to serve as curators, which was influenced by annual appropriations and whether honorary curators (unpaid positions) resided in Washington. 54. The annual report for 1863 is the first to provide a tabulation of exchanged specimens; see SIAR for 1863 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1864), 57. Beginning in 1864 the total number of specimens exchanged were tabulated annually except for 1875 and 1876, when both years were tabulated together. 55. Based on the tables in the annual reports, my count in the Appendix is 395,948. In the SIAR for 1880 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1881), 61, Baird lists the total number as 407,255. 56. Total specimens exchanged dipped to 6,600 in 1868 and 9,920 in 1872. 57. See Appendix. 58. See Henson, “A National Science,” 50. 59. SIAR for 1865, 85. 60. SIAR for 1867, 55. 61. Human skeletal material was generally excluded from ethnology and archaeology, since the majority of these specimens were transferred to the Army Medical Museum and there was no curator of physical anthropology until the twentieth century. 62. Walsh, “Collections as Currency”; Jane Walsh, “From the Ends of the Earth: The United States Exploring Expedition Collections,” accessed 7 April 2014, http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/usexex/learn/Walsh-01.htm. 63. Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 202. 64. SIAR for 1867, 55. 65. Spencer Baird, “Collections at Patent Office,” Patent Office, 1856, Box 63, Folder 7, RU 7002, SIA. 66. The relationship between series and spatial divisions is difficult to discern. The SIAR for 1886 Part II: Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1889), 98, notes that in 1885 there was an installation of a large exhibit of aboriginal pottery in the USNM. Modern/historic pottery from the Pueblos of the Southwest was exhibited in wall cases, with ancient pueblo ware placed

US National Museum and Early Trends in Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates

67. 68. 69.

70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

91

in the central floor case. Holmes noted, “behind the wall case, and extending the entire length, is a space fitted up with shelves, in which duplicates and fragmentary pottery are stored.” Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 204. An exception is the set of casts of stone implements; see Nichols, “Shared Values.” Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 204. See SIAR for 1875, 49. In return for a Smithsonian set, the University of Cristiana in Norway reciprocated with a costumed lay figure of a Laplander, including a sledge attached to a mounted reindeer. This was meant to illustrate an Indigenous locomotive technology. Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 204. For a discussion of exchanged duplicates of Fijian liku see Karen Jacobs, This Is Not a Grass Skirt: On Fibre Skirts (Liku) and Female Tattooing (Veiqia) in Nineteenth Century Fiji (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2019). File D1073, 1872, RU 186, SIA. SIAR for 1868, 27. Ibid. File D1141, RU 186, SIA. Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 204. Ibid., 203. Though used extensively for some natural history collections, the cataloging convention of assigning more than one object to a single number (the lot method) saw comparatively limited use for ethnological material. Extensive use of the lot method would decrease the ratio of specimens cataloged to specimens exchanged. It is unclear if casts made from archaeological material are included in both the catalog (additive) numbers and the exchange (removal) numbers. If casts are included only in exchange numbers, this would lower the ratio of ethnological collection transmitted. Data for the number of specimens exchanged was not included in the 1875 annual report. The 1876 annual report combines the number of specimens exchanged for both years. I have divided the total number for both years evenly in the tables and figure. Robert Rydell, All the World’s A Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 4. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, xlvi; True, “United States National Museum,” 326. For a biographical sketch of Charles Rau, see Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 42–47. Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 85. Ibid., 86. Otis T. Mason, Ethnological Directions Relative to The Indian Tribes of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 1875), 3. The stipulations written by Mason discussed in this section are not exhaustive. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 8–24. Ibid., 27.

92

Exchanging Objects

87. This was titled, “System adopted in arranging the Smithsonian Collection illustrative of North American Ethnology” and published in 1876; see Charles Rau, “The Archaeological Collection of the United States National Museum, in charge of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.,” Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. 22, art. IV, no. 287 (1876): 97–100. Mason’s pamphlet is “Ethnological Directions.” 88. SIAR for 1875, 69–70. 89. True, “United States National Museum,” 327. 90. From foreign exhibitors, the majority of ethnological material was received from China, Egypt, New Zealand, the Philippines and Spain, and Siam (Thailand). SIAR for 1876, 132–36. 91. Ibid., 329. 92. Ibid., 328. 93. Rothenberg, “Introduction,” The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, xlvii. 94. SIAR for 1876, 120. 95. SIAR for 1877, 47. 96. SIAR for 1876, 12. 97. SIAR for 1877, 8. 98. Construction of the building began April 17, 1879 and was completed in 1881; see True, “United States National Museum,” 330. 99. SIAR for 1878, 41. 100. Ibid., 7–8. 101. SIAR for 1879 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1880), 121–22. 102. See Henson, “Baird’s Dream,” 116–19. 103. The Corcoran held artwork deposited by the Smithsonian. The movement of human remains and materia medica to the Army Medical Museum exemplifies the transfer of collections. The archiving and administering of meteorological observances by the Signal Service exemplifies the transfer of scientific activities.

Chapter 3

Networking the US National Museum Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates (1882–1920) Specimen exchange is often cited in narratives of individual and institutional collections-building.1 It is a mechanism that leads to both accessioning and deaccessioning in museums, a means of reducing redundancies while increasing the diversity of holdings. Specimen exchange has played an integral role in how museums actively produce and disseminate knowledge via intellectual and social networks. Natural history museums have been, in modern western societies, the principal location for the collection, preservation and study of natural objects. Once well established, they become the repository for materials acquired by government agencies, the disseminators of information about local animals, plants, minerals and topography, and the chief agency through which specimens and publications are exchanged. Their reputation depends not only on the strength of their holdings but also on such reciprocal relations.2

While mention of specimen exchange can be found in many histories of collecting and museum practice, scholarly appraisals of its dynamics, tenor, and purpose have grown only somewhat recently.3 This growth stems, in part, from increased interest in and access to behind-the-scenes museum practices, such as collections management, in lieu of more public-facing museum products, such as exhibitions and programs. Through a systematic examination of specimen exchange, focusing on the Smithsonian’s anthropological collections in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this chapter offers a more nuanced lens to understand the histories of museum collections-building and refinement. While relationships between internal and external actors have always shaped collections,

94

Exchanging Objects

specimen exchange calls attention to the centrality and persistence of object-based research and education, the realities of exhibit creation, and the social and political dynamics of institutional development.

Specimen Exchange as Natural History Practice The exchange of scientific specimens originates within the practice of natural history. The “collective and cooperative doing” of natural history, and the resulting material assemblages of these practices, were crucial to the production of scientific ideas and texts.4 In the eighteenth century, natural history was largely carried out through quotidian acts of collecting, describing, and naming local natural objects. Correspondence and exchange of specimens followed, as means of facilitating the development of personal and institutional comparative study collections that, in some cases, resulted in intellectual contributions. Though many people participated in collecting, the community of scientists that synthesized, published, and disseminated empirically derived knowledge was smaller in number. However, the intellectual products of the latter were very much dependent on this larger network of collectors, their correspondence, and exchange of specimens. Histories of naturalists’ labors sometimes include mention of specimen exchange. Eighteenth-century botanist Albrecht von Haller assembled the materials for his comprehensive work on Swiss flora by either “mounting his own expeditions or, on a much larger scale, by outsourcing the collecting to a network of colleagues and assistants, and exchanging the yields of others’ excursions.”5 Duchess of Portland Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck carried out exchanges with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the mid-eighteenth century. He contributed rare specimens to her herbarium and, in return, she supplied him with books.6 Within networks of North American bird collectors, specimen exchange was facilitated through the pervasiveness of printed checklists, standardized exchange values for particular species, and exchange notices printed in periodicals.7 While the intellectual products of natural history, which extended into nineteenth-century anthropology, were based on the increasing centralization of scientific data into scholarly repositories, this was made possible only by a network of correspondents who exchanged information and specimens.8 Quantification of specimen exchange provides a sense of its scale and extent. But counting the number of duplicate specimens sent and received tells only part of the story. In many cases, rich correspondences foreground potential exchanges with well-known scientists and museums. Conversely,

Networking the US National Museum

95

short letters and interdepartmental memos reveal that specimen exchange was not limited to the scientific elite, but was also a routine aspect of work for museum administrators and curators. Specimen exchange records—be they letters or catalog-style lists—are useful in uncovering “a qualitative pattern of activity that reveals prevailing attitudes, practical connections and, perhaps inevitably, competition” between museums.9 Exchanges show us that curators and administrators did not act as self-interested individuals attempting to maximize material returns, but rather they considered how the conduct and content of exchanges would affect their professional reputation and that of their fellow curators and departments, their research plans, and the institution as a whole. Attention to the decisions and motivations of individuals working cooperatively within a museum reveals institutional hierarchies, relationships, and histories. Though specimen exchange is associated with the management of collections, it is perhaps somewhat unexpectedly connected to museums’ educational goals. Through their presence in public life, museums seek to bring moral and educational ideals to public audiences; exhibitions are mounted and programs developed to share specialized knowledges.10 Through the distribution of duplicates directly to primary schools, public libraries, and universities, specimen exchange acts as a complement to the myriad ways that curators sought to meet the museum’s public-oriented aims. Though specimen exchange is most commonly understood as a practice carried out between disciplinary experts, the Smithsonian was not the only collecting institution to operate in this manner. Between 1847 and 1914, 35 percent of the specimen dispersal events from the Kew Museum of Economic Botany were sent to schools in the British Isles.11 While specimen exchange was a means of furthering research and curatorial pursuits, it was also deployed to share knowledge with non-local communities of collectors, teachers, and students.

Building Collections: Purchase or Exchange? In the late nineteenth century the anthropology curators at the USNM worked to expand their collections for use in research and display. They sought out opportunities to receive duplicate specimens from areas of the world un- or under-represented in their collection, with a preference for securing a range of object types to demonstrate human technologies. As Susan Sheets-Pyenson has argued, purchasing collections was a far more effective strategy for collections-building than exchange.12 Though sustained with an annual congressional appropriation for a gamut of museum

96

Exchanging Objects

functions, USNM budgets were both limited and uncertain, so specimen exchange was used alongside purchase to procure collections. Monies for purchasing anthropological specimens typically came out of the Secretary’s Reserve, a $5,000 annual budget item included in the BAE appropriation but controlled by the Smithsonian secretary. BAE director John Wesley Powell wanted the money obligated for field research, while the USNM curators lobbied for its use to purchase collections offered for sale, particularly if they aligned with their research interests.13 Though the secretary considered the requests of both parties, Baird preferred to spend the money on museum collections and personnel.14 Though desirable objects often came on offer, the prevailing rejoinder was to decline due to lack of funds. This was especially true for foreign specimens, as funds designated for the BAE, including the Secretary’s Reserve, were to be applied toward research and collections from the United States.15 The Hon. W. W. Rockhill, of the Bureau of American Republics, sends me the enclosed letters and list of material from Tibet. He remarks that many of these are not in the Rockhill collection of the National Museum. I am not able to give him any information about the matter of purchase. Mr. Rockhill is going to China within two or three days, and he has told me that he will be delighted when he gets there to do anything to help the National Museum. I, therefore, did not like to send him the usual reply of “No money” without consulting you.16

Though international field collecting via expeditions and individual collectors could remedy some gaps in the collection, there were still costs involved. Specimen exchange picked up where purchase failed—not due to the lack of specimens on offer, but rather due to the lack of funds. Though purchase was a superior method of procurement compared to exchange, narrowly viewing exchange as primarily an acquisition method obscures its entanglements in other areas of museum practice, such as education. Governments and corporate actors provide infrastructure, regulations, and resources to hasten the development of institutions that serve broad public interests. As Bennett has argued, museums are social institutions “in which civilized forms of behaviour might be learnt and thus diffused more widely through the social body.”17 But the USNM did not serve only a lay public through exhibitionary display. Baird’s network of collectors netted the Smithsonian tens of thousands of objects, and efforts by research collaborators and curators to study and classify those specimens produced prodigious numbers of duplicates. Through networks of distribution and exchange, the USNM’s public reach was extended deep into local contexts. As an enactment of governmentality, the educational distribution program

Networking the US National Museum

97

allowed the USNM to capitalize on its ability to provide educational resources in the form of specimens, funneling them to civilizing institutions such as museums, libraries, and schools as a nationalizing endeavor.

Theorizing Specimen Exchange: Building Social Relationships Specimens could be bought or bartered. Acquisition via purchase was a highly effective means of securing specimens, if there was money to be spent in the vibrant and unpredictable marketplace of antiquities and anthropological objects in the nineteenth century.18 But, for the most part, Smithsonian curators had to pass on many offers. Specimen exchange intersects with characteristics of purchase in two ways: most obviously, as an acquisition mechanism, but also through the capitalization of specimens to ensure exchange equivalence. The latter refers to institutional requirements that duplicates be made commensurable so as to ensure that exchanges were equal.19 The most efficient means of doing this was for curators to assign duplicates a market value, contributing to the creation of a brief, commodifying situation.20 Curators were usually required to exchange an equal dollar amount of duplicates. In short, $5.00 of shells for $5.00 of ceramics. But market value is somewhat subjective, so in their capacity as exchange transactors, curators did not seem overly concerned with assigning highly specific economic valuations to duplicates. Rather, references to exchange equivalence were mostly pro forma. If one exchange partner was suspected of inflating value, the other could simply discontinue the exchange relationship. Concerns over receiving less than what was given were quite rare in exchange correspondence, indicating that the specimen exchange industry was not a competitive economic arena in which transactors sought a kind of capitalist accumulation of specimens.21 Robert Foster’s analysis of an exchange between the Buffalo Museum of Science and the Denver Art Museum bears this out. “Personal judgment” on the balancing of exchange equivalence between curators was of the greatest importance in the negotiation.22 To use well-known economic terms, specimen exchange is substantive in that it is a means of making a living or, in this case, a means of collections-building (while purchase is another). The presence of market valuations—$5.00 worth of ceramics—does not necessarily tie it to the application of “rational economic logic” that maximizes individual (or organizational) self-interest.23 The marketplace is present in specimen exchange negotiations and transactions but has a minimal effect on our understanding of the role of specimen exchange within the museum.

98

Exchanging Objects

Anthropologists have long been interested in systems of gift and commodity exchange, but it is neither helpful nor possible to classify specimen exchange as either of these abstracted systems. Anthropological insights connected to gift exchange draw attention to the social contexts of specimen exchange.24 These social contexts are as important as the putative purpose of specimen exchange—that is, circulations of duplicate specimens to fill gaps in collections. Gifts may include “objects of exchange in which parts of the giver are embedded, extending social relations beyond the transaction.”25 In Gifts and Commodities, Christopher Gregory argues that gift exchange “is an exchange of inalienable objects between people who are in a state of reciprocal dependence that establishes a qualitative relationship between the transactors,” thus emphasizing the relationships between exchange partners.26 The Smithsonian and its curators were not only suppliers of North American anthropological duplicates, but they were also knowledge producers. Their expertise authenticated duplicates as anthropological specimens, and the circulation of these objects were part of how collegial and professional relationships within a global anthropological community were created and sustained. Exchange is a moment within a broader process of social production and transformation.27 Understanding specimen exchange as both reciprocity and redistribution emphasizes its social character—that is, exchange within social relations or between social relations.28 In Marshall Sahlins’s schema, balanced reciprocity or direct exchange involves each transactor sending and receiving specimens, or some enumerated material return, where each transactor’s interests are satisfied within a relatively short timeline. Generalized reciprocity characterizes the sending of specimens without an enumerated return from the recipient, where the eventual return is not required or specified—the free gift or generosity. Drawing on Sahlins, Foster argues it is the “exchange relation” and not the “exchange rate” that drives the exchange of museum specimens.29 Relationships top material returns. Still, it is an obvious historical fact that specimen exchanges occurred within societies with capitalist economies. In his comparison between balanced reciprocity and market exchange, David Graeber contends that “closed reciprocity” portends an end to social relationships created through the process of exchange and the obligations that sustained them, as opposed to the possibilities from when they were left open.30 Jude Philp notes that Australian Museum curators were tasked with striking a balance between the objects they desired, and those that they would need to send out. Not carrying too much “exchange debt” each year while simultaneously planning ahead to be able to send out quality specimens was necessary to maintain good exchange relationships over the long term.31 Open

Networking the US National Museum

99

reciprocity “implies a relation of permanent mutual commitment.”32 In this case, the commitment is not to the expectation of future exchanges of specimens, but to the scientific and museum enterprise in general, to the production of knowledge. It is tempting to understand specimen exchange as a manifestation of museum-based formal economic activity that determines the paths of duplicate specimens from one museum to another. But isolating specimen exchange as an economic activity within a marketplace belies its imbrication within the constitution of a broader community of scientists, museums, and educators. These organizations and individuals created a community in which practical information, scientific knowledge, pedagogical approaches, and sometimes specimens, flowed within somewhat loosely constituted norms of practice. The global specimen exchange industry is best conceptualized as a broad network of circulating specimens, revealing the linkages of dynamic archives in which museum professionals, scientists, collectors, and educators used their interests and institutional affiliations to shape object movements. Thus, the value of duplicate specimens is constituted both on their status as relational objects, and on the basis of their material representativeness of knowledge categories. Brooke Penaloza Patzak’s analysis of Northwest Coast specimens exchanged between the USNM and the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin demonstrates how specimen exchange was used to establish long-term relationships between and among international museums, and to contribute to the development of anthropology as a transnational science.33 It is also worth considering how duplicates—seemingly the most alienable and commodity-like specimens within museum collections—are, in a sense, inalienable. Annette Weiner’s treatment of inalienability emphasizes the association of specific goods with kin groups in which social associations are maintained, though the goods are exchanged.34 Specimen exchange involves not only the physical transfer of specimens, but, also, its practice implies transfer of ownership. Neither transactor thought of these activities as loans. The concept of inalienability might seem unwarranted here, save for the unique characteristic of duplicates as museum objects. Because duplicate specimens circulated under the guise that they would be kept in perpetuity by museums, and that the giver’s name would be recorded in museum documentation systems by the receiver, exchanges served to maintain social relationships extending beyond the time of the transmission itself, and to cast duplicates with a sense of inalienability through the value of their provenance. I have often been able to track down duplicate specimens exchanged by the Smithsonian by searching for “Smithsonian” in the receiving museum’s collections search portal.

100

Exchanging Objects

Rather than present only an accounting of the givers and receivers, and the contents of their exchange, I use exchange incidents to consider the broader contexts in which specimen exchange was carried out. Specimen exchange is one facet of museum and disciplinary histories but offers a new lens through which to understand how anthropology established itself in the museum and in the classroom, and how its subject matter and methodologies joined larger public scientific discourses.

A Smithsonian Exchange Network On March 3, 1879, Congress granted an appropriation for the construction of a new museum building to house the expansive USNM collections, employ a curatorial staff, and mount exhibitions. The building opened to the public in October 1881, teeming with exhibits spanning art, ethnology, history, and natural history, a testament to the labors of its scientific and administrative staff. Baird’s tenure as secretary ushered in a new era of museum operations, in addition to the expansion of research and publication series. During this period, specimen exchange was considered part of regular museum operations. Its practice was influenced by the national status of the USNM, and historical precedents developed under Henry’s administration. As museum departments grew larger and more complex, the USNM developed new record-keeping and decision-making systems that allow for a more systematic study of both the quantitative and the qualitative characters of specimen exchange.35 As museums increasingly transform historical collections-related data recorded in analog formats into standardized digital data, there are more opportunities to identify interactional patterns.36 I transferred specimen exchange records from specimen distribution ledger books and transportation logs into an electronic research database, which allowed me to visualize and analyze temporal changes in exchange practice. Used following the opening of the USNM building, the analog registers and logs document exchanges, but also provide information on a range of exchange variables, including date, name and location of recipient, type of exchange partner (museum curator, private collector, university, etc.), and a brief description of the contents of the exchange. For anthropological exchanges, quantification of these temporal, geographic, and content variables reveals the overall character of exchanges as somewhat bifurcated. The USNM had a large number of exchange partners—about 525 for anthropological exchanges between 1882 and 1920—but the majority of these relationships were circumscribed by a single or handful of specimen

Networking the US National Museum

101

transmissions. There are important exceptions to this pattern, notably exchange relationships with scientists or collectors that spanned decades and involved more than five exchange transmissions. The voluminous correspondences, notes, and inventory lists illuminate both the purpose and the outcomes of specimen exchange, as well as negotiation techniques. Specimen exchange contributed to the establishment and strengthening of social networks between scientists and museum professionals. It served to engender public interest in natural history practice and subjects. Curators selected the contents of exchange transmissions based on thoughtful consideration of how the objects would be used. These were careful, deliberate, and meaningful exchanges. Quantitative data on nearly forty years of anthropological exchanges at the USNM suggests that the Smithsonian’s exchange network was both wide and shallow (many exchange partners with few exchanges per partner), and deep and extended (many exchanges with a single partner). It is tempting to interpret the wide and shallow network as a reflection of the tenets of commodity exchange, where there are no enduring links or obligations between exchange partners, a social field with weak ties. Although there are many instances where the USNM exchanged anthropological duplicates with a collector or museum only once, this does not mean that the collector or museum was not subsequently exchanging specimens with other individuals and institutions. Participation in the global networks of exchange was essential to the development of national and international anthropological communities. In the instances where transactors exchanged only once with the USNM, the initial inquiry and transmission of specimens served to determine whether the content of the material exchange would suit the needs of both parties. In some cases, the requirements were met through a single reciprocal transaction. In others, needs developed over time and were met through multiple transactions. Exchanges were not only time consuming, but they also created situations in which curators made mistakes—unwittingly exchanging type specimens or selecting objects for exchange to which knowledge experts might object. In addition, specimens could be broken or lost in transit.37 Exchanges were risky in terms of loss of time and specimens, so they were not a means of expeditiously and easily culling storage shelves. If exchanged specimens carry the association of their giver—and it is clear that Smithsonian objects were valued based on organizational association—the specimens become the vehicle to imagine a relationship between the giver and the receiver. For the many small educational institutions that received USNM collections, these exchanges demonstrate how the process served to democratize science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

102

Exchanging Objects

and encourage popular interest in anthropology and natural history. The purpose of specimen exchange was to contribute to the constitution of a social field by creating relationships within a community of practitioners and stakeholders from the local to the global. The careful preparation of duplicate sets signals the importance of these specimens as representative and labeled examples of knowledge categories. Specimen exchange’s purpose grew recursively in accordance with the research interests of curators, the USNM’s popular educational objectives, and the desire of Smithsonian leadership to shape museum practice in the United States and beyond. As a discipline interested in human variation, nineteenth-century anthropology drew on data sets from material, linguistic, and behavioral domains.38 Specimen exchange was a means to diversify material data sets, expanding the representation of discrete analytical units through which anthropological knowledge was produced. Circulation of duplicate specimens provided widespread access to the material evidence of theories of culture change and variation, which were proposed by anthropologists at the BAE, major museums, and world’s fairs, and by general educators in local contexts. Exchanges would both “broaden the basis of research” by providing objects that had thus far been excluded from the Smithsonian’s collecting efforts and would be useful in constructing synoptic exhibit series or technological analyses. Moreover, they would “prove valuable” in a “common effort [between museums] to increase . . . popular knowledge” about anthropology.39 Specimen exchange is present in a variety of domains of museum and scientific practice, including securing appropriations, development of professional communities and networks, collections growth and refinement, popularization of anthropology and natural history, and the proliferation of museums domestically and abroad.

Exchange by the Numbers By 1882 the specimen distribution registers regularly recorded incidents of specimen transmission—that is, specimens sent out of the USNM. As a record-keeping technology, these ledgers recorded specimens sent out for exchange, gift, return, loan, or examination. While all of these involve the movement of specimens, I am concerned only with exchanges and gifts. The terminological distinction refers to returns. Exchanges involved USNM specimens being traded for other specimens, publications, or enumerated courtesies. “Gifts” refers to a situation in which no return was specifically enumerated, and typically includes distributions of duplicates to domestic educational institutions such as schools, libraries, universi-

Networking the US National Museum

103

ties, and museums. I consider exchanges and gifts together as specimen exchange, encompassing balanced and generalized reciprocity. I use the generic term “transmission” when referring to numerical data in order to avoid confusion in the determination of the terms under which specimens were sent out, which is a necessity when dealing with such a large data set. There were approximately 750 transmissions of anthropological objects, including ethnology, archaeology, photographs, and casts sent from the USNM anthropology department from 1882 to 1920 (table 3.1).40 Quantitative analysis of transmissions reveals temporal trends. The number of transmissions exceeds 100 for every five-year period from 1886 to 1905. This trend correlates with Mason’s tenure as curator; he served from 1884 to 1908 and embraced exchange as a scientific and museum practice. Table 3.1. Incidents and character of transmissions of anthropological specimen exchanges sent by the Smithsonian Institution/USNM from 1882 to 1920. 1882– 1886– 1891– 1896– 1901– 1906– 1911– 1916– 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 Total Transmissions

31

119

133

113

166

65

54

29

International

11

54

43

27

40

14

17

7

Domestic

20

65

90

86

126

51

37

22

Casts

12

12

53

35

55

16

10

8

Non-casts

18

105

77

74

91

47

43

21

Casts and Non-casts

1

0

2

2

2

1

1

0

Models

0

2

1

1

18

1

0

0

Models and Non-Casts

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

Small Size

14

53

35

49

96

40

31

19

Large Size

12

62

97

64

70

25

23

10

5

4

1

0

0

0

0

0

Unknown Size

Note: The relatively high number of international transmissions during the period 1885–90 is explained by Baird’s proclivity for international exchanges. The relatively high number of domestic exchanges during the period of 1901–5 is due to the distribution of sets of cast archaeological material. Transmissions of small size include those with less than 10 specimens, while large size includes ten or more specimens. In some cases, archival data indicating number of specimens transmitted was unavailable, so I have either classified this as unknown size or made a choice informed by accompanying information.

104

Exchanging Objects

Domestic transmissions exceed international, and transmissions of originals exceed those of casts. The approximate number of distinct exchange partners was about 525, including about 240 domestic individuals, 165 domestic educational organizations, and 120 international individuals or organizations.41 Domestic exchanges were faster and less expensive than international exchanges. As distance increased, there were fewer exchanges except where they would greatly benefit the USNM in either material returns or status. The domestic exchange network included a greater variety of partners such as scientists, museums, libraries, universities, schools, and private individuals. The international exchange network is principally limited to major museums, prominent scientists, and in some cases, less-well-known scientists who had personal and/or professional connections to Smithsonian curators. From 1882 to 1900, large transmissions exceeded small transmissions, but the trend reversed from 1901 to 1920. Two factors explain this reversal: Baird’s preference for sending exchanges with a large number of objects (a practice that declined following his death in 1887), and the transmission of educational sets of cast archaeological material. From the curators’ perspectives, smaller exchanges were preferable, in part because less labor was involved. In a letter to Henry Balfour, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, with whom the USNM exchanged repeatedly, Mason commented, “I am glad to carry on little exchanges of this kind. On one or two occasions we have undertaken large exchanges with foreign museums and they have proven burdensome.”42 One of the most important findings in the analysis of the transmissions data is the tendency for the USNM anthropology department to maximize the number of different exchange partners, resulting in only a few transmissions per partner. Though the USNM exchanged with many museums in European and former colonial nations, most exchanges were limited to one or two transmissions. The high number of exchange partners coupled with the low numbers of exchanges per partner make this network wide and shallow, or outstretched. There are notable exceptions to this general trend, particularly a handful of extensive reciprocal exchange relationships: Enrico Giglioli of the Royal Zoological Museum in Florence, Italy; Edward Lovett, an English folklore collector; Professor E. T. Hamy, an anthropologist and director of the Trocadero Museum of Ethnography, Paris; Henry Balfour, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University; Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Brown, a musical instrument collector; Charles Aldrich of the Historical Department of Iowa in Des Moines, and Frederic Putnam of Harvard’s Peabody Museum.43 Rather than view these as outliers, I suggest that specimen exchange practice at the USNM operated in

Networking the US National Museum

105

two ways: it created an extensive network of individuals and institutions by keeping exchange incidents at a minimum, and it pursued relationships with museums or individuals to hasten specific outcomes such as securing particular objects or gaining favor in European scientific circles. The purpose and effect of specimen exchange is largely dependent on the character of the relationship (long term and dense versus short term and singular) and the recipient. Exchanges served to establish a professional community of anthropological museum practice. They also elevated the status of the USNM within the global hierarchy of museums, positioning the anthropology department as an authoritative source of authenticated anthropological specimens, and of anthropological knowledge about North American Indigenous cultures. Exchanges with domestic collectors and educational establishments served to encourage popular interest in anthropology and to lend legitimacy to anthropology as a scientific discipline. Each Smithsonian specimen transmission record provides basic information about who the transactors were, when the transaction took place, and a brief description of what was exchanged. Many of these records contain rich correspondences, entrées to local histories, and the vast potential to explore objects’ networked biographies.44 As a whole, the Smithsonian’s exchange practice contributed to an expansive network of organizations and individuals interested in anthropology (or at least anthropological subjects) through the lens of material culture. Rather than examine one or two exchange relationships in depth, I identify and explore emergent characteristics that exchanges have in common, grouped loosely on the type of exchange partner. I consider how USNM specimen exchange practice sought to cultivate inter-organizational relationships with other museums, seek advantageous trades with collectors, encourage aspiring naturalists, provide specimens for educators, and further the USNM’s operations through exchanges with well-connected and powerful individuals.

Cultivating Museums Foundational collections for anthropological museums are most often tied to the interests and undertakings of field collectors. Long-term engagements of US federal scientific agencies, especially in the American West, produced prodigious numbers of objects and architectural models from Indigenous groups, photographs, ethnographic descriptions, and maps, collected under a salvage paradigm.45 Collecting expeditions were competitive and costly. The nineteenth century saw potential sites of anthropological study quickly picked over by collectors aided by colonial governments,

106

Exchanging Objects

as well as by national museums seeking to collect and control their patrimony.46 Because no museum could send collectors to every corner of the globe, specimen exchange allowed the USNM to broaden its collections, bypassing the expense of outfitting field collectors and navigating travel and transportation logistics. Under the leadership of George Brown Goode, the USNM pioneered developments in museum professionalization.47 With immense North American collections, the source of the majority of its duplicates, the USNM was well-positioned to make strategic trades as Europe’s museums were filled with the spoils of colonial collecting. Outside Europe, other national museums sought North American specimens, important not only for comparative science, but also as a means of connoting a modern cosmopolitanism.48 The USNM desired mutually beneficial trades, but nothing was guaranteed. When possible, curators might visit other museums to assess prospective trading partners’ specimen stocks, attempting to gauge their willingness to exchange.49 They corresponded with individuals with insider knowledge and connections, and initiated exchanges as a way of testing the waters. Curators were mindful of the potential of exchanges to refine their collections and worked to cultivate and broaden their professional relationships.

London, England England’s museums held the spoils of centuries of cultural exchange and colonialism. During his only trip to Europe, where he attended scientific conferences and met many of his long-time correspondents, Otis Mason visited the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 50 In a letter to Goode after touring the British Museum’s ethnological collections, Mason noted, “They are extremely rich in some lines. Their Polynesian collection made my mouth water. . . . I have arranged with Mr. Read [the keeper’s assistant] to start our retail exchange. He will give me a few things for a few things steadily. I am really inclined to like this better than great exchanges.”51 In Mason’s estimation, these were valuable collections and exchange prospects looked promising. Even more impressive was the Victoria and Albert Museum; Mason could hardly contain his frenzied excitement, which he conveyed to Goode in his description of the collectors: a “noble army of Vandals, who with crow bars and derricks have torn to pieces everything on earth that could be shipped.”52 The USNM only eventually exchanged with the British Museum. But the contents of both magnetically drew Mason’s admiration and hope for exchanges, though

Networking the US National Museum

107

the actual materialization of exchanges were based on mutual evaluations of whether each partner would be able to provide the desired outcome.

Montevideo, Uruguay Building a global, encyclopedic collection was aspirational for museums looking for international prestige. Though the USNM’s collections did not rival the global reach of many museums in Europe, museums with even fewer resources regarded, with hopeful anticipation, the USNM as a potential trading partner. Diplomat Luis de Herrera of the Legacion de Uruguay, on behalf of the National Museum at Montevideo, offered to send “indian curiosities” from Uruguay on the expectation that the Smithsonian would be “generous in this first exchange.”53 Reputations of museums in former colonies were based not only on the size of their collections, but also on the “acquisition of exotic foreign materials.”54 Though Uruguay’s National Museum was “just now growing,” and the anthropological collections were small with few duplicates, Herrera was able to secure and send thirty-five archaeological artifacts.55 In return, the USNM sent ninety-one archaeological artifacts and twelve historic ceramics from the American Southwest.56 There are no indications as to whether either trading partner found this to be an equivalent exchange, but the glaring difference in specimen numbers (35 versus 113) perhaps indicates that the USNM did offer a more generous return in an effort to encourage the South American museum’s development, as well as to position itself with higher status in the global scientific community.

Sapporo, Japan Specimen exchange provided an avenue to secure both international cooperation and reputations. In 1888 the USNM accessioned twenty Ainu (Japanese Indigenous) objects received from Sapporo Agricultural College.57 The return was to be sent to the Sapporo Museum, who requested Smithsonian publications on Japanese or Chinese fauna or “a collection of Indian specimens.”58 Publications were selected and transmitted, but their number did not constitute an equivalent in Goode’s estimation. He asked Mason to supplement the publications with a small collection. Mason inquired about the specifics of the contents, since “it would be useless to send indiscriminately.”59 The matter lay fallow until two years later when the debt was realized by Smithsonian administrator Randolph Geare who

108

Exchanging Objects

asked Mason, “If you think that this museum is one which should be cultivated, would it not be well to get up a miscellaneous collection for them, and send it at random, showing our good will? It seems to me that Japanese ethnological museums ought not to be dealt lightly with.”60 There is no evidence the Sapporo Museum had complained, rather internal recordkeeping revealed the unfilled obligation. Mason assembled a collection, which was quickly transmitted. This exchange demonstrates that administrators were perhaps more concerned with international reputation vis-àvis exchange equivalence rather than if the content of the transmission met a specific need. The latter consideration was articulated by the curators.

Irkutsk, Russia In a trip similar to Mason’s, USNM curator of physical anthropology Aleš Hrdlička’s international tour to assess collections in 1912 served to initiate scientific cooperation and prospect exchanges. Hrdlička reported that the Irkutsk museum in Siberia held many valuable specimens and was interested in receiving Smithsonian publications. Hrdlička’s visit had laid the initial groundwork, and anthropology department head William Henry Holmes wanted to move forward with an exchange by sending “photographs of Indians . . . and also a small series of stone implements or other relics to indicate to the Irkutsk museum authorities that we are ready to take up the work at once, and actively.” This was a bold move on the part of Holmes, especially since the Irkutsk museum had made Hrdlička no promise of a return. But photographs and duplicate specimens could be put to use as an “opening wedge” if it meant that Indigenous Siberian collections would be sent in return.61 Included with the duplicates and photographs, the USNM detailed what else it could offer—a range of valuable archaeological, ethnological, and physical anthropological duplicates—and what it desired in return. Administrators articulated how the USNM would want to “conduct the exchange,” emphasizing equivalence and attention to the specificity of desiderata.62 It was a failed attempt to cultivate a productive exchange relationship. Annual accession records indicate no recorded returns from Irkutsk until 1920. Perhaps the Russians were unimpressed with the Smithsonian offer, or they had nothing they wanted to exchange, or the political climate, especially the Russian Revolution and World War I, rendered international shipping and scientific work a low priority. By 1920 World War I had been over for two years, and the East Siberian Section of the Russian Geographical Society, in Irkutsk, sent five photographs of an Urentkhaiski shaman and his wife to the Smithsonian in exchange.63 Cultivating international

Networking the US National Museum

109

relationships could be a gamble, with no guarantees of returns or mutual benefit. Under a salvage paradigm, where concerns over the supply of specimens from disappearing peoples were ever-present, exchange was one avenue with limited risk, but also the possibility of little reward.

Exchanges with Collectors Specimen exchange was not limited to museums or educational institutions. If an individual collector had something to trade, and the Smithsonian had something to offer in return, an exchange was usually the result. Exchanges with collectors expose some of the tensions between the Smithsonian administration and the curatorial staff. Smithsonian administrators such as the secretaries, assistant secretaries, and Randolph Geare, chief of the Division of Correspondence and Documents, were generally pro-exchange. Administrators routed and monitored correspondence, and approved exchanges. Curators usually wanted to assist who they reasonably were able to help, but selecting duplicates was one of many tasks that added to their workload. Cataloging was endless, the preparation of exhibits for international and domestic expositions was continuous, and time for research was limited. Compared to international museums, exchanges with domestic collectors seemed mundane and tedious. Yet these usually small exchanges were carried out with regularity. Small exchanges (fewer than ten specimens sent) frequently exceeded the exchange of large (ten or more specimens sent) transmissions (table 3.1). Administrators preferred to approve exchanges where low-value duplicate specimens would be transmitted to avoid personal offense or dispute. Rather than a productive means of filling gaps in the collection, exchanges with collectors were valued for their ability to establish social relationships with individuals interested in the field. Most collectors with whom the USNM exchanged were United States–based and offered North American materials in trade. Exchange requests were typically made directly to Smithsonian administrators. BAE archaeologist Cyrus Thomas had promised the wife of John Rogan, one of his field assistants, “a piece or two” from the “quantity of Pueblo pottery held for exchange” by the USNM, in return for a pipe that had been in the family and he had seen (and wanted) when visiting their home. Thomas appealed to Goode for assistance, and Goode approved the transmission of a duplicate Pueblo ceramic.64 Thomas took a liberty in negotiating this exchange, but norms of exchange practice were wellknown by Smithsonian staff and BAE researchers, so Thomas must have been confident of eventual approval.

110

Exchanging Objects

In an exchange with the French collector Emile Granier, who offered “a pretty collection” of Plains material from his time spent in Wyoming in return for “a few specimens that we [the USNM] cared to spare,” Mason parted with seven objects from the Southwest. Consisting of Hopi and Zuni material, among the total were a rattle, headdress, anklets, and prayer stick.65 Granier sent roughly the equivalent number of objects, those that were relatively similar in function, including a buffalo mask, tent model, medicine man’s wand, wheel games, and whistle.66 The regional focus of BAE collectors meant that USNM collections from the American Southwest far outnumbered Plains materials. Specimens from the Pueblos (particularly ceramics and basketry) dominated the contents of ethnological duplicates. As this and the above example demonstrate, USNM staff, even those in other departments, equated anthropological duplicates with Puebloan material.67 Granier’s exchange facilitated a more even distribution and variety of objects from North American tribes that were needed for USNM exhibits, which were based on geographic distribution and technologies, as well as the outfitting of lay figure groups. The USNM regularly received requests for Plains materials, and some of Granier’s objects were later exchanged. Following Baird’s death, the era of transmissions containing hundreds of specimens concluded, and exchanges with collectors were often viewed as being more trouble than they were worth. Though curators supported the growth of avocational interest in anthropology, most collectors shied away from the more technical and intellectual engagements with disciplinary methods and knowledge. Their collections reflected notions of curiosity and visions of primitiveness toward the subjects of anthropological research, particularly the Indigenous populations of North America. Hutchinson’s study of Indian corners emphasizes that their emergence is tied to a desire for “an individual and national sense of mastery” in light of the ills of modernization.68 Western expansion is linked to the availability of objects to supply Indian corners, and the USNM was seen as a possible purveyor. Collectors posed questions about the histories of human occupation in their locality and expressed a desire to craft collections that operated on a defined schema. Collectors enjoyed building collections where each state or territory in the nation was represented by an archaeological specimen. In what Curator of Prehistoric Anthropology Thomas Wilson considered an “insignificant exchange” and “for his pleasure not ours,” E. G. Holcomb of Helena, New York, requested arrowpoints from states missing in his collection.69 He had specimens from “all the southern [states] except N.C. [North Carolina] and Miss[issippi] . . . and all west of the Mississippi R[iver].”70 In exchange for Holcomb’s archaeological material from New York, the USNM sent forty-three arrowpoints from twenty

Networking the US National Museum

111

states, including Texas and California.71 Curators found these requests tedious and devoid of any scholarly importance. Such collectors were quite persistent. In an exchange with Mr. W. H. McGinnis of Youngstown, Ohio, Wilson initially sent a collection of twenty-four arrowpoints from thirteen states. McGinnis desired to have “each of the states and territories represented” in his collection.72 Unsatisfied with the geographic distribution from the first transmission, Wilson then sent ten additional points that “comprise all the states and territories” from which the USNM had “specimens to spare.”73 Three years following the first two transmissions, Wilson sent five additional specimens, representing even more states.74 None were from Arizona, California, or New Mexico, although McGinnis had requested those, but Wilson did make an effort to spare what became available in duplicate over a number of years. Though collectors exchanged with each other, the USNM was viewed as a source to procure specimens that could not be gotten elsewhere. Like museums that sought diverse collections, collectors used the state schema to generate an organizing framework and collecting goal. Having every state represented might portray the collector as a well-connected, educated, or worldlier individual, a sign of personal prestige. The state-based collecting schema references the patriotic and nationalistic motivations of antiquarians, as well as the early scientific archaeologists.75 Most exchanges with private collectors yielded few contributions of scientific importance. Private collectors rarely documented and provided the provenience information that was increasingly valued by professional anthropologists. But these exchanges were part of a larger effort to encourage local collecting and museum-oriented activities, and to cultivate supporters of domestic museums who could be called on to donate their collections as gifts. Exchange complemented broader efforts to support avocational practitioners and educators, such as the distribution of circulars encouraging local collecting, information gathering, and loans.76 Curators took time to field questions from private individuals and identify specimens they sent in for examination. It was the sum of these small and consistent actions, including exchanges with collectors, that served to nurture and grow a national community of museum supporters.

Encouraging Future Generations The distribution of standardized duplicate sets from the educational series, meant for university instruction and general education, resulted in the movement of thousands of specimens (across all departments) out of

112

Exchanging Objects

the USNM. Effective in reducing specimen numbers, it was extensive in reach, though somewhat impersonal in character. In addition to these sets, there are several exchanges that speak to the genuine interest and dedication of curators and administrators to encourage young naturalists in their collecting efforts, as an entrée to the study of scientific disciplines, rather than collecting for its own sake. Curators and BAE anthropologists wanted to discourage speculative tendencies from lay publics and collectors, while fostering an interest in anthropology as an empirical science. This had been Henry’s objective as well, when he insisted that Squier and Davis’s Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848) published in the Smithsonian’s first Contributions to Knowledge series be free from interpretive speculation.77 Natural history research relied on collectors’ adherence to scientific methods. On a visit to the USNM, Mrs. D. B. Meacham learned of the practice of exchanging duplicates and hoped to exchange specimens from her son’s “cabinet.” Mother and son identified the desired specimens using a book given to her at the USNM and enumerated their forms in a letter.78 Wilson responded by completing the exchange, and sending this sentiment to Mrs. Meacham: The value of our respective sending is not much and if we gained no more than by such transactions, our museum would not grow. But I have taken this trouble and make this sending as an incentive to your boy, hoping that it may increase his interest in the science of Prehistoric Anthropology and that [as] he grows up he may study it and become a bright and shining light. I should deplore his becoming nought but a mere collector and hope he may delve deeper and become more profound. As a start I send him a handbook of Prehistoric Anthropology and a circular in regard to a proper method of search for Prehistoric Antiquities. The real study of the science is to discover, not merely the relics, but the history of the man who made and used them. In this the relics are nearly our only means of knowledge and so they must be procured and studied, but it should never be forgotten that they are only the means to the end and not the end itself.79

Wilson wanted to encourage collectors, especially young collectors, to learn the principles of archaeological science, since these materials were limited in supply. The importance of collecting not for curiosity, but as scientific methodology, needed to be impressed on future generations.

Exchanges with Domestic Museums and Educational Establishments The USNM transmitted the vast majority of duplicates through the educational series. This was a far more robust system in the natural history

Networking the US National Museum

113

departments, since there were simply more duplicates of rocks, shells, and fishes than there were anthropological duplicates. The only educational series of anthropological material was a standardized set of prehistoric stone implements, assembled by Thomas Wilson as means of promoting the American Paleolithic hypothesis.80 Because they usually received sets from the educational series, domestic educational institutions were not normally required to reciprocate. But the limited supply of anthropological duplicate sets did not prohibit requests for these kinds of objects. Anthropology curators were routinely asked to undertake the laborious process of assembling collections from their supplies of duplicates, and, in turn, USNM anthropology curators often requested these exchange partners reciprocate with specimens. Reducing duplicate stocks was an organizational goal, but this left anthropology curators to deal with extensive and sometimes impossible requests. Duplicates readily available were not always what recipients wanted, and Smithsonian administrators were much more sensitive to how requests were handled when powerful politicians got involved.81 Though it required significantly more labor than distributing the standardized educational sets, curators usually went out of their way to fulfill specific desiderata when they sensed the need was genuine and the materials would likely see extensive use.

Rochester, New York The 1902 exchange with the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute illustrates the inter- and intra-organizational dynamics of exchange negotiations.82 It begins with a letter from John Stewart, financial secretary of the Athenaeum, to Smithsonian secretary Samuel Langley. Having recently visited Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute, where he saw “a very fine exhibit of basketry, pottery, and blankets,” he sought similar “contributions” from the Smithsonian’s “surplus.”83 He included a circular about the Athenaeum, extolling its virtues—good buildings, more than 3,500 pupils enrolled—but no museum. The Athenaeum offered courses in basketry, weaving, and ceramics, and was slowly building a collection of these items. Another letter followed, from US House Representative from New York James B. Perkins, which stated that he understood the Smithsonian had “a surplus of basketry, pottery, blankets, etc.” and he trusted it would be possible to “furnish the Mechanics Institute a large and full exhibit.”84 The request was forwarded to William Henry Holmes, anthropology department head, who responded to the Smithsonian’s administration: “Such requests are quite common. We really have no ‘overflow’ in this or any

114

Exchanging Objects

other branch. Our duplicate series are available for exchange, and I know of no authority on my part or on the part of any one save the Secretary or Congress to send out valuable collections as gifts.”85 Rochester’s request fell outside exchange norms, especially since they were not offering specimens in trade. Smithsonian administration conveyed a version of Holmes’s note to Perkins and Stewart, noting that duplicate baskets and pottery were limited in number, since there had been no recent culling of the “general series” in order to identify more duplicates. If the Athenaeum “could offer in exchange some objects desired” by the USNM, “it might perhaps be possible to make before very long a selection of some articles.”86 Holmes did not want Rochester to assume the USNM was offering for free what could also be purchased in a mail order catalog.87 Perkins was irritated. Demonstrating a lack of knowledge toward the requirement of research collections, he suggested that rather than keeping “spare” specimens in storage, they should be put to use. And as Rochester had no “exhibits to trade,” it would be “impracticable” to ask for anything in return.88 In his view, anything not on display was available to be sent out, and the curators should be able to quickly send objects and information that could easily be translated into an exhibit. This was an assumption that USNM curators found unreasonable. Langley did not budge, and rather restated that there were practically no ethnological duplicates to send at the present time. As a means of communicating exchange norms, he added a detailed description of the process in order to promote transparency, and to clear up any assumptions or misunderstandings, specifically addressing Perkins’s frustration over being asked to send specimens in trade. Under the law the collections of the Museum may be added to and their variety increased through the medium of exchanges. When, therefore, an offer to exchange, coming from another institution, promises to materially benefit the National collections, I feel justified in approving the transaction if it can be consummated by selections from among the inferior specimens in the Museum series. It was in accordance with this long established policy that the proposition was made to the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute. I would say further that ethnological material is both difficult and expensive to obtain, and duplicates rarely occur in any of the collections which reach the Museum. In the lines of zoology and geology, however, the Government surveys have at times supplied many duplicate specimens, which to the extent of the facilities at my command have been made up into sets for distribution to educational establishments throughout the country. Marine invertebrates, fishes, and possibly some geological specimens might now be furnished, but I judge that material of this character is not desired by the Institute at Rochester.89

Networking the US National Museum

115

The issue was the scope and timing of Rochester’s request. While modest collections (ranging from a handful to upwards of fifty specimens) were regularly sent out, assembling a variety of objects and information enough for an exhibit was a significant request. Exhibit curation and logistics was time consuming, and the curators were tasked not only with curating exhibits for the USNM, but also for world’s fairs and regional expositions. The Smithsonian, including the anthropology department, had prepared exhibits for the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo from May to November 1901, after which time those exhibits were transferred to the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition in Charleston.90 This exposition ended on May 31, 1902, and the Rochester requests were initiated in September. The curators and their assistants would be busy receiving and disassembling the exhibit components, and at the same time they had begun making preparations for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Rochester’s inability to offer an exchange could have ended the matter. Holmes had no interest in diverting departmental resources to assist Rochester in creating exhibits. But in 1903 Holmes stepped down as department head to assume leadership of the BAE. Mason was promoted.91 Basketry was a long-time research interest of Mason’s, and he looked for ways to nurture interest in its study. Mason wrote to Stewart privately, offering the help that Holmes had refused.92 Stewart was quick to take Mason up on his offer to send baskets, and conveyed his specific needs. We have not at present any educational exhibit in showing the technical processes in basketry. . . . We have had large and enthusiastic classes for the past two years, and teachers have worked without the aid of the exhibit which you so kindly offer to send us, but are, of course, hampered for lack of same. We would be very grateful to you if you would send us a complete educational series showing all the processes involved in your book. If you will send with this, also, baskets under construction, and the finished product, it would be simply invaluable to us.93

Stewart had no idea the scope of what he had asked. Mason’s Basketwork of the North American Aborigines (1884) contained fifty-four illustrations of basketry and techniques alone. Finding duplicates of every type in the USNM collections was impracticable. But Mason wanted to do what he could. Mason sent five carefully selected baskets from the Southwest (Zuni and Hopi), California (“Missions”), and the Northwest Coast (“British Columbia” and Bella Coola).94 These baskets exemplified aspects of his scholarship and illustrated construction techniques. Handling examples of Indigenous artistry can be considered as part of a broad suite of peda-

116

Exchanging Objects

gogical approaches used in industrial education, including development of physical and manual dexterities via the production of handicrafts.95 Mason included only a cursory description of each basket’s relationship to technical processes. Describing the Hopi basket, he noted that it “resembles so nearly the coiled basketry of Northern Africa and Egypt, that these Indians who came very early in contact with the Spaniards are supposed to have received suggestion from examples which the explorers had with them.”96 This comparison reflected the ethnological approach of cultural comparison. Mason’s descriptions emphasized technique, couched within a larger discourse of artistic degeneration caused by acculturation, a prominent mode of interpretation associated with salvage anthropology.

Evansville, Indiana Members of Congress were routinely called on to endorse exchange requests. Though it added an additional layer of paperwork, the correspondence could open up a dialogue between Smithsonian administrators and influential politicians. The transmission of duplicates to the Museum at Evansville in Indiana demonstrates the attentiveness of Smithsonian administrators to the fact that not all politicians held equal political clout. Though the Evansville museum’s chairman requested that the Honorable James A. Hemenway visit the USNM to request duplicates in person, Hemenway simply forwarded the request to Secretary Langley.97 The response was quick. Langley noted that the Smithsonian, was “in a position to render substantial aid to the new museum,” and that he had “given directions that the matter receive prompt attention.”98 This request merited priority on the basis of Hemenway’s political position. In an internal note, Executive Curator Frederick True remarked, “This is a request through the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the House. . . . I think it would be best to find out from Mr. Haln if there are not a few mounted mammals available in storage. . . . It is a good investment.”99 The use of the term “investment” alludes to formal economic thinking loosely connected to the specimen exchange system. Gareth Knapman has considered specimen exchange as having dimensions comparable to that of comparative advantage, where the ability to corner the market on specimen types allowed transactors to use limited supply to their advantage.100 A return of specimens was not a concern: the opening of a dialogue with Hemenway was valuable enough. Once Hemenway had been assured this would be seen to, Assistant Secretary Richard Rathbun wrote directly to the Evansville museum chairman,

Networking the US National Museum

117

W. A. Whittle, who detailed the request’s specifics. “Most highly prized” would be an “ethnological collection” of “stone implements, pottery, basketry, bead-work representing different styles of handiwork of our North American Indians, as well as a set of some 60 casts of aboriginal stone implements and weapons.”101 True marshalled the relevant curators. A standard geological collection, “consisting of minerals, rocks, and ores of the United States,” would be sent, but Rathbun asked geology curator George Merrill to also include “a few striking specimens.”102 There had been some internal discussion about the archaeological casts. The last available set was originally slated to go to Erie, Pennsylvania, but Rathbun redirected them to Evansville.103 Seventy-nine archaeological and ethnological objects were also included. Satisfying Congressman Hemenway was of paramount importance, accomplished through speedy responses and selected objects, which were generous in number, would be attractive on display, and serve the museum and the community’s educational objectives. The receipt of the collection was recorded in the city’s newspaper. Dr. Whittle has been working on the plan to secure the Washington collection some time and was exceedingly fortunate in getting it as it was the last of a valuable series collected by the government ten years ago. . . . Mr. Hemenway interested himself in the Evansville museum and exerted his influence to secure the handsome and valuable collection received yesterday. In a letter to Dr. Whittle, R. Rathbun, the assistant secretary of the National museum, stated that this was the last of the present series and that there had been many demands for it.104

Though the paper offered a description of the contents of the collection, the emphasis was on who was responsible for securing it, and how Hemenway’s political clout meant that Evansville was favored in comparison to museums in other domestic locales. In domestic exchanges, satisfying members of Congress, and by extension their constituents, was not a given. Smithsonian administrators respected curatorial prerogatives and decisions, but took into account the politician’s relative power and influence with regard to the filling of requests. In the Rochester case, whether or not curators wished to comply with requests did not solely rest on the reported presence or absence of duplicates. The initial denial to send basketry followed by the decision’s reversal was likely not a product of the anthropology department replenishing its duplicate stocks, but rather the prerogative of curators to engender public education (through assistance to others interested in their specialty) while maintaining a robust collection for study, display, and subsequent exchange. The Evansville case provides a point of contrast. Smith-

118

Exchanging Objects

sonian administrators prefaced their initial directives to curators involved in sourcing duplicates. Curators understood that making a good showing with this request would be beneficial for the Institution as a whole.

Negotiating the Content of Exchanges Compared to the natural history departments and their educational series, anthropology curators filled exchange requests on an individual basis. There were supply concerns for anthropological collections, which imposed limits on the variety of duplicates that could be exchanged. Specimens with the greatest research and educational value were those that exhibited little Euroamerican influence, and with the encroachment of explorers and settlers to the Western parts of the nation, the procurement of these objects became increasingly difficult to impossible. The size and content of exchanges varied greatly. What each trading partner could spare, and how desirable the offer was were always major considerations. Social relationships and prestige factored into negotiations, and, as the following examples demonstrate, smaller museums approached the Smithsonian as a potential benefactor. Though anthropology might be asked by administrators to assemble a collection to exchange, the returns might be only natural history specimens. Exchanges usually required disciplinary expertise to assess the value of the material on offer.

Concepción, Chile In 1902 the Smithsonian received a letter addressed to Leland Howard, honorary curator of insects, from Edwyn Reed, a British naturalist who had been recently appointed the new director of a government museum in Concepción, Chile.105 At its inception, the museum was “an empty chapel (that might be taken for a second rate barn) and an empty house, for offices and workshops.” Reed said he was determined to “soon change all that.” Though the weather would delay “good collecting” for another month, his son was already out “ ‘bug-hunting’ ” and the taxidermist was seeing to “the birds and fishes.” Reed promised he would not forget the Smithsonian’s potential needs. In six months, he hoped to send “a fair collection of insects, crustaceans, etc., for identification,” at the genus level. Reed knew “the Chilean insects well,” but had “no means of knowing modern genera.” Carrying out scientific work and museum administration in the geographic periphery of transatlantic scientific community bolstered Reed’s

Networking the US National Museum

119

desperation for the Smithsonian’s largess. He needed access to publications and correspondence networks to develop his knowledge of advances in taxonomy. He also needed specimens to stock the museum. If the U.S. National Museum, or any other museum, could send me anything to help start my Museum, I should be very pleased and would make a fair return in birds, fishes, crustaceans, insects, etc. Any largish specimens, or heads, or anything, even in second class preservacion [sic], would be welcome. Especially so as in a months [sic] time I shall have a beggarly array of half empty cases. With regard to books—the nascient [sic] Museum has not one yet, though I have brought here some 1000 volumes from my private library. Here the Smithsonian might shine brightly.106

This request was directed to the Smithsonian as a whole and contributions from multiple departments were needed to assist Reed in fashioning exhibits. It was an opportunity for the USNM to expand its South American holdings. Anthropology promised “a type set of stone implements and some specimens illustrating Eskimo life.”107 The USNM sent sixty-one archaeological specimens, representing eleven types, the largest group composed of arrowpoints. All sourced from the United States, the collection illustrated the diversity of lithic forms. Sixteen ethnological objects from Alaska were selected, including knives, spoons, lance heads, and earrings.108 As a sample of objects used in daily life, it could be arranged to represent a culture area. Sets of fishes and marine invertebrates were available and could be sent, and Merrill agreed to “get together a collection of rocks, minerals and fossils, perhaps 100 varieties.”109 Though anthropology and geology were on board, birds and mammals were a problem. The biology department’s head curator informed the assistant secretary that “after a careful examination of our duplicates, made at great expense of labor and time . . . there are no mounted mammals or birds available to send.”110 However, clarification that Reed would accept “any mammals, birds, etc.,” as long as they were in the curator’s estimation “at all presentable,” meant that the USNM was able to send sixty-one mounted birds and five mounted mammals.111 Quantity outweighed concerns over quality and variety for Reed, particularly since he was yet unable to reciprocate.

Copenhagen, Denmark The 1895 exchange between the Royal Ethnographic Museum in Copenhagen and the USNM was the final one of three involving anthropological

120

Exchanging Objects

material. The first was in 1867 through Baird, and the second was just a year earlier through Holmes, a collection of American aboriginal quarry specimens, similar to other sets sent to several European museums and connected to the American Paleolithic debate.112 Mason had connected with Sophus Müller, an anthropologist and the museum’s director, on his 1889 European tour. During their meeting, Mason inquired about the possibility of an exchange of North American specimens from the USNM for those from Greenland. At the time, Mason’s request was a nonstarter. The Danish museum had only one collection from East Greenland, collected by Captain Holm on his first expedition. Müller later noted, “Having received last year from the second expedition to the east coast a certain amount of ethnographical specimens from Angmagsalik,” he was “now in the position to offer to [Mason] a collection” of objects, mostly the material culture of everyday life, including full sets of clothing, tools, toys, and a medicine man’s drum. In return, Müller hoped to receive “a list of specimens” that could be offered to the museum in exchange. He preferred “a serie [series] from the Zuñis if you have got some doubles from these peoples, or from the northwest coast tribes of America, particularly the Western Eskimos in Alaska.”113 The timing seemed right to make an exchange. Mason was “truly glad” to receive Müller’s request and wrote that the USNM could send “a very nice collection from the Pueblo country.” Mason identified seven categories (or classes) of material culture from which he could offer duplicates, demonstrating the range and wealth of the USNM. The categories included photographs of native people and their dwellings, pottery, textiles, basketry, agricultural implements, musical instruments, and ritual objects.114 Müller was pleased with the proposition since his museum “did not possess anything from the Pueblos” and “it would be of great interest to get a serie [series] of specimens illustrating the different points of the culture.” Müller requested that Mason send “a number of objects from each of the classes” mentioned in the letter.115 Müller sent sixty objects, and the USNM sent twenty-two. Both men had authority to make exchange selections, underscoring the shared perceptions of the conditions under which exchanges could be made. Duplicates or “doubles” must be available, and the collections should be of equivalent value.116 For Müller, duplicates came following multiple collections from a single locality. His request for Zuni objects reflects a knowledge of research directions in American anthropology, since well-known ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing had published on Zuni collections and culture. Mason’s classification schema was based on material and object function, and he intended to send specimens that would

Networking the US National Museum

121

represent the technical process of weaving. Basketry and pottery would illustrate variation in design. Both requests initially identified a geographic area but were relatively unspecific, reflecting the general dearth of objects in the respective museums’ collections. They relied on each other’s expertise to fill in the specifics.

The Tyrol, Austria Exchange contents were determined on an individualized basis, though shaped by the positionality of each exchange partner. Wohlgemuth Carl, an Austrian professor, sent a collection of Tyrolean peasant objects, including a beer mug, two copper wine pots, a quillwork belt, and a fur cap, which he hoped to exchange for “Indian ethnographic material, preferably weapons” for his “small Ethnographic School collection.”117 Though Carl was promised a suitable return, more than a year lapsed and he had received nothing. Overwork of the curators had caused the delay. Mason lamented in an internal memo,“I do not know what I can do for Mr. Carl now. The Civil Service work, the new galleries, the Fewkes collection, Nashville coming home, nearly set me crazy. I do not believe that I could pull my thoughts together long enough to get up a collection for him. When Mr. Sweeny comes back from his leave of absence, if there is time before he goes to Nashville, perhaps, he can attend to it for our German friend.”118 Assistants in the anthropology department were sometimes tasked with selecting duplicates, though curators reviewed and approved their selections. Carl eventually received thirteen objects from the USNM: nine weapons, six of which were arrow and lance points. A war club, knife, and adze blade were the only other weapons sent.119 The long delay did not dissuade Carl from sending additional objects in order to secure more weapons. The objects were principally clothing, both complete outfits and individual elements, including a watch and a pair of false sleeves, also a “glass bottle in which the peasants keep the Holy water” for “ceremonial purposes.” These were useful for outfitting lay figures. Noting their age and provenance Carl described the objects as “fifty years old, are not more used, and are relics of the mountains peasants.” In return he asked for specific objects, including “an American shield, Tomahawk, Peace-whistle, or scalp by knife” if possible, or “other objects of American ethnology.”120 Responsiveness was an issue, since Carl needed the returns prior to the school’s fall start. Quality was not critical: “For every broken piece we will be very thankful.” Drawing on familiar discourses

122

Exchanging Objects

of salvage and limited supply, and as a means of upping the objects’ value, he noted these kinds of objects “will not last much longer, and in a short time it will not be possible for collectors to obtain these old relics from the mountain peasants.”121 The USNM could not meet Carl’s deadline. Curators were unavailable or were away from Washington conducting research. Time passed, no duplicates materialized, and Mason was again pressured by his superiors. Mason reached out to a colleague, musical instrument curator E. H. Hawley, and asked if there was anything he could spare. Hawley responded: “I think the ‘Domba’ Kiowa Country flute No. 152899 could be spared, coll. by James Mooney.”122 Eleven objects were eventually sent: four weapons, including a Klamath bow and arrow, an Arapaho “pipe-hatchet,” and a Hopi “rabbit club,” but no flute.123 Carl did not offer a rationale for requesting weapons, but his specificity in naming particular weapons perhaps demonstrates familiarity with stereotypical Plains objects similar to those used in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows that toured Europe in the 1880s and 1890s. If Carl did not receive the weapons he requested, he was liable to send another collection for exchange. The curators were too busy to engage in lengthy correspondence, and the Tyrolean objects were acceptable, if not highly desirable. Though unable to meet Carl’s deadline, they did comport themselves appropriately in terms of sending and receiving duplicates.

Value and Equivalencies Standard practice when exchanging duplicates was to use economic valuations to ensure equivalence. An anthropology curator might be able to estimate an equivalence of Zuni water vases to Dayak shields, but determining how many vases were equivalent to a collection of deep-sea fishes required much broader knowledge of specimen markets, and could result in disagreements and long-standing discord between departments. Though the USNM as a whole could expect an equal return, departmental givers were not always receivers. In a letter to Baird, mollusk curator William Healy Dall complained of this problem. I would say that the shells sent by Miss Black were dead and worn Unios of no value whatever. I should be glad to comply with Mr. Ridgeway’s request, but, as I have already several times represented, if the museum expects the Conchological Department to make up the deficiencies in exchanges of all the others, it is absolutely necessary to obtain some cheap material for that purpose. We are without the sort of stuff required and all that we have on hand is either only of interest in a scientific

Networking the US National Museum

123

point of view or too valuable to spare except for an equivalent rendered. I object strongly to the spending of the small resources of the department for other people’s stone implements, and so leaving our own department unable by exchange to make up the gaps in its own series.124

Use of economic valuations streamlined record-keeping. Holmes noted, “In making exchanges we always try to reduce the valuation to dollars and cents, which is after all the only practical method.”125 While this might be the practical method for record-keeping and monitoring exchange accounts, individual curators were tasked with assessing market values of specimens, requiring knowledge of market trends and the ability to forge consensus with their trading partners. Economic valuations were usually accepted without extensive negotiation, though if a trading partner had vastly overestimated the worth of their duplicates, this could impact future trades.

Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, Illinois While most exchange equivalencies were easily negotiated, other exchange relationships involved far more trading that relied on careful record-keeping. Keeping exchange accounts balanced was necessary to maintain professional relationships and ensure future exchanges. In 1901, Field Columbian Museum anthropology curator George Dorsey negotiated for eight Plains Indian shields from the USNM collected by James Mooney. Though the Field already possessed similar shields, Dorsey wanted to expand the collection. He proposed to send the “entire reserve La Plata collection numbering several hundred specimens, several specimens of basketry from British Guiana relating to the preparation of Casava [sic], and a collection of stone, wood and pottery from the Montes collection of a value of $200; or a collection of 200 specimens from the Hasler Paraguay collection, of much greater value.”126 Assigning economic valuations allowed for multiple objects to be commoditized in bulk in order to hasten their exchange. USNM curators discussed the proposal and Mason was receptive, since the department had some materials from Paraguay and would soon be receiving more.127 This was an opportunity to build. Dorsey changed tack, suggesting the USNM take both the Paraguay collection and the Montes collection. Understanding that both collections would far exceed the value of the shields, Dorsey asked that the Paraguay material be accepted as a “credit” at the USNM’s “own valuation—for some future exchange.” The suggestion was motivated by practical concerns. Dorsey had all the material out and had sorted it into “three great collections, one of which goes to New York, one to Philadelphia, and the other” Dorsey was “anxious” to

124

Exchanging Objects

send to Washington. Dorsey assured that “compensating material” from the USNM could be agreed on at “some future time.”128 And it was. To complete the exchange, twenty-seven objects from Southeast Asia, most from the Andaman Islands, were sent to the Field Columbian Museum in November 1901.129 Economic valuations were useful in negotiating not only one-to-one equivalence, but also in creating long-term exchange relationships. Because desired duplicates were not always “in stock” between trading partners, exchange accounts allowed museums to keep track of what had been given and what was owed over a longer temporal duration. Dorsey would seem to have preferred the USNM simply take the Paraguayan material for the shields, but exchanges required mutual agreement on both needs and equivalencies.

Melbourne, Australia Interdepartmental exchanges relied on ensuring equivalencies, but also necessitated that different departments work together, which sometimes produced tensions when requested duplicates were unavailable. Curators balanced their responsibilities to maintain their collection’s authority and credibility as an irreplaceable scientific resource, against the interests and desires of other departments. Frank H. McK. Grant of North Melbourne, Australia, sent the USNM fossilized seeds for which he desired archaeological specimens from the Ohio mounds. Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology Charles Schuchert was not able to place a monetary value on them “for various reasons,” though he recommended that “as many archaeological implements be sent as can be spared.”130 Grant’s specimens had been scientifically described by the government botanists of Victoria, Australia, and held scientific value. He also offered to send related publications. Collected from the Pliocene Tertiary Auriferous Drifts of Haddon, Victoria, and sourced from Grant’s personal collection, they were “very rare indeed” and, in Grant’s opinion, “unobtainable.” Due to his “great dread of dealers,” it had been recommended to him that the USNM would send “only genuine specimens.”131 The USNM would act as a virtuous exchange partner, and, with its prestigious international reputation, could provide specimens from all over the world. However, Grant found that not all anthropological duplicates were easily parted with. Thomas Wilson made a concerted effort to fulfill Grant’s desiderata. Of the twelve object categories Grant requested, Wilson filled eight. Three of the remainder were copper objects, and very valuable. Though Grant

Networking the US National Museum

125

requested only fourteen objects total, Wilson selected fifty-three objects. Wilson may have been looking to compensate in quantity for what he could not provide in specificity. However, the initial quantity of specimens might not have been wholly Wilson’s doing, since Schuchert had urged two months prior to the final selection being transmitted that “the implements selected are about an equivalent for the fossil seeds. However if two or three more specimens can be added I think Mr. Grant cannot complain.”132 It seems Grant was pleased with the return. In a year’s time he had sent 389 specimens of Eocene and Oligocene fossils on the condition that the USNM would send both European and American archaeological material.133 Most of what Grant requested could be granted but not always to exact specifications. For example, Grant asked for a European “hammer stone with well defined depression,” to which Mason noted, “We have no hammerstones with depressions from Europe for exchange.”134 Two arrowheads from Lake Constance, Switzerland, were sent in place of the hammerstone.135 Wilson tried to supply objects from Europe at least, though he was unable to provide the specific form requested. Initiating a third exchange, Grant sought more European specimens while offering two fossils, which Schuchert valued at $25. Grant’s desiderata included “one flint hand chisel, Danish, if possible, or any European locality, Neolithic, one plummet or sinker; one flint core, European; one serpentine axe, chisel, or other implement in deerhorn socket from the Swiss Lake Dwellers.”136 Grant’s “second tier” desiderata included other specific European forms, Mexican obsidian, or perfect arrow points from Peru or Chile.137 Though four European specimens had been sent previously, Mason wished to slow further requests for this material and asked that Grant be informed of their limits: “We have only a little Danish collection presented by that Government and cannot spare a piece. If he will let us send American things, we shall be glad to serve him. The Mexican obsidian will be sent.”138 Ethnology assistant E. P. Upham selected six obsidian cores from Mexico, which were approved by Holmes. Economic valuations were essential for interdepartmental exchanges. Curators were typically respectful of the potential snags and perceived inequities in this process, where essentially one department was giving, while the other received. Ultimately, interdepartmental exchanges were beneficial to the USNM’s scientific reputation writ large. While the returns to Grant were generous at first, as exchanges proceeded the anthropology department became increasingly stingy. Though the USNM did possess archaeological material from various geographical regions, their duplicates were mainly from North America. They were not well-positioned to reciprocate in a way that would consistently meet Grant’s specific needs.

126

Exchanging Objects

Though Grant was weary of working with dealers, likely because they would drive a harder bargain, they might be able to better supply him.

Collective Goals The doing of natural history, anthropology, and museum work requires cooperation and communication on the part of many players—some major, some minor—depending on the focus of the story. The interests and actions of individuals taken in context reveal how and why the USNM kept some specimens and exchanged others. The actions of Smithsonian administrators are closely aligned with promoting and maintaining the Institution’s reputation in scientific circles as a leader in exhibition practice, with collections that were comprehensive of the national territories. Smithsonian administrators increasingly sought recognition of their expertise from a growing civic-minded class interested in developing museums in cities throughout the nation. Provision of specimens was an essential expression of these relationships. As much as the Smithsonian benefitted from nurturing a large and diverse network of collectors, scientists, and museum proprietors, association with the Smithsonian was of great value to these individuals as well, many of whom where located outside of urban centers. To be recognized by the Smithsonian, or to receive Smithsonian publications or collections, increased public appreciation of local scientific efforts, allowing local scientists to gain stature in their own communities.139 Curators’ correspondence around exchanges is characterized by passion for one’s subject, the desire to encourage that interest in others, and to educate students and teachers about disciplinary standards. These efforts align with the commitment by administrators and curators to the museum’s educational objectives. But exchange was also, quite importantly, a means of adding to collections. In addition to the research value of the objects themselves, exchanges allowed USNM curators to create and grow a domestic and international scientific network of disciplinary experts.

Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns The majority of examples discussed here consider how specimen exchange was used to engender connections between individual museums, and between museums and broader publics. The following chapter focuses on how specimen exchange was used to broker relationships between curators

Networking the US National Museum

127

in a more insular, disciplinary field. But I have intentionally foregrounded specimen exchange as an organizational strategy to prioritize the vastly important role contemporary curators and perhaps now more often collections managers have in creating institutional reputations and serving broad audiences. Whereas contemporary collections managers may be attracted to behind-the-scenes work because it superficially promises to avoid public-facing activities, past museum practice reveals that all museum work holds important potential to engage broad publics, both inside and outside the walls of the museum. While the notion of duplicate specimen is generally no longer a classification applied to collections of material culture, there are contemporary similarities, such as distinctions between educational and permanent collections. If the contexts of the exchange of duplicates tell us one thing (and I think they tell us many things), it is that education collections are not intermediate receptacles for once-permanent collection objects on their way to ultimate disposal. Educational collections—perhaps equivalent to the duplicates of decades ago—materially and viscerally represent the museum’s collections, and are poised to do the critically important work of object-based learning. These collections are not to be populated with castoffs, and collections managers should not discourage public-facing activities such as handling, even if damage is a risk. One consistent theme that runs throughout chapter 3 is an emphasis on relationship and community. Though market valuations are involved, the exchange of duplicates should simply not be understood through a formal economic lens. Though admission fees can be seen as economic transactions, museum visitors are not simply purchasing an experience, in the same way that museums were not just trading specimens like baseball cards. Our visitors, stakeholders, and broad publics are more than the source of (much needed) resources to keep our museums afloat. We can see ourselves as trying to create relationships with all our visitors and publics, even if the majority of these interactions are shallow and widespread. Museums are about relationships. I feel a distinct affinity for the exchanges with collectors and private citizens because the curators believed that the time they spent carrying these out had little benefit to their own interests. But they carried them out regardless and made a genuine effort to respond to collectors’ desiderata. My impression here is that these curators and administrators took very seriously the museum mission to serve the public— even members whose requests they found irritating and tiresome. This is an example of public service and the democratization of knowledge to return to when we are faced with too many demands and too few resources.

128

Exchanging Objects

Notes 1. The following are examples of scholarship that mention specimen exchange within larger narratives of museums and collections: Christian Feest, “European Collecting of American Indian Artifacts,” Journal of the History of Collections 5, no. 1 (1993): 1–11; Gwyneira Isaac, “Anthropology and its Embodiments: 19th Century Museum Ethnography and the Re-Enactment of Indigenous Knowledges,” Etnofoor 22, no. 1 (2010): 11–29; Arthur MacGregor, “Exhibiting Evolutionism: Darwinism and Pseudo-Darwinism in Museum Practice after 1859,” Journal of the History of Collections 21, no. 1 (2009): 77–94; H. Glenn Penny, Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 67–69; Cameron Strang, Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500–1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 22–74; Jennifer Thomas, “Compiling “God’s Great Book [of ] Universal Nature”: The Royal Society’s Collecting Strategies,” Journal of the History of Collections 23 (2011): 1–13. 2. Sally Kohlstedt, “International Exchange in the Natural History Enterprise: Museums in Australia and the United States,” in International Science and National Scientific Identity: Australia between Britain and America, eds. R.W. Home and Sally G. Kohlstedt (Dordecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 122. 3. Lena Bjerregaard, “ ‘Doubletten’—puzzles That Could Maybe Someday Be Reconstructed,” Baessler—Archiv 49 (2001): 187–92; Cornish and Driver, “ ‘Specimens Distributed’ ”; Feest, “Ethnographic Collection”; Brian Gill, “The Cheeseman-Giglioli Correspondence, and Museum Exchanges between Auckland and Florence, 1877–1904,” Archives of Natural History 37, no. 1 (2010): 131–49; Amy Margaris and Linda T. Grimm, “Collecting for a College Museum: Exchange Practices and the Life History of a 19th-Century Arctic Collection,” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 2 (2011): 109–27; Penaloza Patzak, “Guiding the Diffusion”; Philp, “Hedley Takes a Holiday”; Alice Stevenson, Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums (London: UCL Press, 2019), JSTOR Open Access Books; Simon Ville, “Researching the Natural History Trade of the Nineteenth Century,” Museum History Journal 13, no. 1 (2020): 8–19. 4. Bettina Deitz, “Making Natural History: Doing the Enlightenment,” Central European History 43 (2010): 27. Intellectual histories of natural history tend to focus on ideas, authors, and their texts. For works concerning cultural and social contexts of natural history practice, see Nicholas Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996); William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 5. Deitz, “Making Natural History,” 35.

Networking the US National Museum

129

6. Alexandra Cook, “Botanical Exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland,” History of European Ideas 33 (2007):142–56. 7. Barrow, Passion for Birds, 39. 8. Latour, Science in Action, 219–21. 9. Kohlstedt, “International Exchange,” 123. 10. Bennett, Birth of the Museum. 11. Cornish and Driver, “ ‘Specimens Distributed,’ ” 336. 12. Sheets-Pyenson, “How to ‘Grow,’ ” 135. 13. For example, Mason requested that a collection of baskets from California Mission Indians offered by H. N. Rust be purchased with funds from the Secretary’s Reserve. See Holmes to Rathbun, 9 September 1902, Box 1, Series 1, Records of USNM-DoA, NAA. 14. Rivinus and Youssef, Spencer Baird, 133–6. 15. “Some of our economical friends in Congress last winter, for the first time in the history of our Institution, cut off our little appropriation for the purchase of rare and desirable specimens. We have had a great deal of amusement among ourselves in the discussion of the question whether the phrase ‘Bureau of American Ethnology’ can be twisted so as to include the Philippines.” Mason to Albert Ernest Jenks, 15 September 1904, Box 1, Series 1, USNMDoA, NAA. 16. Mason to Rathbun, 8 March 1905, Box 1, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 17. Bennett, Birth of the Museum, 24. 18. See Penny, Objects of Culture, 51–94. 19. Robert Foster “Commodity Forensics: The Secret Life of the P.G.T. Black Collection,” Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 42 (2015): 104. 20. Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 13. 21. An exception to this is the exchange relationship between the USNM and Enrico Giglioli; see Catherine A. Nichols, “The Smithsonian Institution’s ‘Greatest Treasures’: Valuing Museum Objects in the Specimen Exchange Industry,” Museum Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2018): 13–29. 22. Foster, “Commodity Forensics,” 106. 23. Richard Wilk and Lisa Cliggett, Economies and Cultures: Foundation of Economic Anthropology (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2007), 7. 24. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000 [1950]). 25. Anna Tsing, “Sorting Out Commodities: How Capitalist Value Is Made Through Gifts,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3, no. 1 (2013): 23. 26. Gregory, Gifts and Commodities, 106. 27. Jane Fajans, ed. Exchanging Products, Producing Exchange (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1993). 28. Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1972), 188–95. 29. Foster, “Commodity Forensics,” 106.

130

Exchanging Objects

30. David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 220. 31. Philp, “Hedley Takes a Holiday,” 273. 32. Graeber, Anthropological Theory, 220. 33. Brooke Penaloza Patzak, “An Emissary from Berlin: Franz Boas and the Smithsonian Institution, 1887– 1888,” Museum Anthropology 41, no.1 (2018): 30. 34. Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 35. The data and analyses presented in this chapter and chapter 4 are drawn from records directly related to the exchange of anthropological specimens at the USNM from 1882 to 1920. The specimen distribution registers (SIA RU 120) contain the chronological entries of object transmissions sent from the SI and thus provides a temporal and (to some degree) content overview of exchanged materials. The registers do not only serve as a record of exchanges—they also document every type of specimen transmission. This includes specimens sent as gifts and exchanges, but it also includes loans, the return of specimens sent to the SI for (1) identification, (2) replication through casting, and (3) offer of purchase, to their owners. While many of the individual register entries specify the terms on which specimens were transmitted, there are numerous omissions, and in some cases it is a challenge to determine the type of transmission without further research. This analysis focuses on duplicate specimens sent from the SI as exchanges (including distributions and gifts). Thus, the social and institutional network these transactions construct is different from an analysis of the entirety of transactions listed in the registers. Analysis of the many Smithsonian correspondents would render yet another set of connections. Companion to the register entry (RU 120) is a folder with a corresponding identification number (a D number) containing related paperwork on the shipment (SIA RU 186). The contents of these files are quite varied. Some contain rich correspondences and catalog lists while others contain a simple memorandum. There are a significant number of transmissions recorded in the register that do not have a corresponding folder. There are several reasons for this: (1) no accompanying information was retained at the time, (2) the BAE retained the paperwork and I was unable to locate it, (3) documentation of the content of transmissions was recorded in other administrative files (I have found related records in SIA RU 112, RU 113, RU 114, RU 115, and RU 116), (4) the folders were culled later and some information filed in new places, (5) exchange paperwork was filed in the corresponding accession file. In some cases, I have been able to identify a corresponding accession file of material received by the SI as part of the exchange. The reason for excluding exchanges after 1920 from this analysis is due in part to a change in the record-keeping systems of the USNM following the death of the registrar, S. C. Brown. After around 1920, the specimen distribution registers and filing system were discontinued, and all exchange correspondence was filed in a general administrative file (SIA RU 192) or in accession files (SIA RU 305). The size of these

Networking the US National Museum

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

131

files was too large to continue a systematic review to document temporal and geographic trends for anthropological exchanges, though I include some files dealing with exchanges after 1920. Specimen exchange was most extensively practiced between 1885 and 1905 (table 3.1) and the number of exchanges decreased after that time. Larson, Petch, and Zeitlyn, “Social Networks.” See Sheets-Pyenson, “How to ‘Grow,’ ” 124, on broken specimens; see Nichols, “ ‘Greatest Treasures,’ ” 18, on exchanging types. Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 125–43. H. V. Hilprecht to Goode, 3 December 1889, File D6111, RU 186, SIA. I have chosen to exclude the relatively few physical anthropology materials in my analysis since the Division of Physical Anthropology was not established until 1903 and, previous to this time, the US Army Medical Museum curated these collections. See Catherine A. Nichols, “Museum Networks: The Exchange of the Smithsonian Institution’s Duplicate Anthropology Collections” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2014), 605–67. Mason to Balfour, 26 February 1890, File D6178, RU 186, SIA. For scholarship on Giglioli, see Nichols, “ ‘Greatest Treasures’ ”; for Aldrich, see Nichols, “Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates.” Robert Foster, “Notes for a Networked Biography: The P.G.T. Black Collection of Oceanic Things,” Museum Anthropology 35, no. 2 (2012): 149–69. See Parezo, “Formation of Ethnographic Collections”; Fowler, Laboratory for Anthropology. Curtis Hinsley, “Collecting Cultures and Cultures of Collecting: The Lure of the American Southwest, 1880–1915,” Museum Anthropology 16, no. 1 (1992): 12–20. Sally Kohlstedt, “George Brown Goode, 1851–1896,” in The Origins of Natural Science in America: Essays of George Brown Goode, ed. Sally Kohlstedt (Washington, DC: SI Press, 1991), 1–21; Edward P. Alexander, Museum Masters: Their Museums and Their Influence (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1995), 277–310. Sheets-Pyenson, “How to ‘Grow,’ ” 123. Catherine A. Nichols and Nancy J. Parezo, “Social and Material Connections: Otis T. Mason’s European Grand Tour and Collections Exchanges,” History and Anthropology 28, no. 1 (2017): 58–83. Sally Kohlstedt, “Otis T. Mason’s Tour of Europe: Observation, Exchange, and Standardization in Public Museums, 1889,” Museum History Journal 1, no. 2 (2008): 181–207. Mason to Goode, 31 July 1889, Box 1, Folder 1, RU 7086, SIA. Mason to Goode, 1 August 1889, Box 1, Folder 1, RU 7086, SIA. Luis de Herrera to Holmes, 13 March 1903, Accession File 40654, RU 305, SIA. Susan Sheets-Pyenson, “Civilizing by Nature’s Example: The Development of Colonial Museum of Natural History, 1850–1900,” in Scientific Colonialism:

132

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

Exchanging Objects

A Cross-Cultural Comparison, eds. Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg (Washington, DC: SI Press, 1987), 367. Luis de Herrera to Holmes, 13 March 1903, Accession File 40654, RU 305, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” 6 April 1903, File D16669, RU 186, SIA. Accession File 22633, RU 305, SIA. Kodera to Goode, 27 January 1891, File D8911, RU 186, SIA. Mason to Goode, 13 January 1890, File D8911, RU 186, SIA. Geare to Mason, 2 June 1893, File D8911, RU 186, SIA. Holmes to Rathbun, 1 November 1912, File D27298, RU 186, SIA. Rathbun to Komitet Imp. Geograficeskago Obscesstva, Muzei Obscesstva, Irkutsk, Siberia, 13 November 1913, File D27298, RU 186, SIA. Accession File 63970, RU 305, SIA. Thomas to Goode, 17 February 1896, File D9803, RU 186, SIA. Mason to Goode, 14 October 1891, and “Distribution of Specimens,” 19 October 1891, File D6912, RU 186, SIA. Memorandum to Registrar, 14 October 1891, Accession File 24931, RU 305, SIA. See correspondence in Accession File 37390, RU 305, SIA. Elizabeth Hutchinson, The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890–1915 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 19. Wilson’s scrap note, undated [1895], Accession File 28989, RU 305, SIA. Holcomb to Goode, 31 December 1894, Accession File 28989, RU 305, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” 11 February 1895, File D8919, RU 186, SIA. McGinnis to Wilson, 1 October 1888, Accession File 21240, RU 305, SIA. Wilson to Goode, 17 November 1888, File D5600, and also see File D5558, RU 186, SIA. “Distribution of Specimens,” 8 May 1891, File D6720, RU 186, SIA. Bruce Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 74. See David Meltzer, The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of America’s Ice Age Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 79. Trigger, Archaeological Thought, 107. Meacham to curator of the Department of Anthropology, undated, Accession File 25091, RU 305, SIA. Wilson to Mrs. Meacham, undated [1892], Accession File 25091, RU 305, SIA. See Catherine A. Nichols, “Illustrating Anthropological Knowledge: Texts, Images & Duplicate Specimens at the Smithsonian Institution and the Pitt Rivers Museum,” in Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation, eds. Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt, and Caroline Cornish (London: UCL Press, 2021) 121–148. Walsh, “Collections as Currency,” 206.

Networking the US National Museum

133

82. The organization is now the Rochester Institute of Technology. 83. John A. Stewart to Secretary Langley, 12 September 1902, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 84. James B. Perkins to Langley, 13 September 1902, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 85. Holmes (Head Curator, Anthropology) to Geare, 15 September 1902, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 86. Ravenel to Perkins, 16 September 1902, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 87. Jonathan Batkin, “Tourism Is Overrated: Pueblo Pottery and the Early Curio Trade, 1880–1910,” in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, eds. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 282–300. 88. Perkins to Langley, 3 October 1902, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 89. Langley to Perkins, 28 October 1902, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 90. SIAR for 1902 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1903), 16. 91. SIAR for 1903, Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1905), 51. 92. Memo, 2 February 1903, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 93. Stewart to Mason, 7 February 1903, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 94. “Invoice of Specimens,” File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 95. Ezra Shales, Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2010), 103–11. 96. Draft letter by Mason, undated, File D16512, RU 186, SIA. 97. Whittle to Hemenway, 8 December 1904, File D18973, RU 186, SIA. 98. Langley to Hemenway, 14 December 1904, File D18973, RU 186, SIA. 99. Scrap note from True to Dr. Benedict, no date [1905], File D18973, RU 186, SIA. 100. Gareth Knapman, “Exchanges and the Historical Construction of Collections,” in Inspiring Action: Museums and Social Change (Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc, 2009), 58–75. 101. Whittle to Rathbun, 30 December 1904, File D18973, RU 186, SIA. 102. Emphasis in original. Rathbun to Merrill, 9 January 1905, File D18973, RU 186, SIA. 103. Scrap note, undated, [1905] File D18973, RU 186, SIA. 104. “Valuable Relics for the Museum,” The Courier (Evansville, IN), 18 March 1905. 105. Patience A. Schell, “Edwyn Charles Reed,” accessed 21 May 2020, http:// www.bbk.ac.uk/ibamuseum/texts/Schell01A.htm. 106. Emphasis in original. Edwyn Reed to L. O. Howard, 12 October 1902, File D16504, RU 186, SIA. 107. Geare to Mason, 1 December 1902, File D16504, RU 186, SIA. 108. “Invoice of Specimens,” 27 December 1902, File D16504, RU 186, SIA. 109. George Merrill’s scrap note, undated, File D16504, RU 186, SIA. 110. True to Rathbun, 31 January 1903, File D16504, RU 186, SIA. 111. Emphasis in original. Quoted text from scrap notes by Lucas and True, undated; “Data for Letter Transmitting Specimens,” 10 February 1903, File D16504, RU 186, SIA.

134

112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139.

Exchanging Objects

Nichols, “Illustrating Anthropological Knowledge.” Müller to Mason, 7 November 1893, File D8930, RU 186, SIA. Mason to Müller, 29 November 1893, Accession File 28353, RU 305, SIA. Müller to Goode, 2 May 1894, File D8930, RU 186, SIA. Müller to Mason, 7 November 1893, File D8930, RU 186, SIA. Quoted text from Wohlgemuth Carl to Director, SI, 1 September 1897, File D11669, RU 186, SIA; see also, Accession card, 2 March 1896, Accession File 30402, RU 305, SIA. Mason to Geare, 20 October 1897, File D11669, RU 186, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” 9 February 1898, File D11669, RU 186, SIA. Carl to Director [SI], 18 May 1901, Accession File 38134, RU 305, SIA. Carl to Director [SI], 14 August 1901, Accession File 38134, RU 305, SIA. Hawley to Mason, 9 March 1902, Accession File 38134, RU 305, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” 20 March 1902, File D15468, RU 186, SIA. Dall to Baird, 9 April 1886, Box 2, Folder 12, RU 30, SIA. Holmes to Juan Ambrosetti, 23 March 1911, Accession File 51680, RU 305, SIA. Emphasis in original. Dorsey to Holmes, 6 April 1901, Accession File 38093, RU 305, SIA. Mason to Holmes, 8 April 1901, Accession File 38093, RU 305, SIA. Dorsey to Holmes, 10 April 1901, Accession File 38093, RU 305, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” November 1901, File D15461, RU 186, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” and note by Schuchert, 9 February 1898, File D11627, RU 186, SIA. Grant to unnamed [Sir], 28 August 1897, File D11627, RU 186, SIA. Schuchert to Holmes, 22 November 1897, File D11627, RU 186, SIA. True to Mason, 3 February 1900, File D13569, RU 186, SIA. Emphasis in original. Scrap note in Mason’s hand, undated, File D13569, RU 186, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” 9 April 1900, File D13569, RU 186, SIA. Memorandum to Holmes, undated but before 23 December 1902, File D16712, RU 186, SIA. Grant to unnamed [Sir], 26 February 1903, File D16712, RU 186, SIA. Scrap note by Mason, 31 March 1903, File D16712, RU 186, SIA. Daniel Goldstein, “ ‘Yours for Science’: The Smithsonian Institution’s Correspondents and the Shape of Scientific Community in NineteenthCentury America,” Isis 85, no. 4 (1994): 588–89.

Chapter 4

Giving and Receiving Specimen Exchange between Curators, and the Shaping of Anthropological Collections The normative explanation that underpins the function of specimen exchange is that it serves to diversify a museum’s collection by providing objects positioned to represent the basic evidentiary units that constitute a system of knowledge or interpretive framework. Exchanges fill gaps. The study of specimen exchange allows us to understand a museum’s collection as “an assemblage that no longer exists.”1 The objects that composed the museum’s collection in the past are not all the same as the objects that compose it now, though registration and collections records can act as the “material traces” for a kind of archaeological construction at different temporal moments.2 By attending to specimen exchange—how it shapes the contents of the USNM’s anthropological collection—the role of social relationships remains consistently important when considering exchanges between the museum and individuals or educational sites, as well as between curators and anthropologists. These relationships constitute a part of the museum’s collection; here I explore the collection’s relational character through a range of specimen exchange examples that triangulate the relationship among research interests, exchangeable specimens, and institutional practices. By considering exchanges between museum-based disciplinary practitioners, I am working toward “situating and particularizing” objects in museum collections.3 Fredrik Svanberg suggests this approach as a means of metonymic reversal. Rather than exploring how concepts such as nation, body, and culture are articulated by objects in the museum, he suggests that museum objects structure perceptions of these concepts. Duplicates, the objects involved in specimens exchange, having been subject to classification, are then situated as representatives of anthropological knowledge. As duplicates move into new hands and contexts through exchange, they have the potential to structure both perceptions of North American ethnology and knowledge of USNM’s anthropological practice.

136

Exchanging Objects

This analysis seeks to draw increasing attention to the role of specimen exchange in expressions of museum-based anthropological interpretations. Robert Oppenheim suggests that “interpretation” in the museum context “is often assumed to reside in the arrangement and display choice of curation.”4 A considerable vein of disciplinary intellectual and institutional history in this period had brought a critical eye to anthropological exhibits, either in the museum or on the fairgrounds.5 Oppenheim argues that interpretation should be extended to activities associated with the movement of objects—their availability and acquisition, not simply their subsequent use in the museum. His attention to the contexts and intricacies of objects’ movements into museums (and thus their corresponding movement out of former contexts), allows him to consider how objects contextualized in diplomatic relationships moved into the USNM, but were later used for ethnological deployments, though this was not the interpretive intent of the collector. While this argument raises questions about the agency of collectors to shape how museum curators and anthropologists would go on to produce interpretations, it also suggests an applicable point—to consider how exchanges of duplicate specimens served the interpretive purposes of those transacting the exchanges. While curators like Otis Mason and William Henry Holmes maintained some power over the movement of anthropological specimens on the basis of their disciplinary expertise, allowing them significant latitude in determining who received what, the extent to which curators understood how these objects would be later used is dependent on their knowledge of the recipients. Furthermore, as duplicates moved to new sites they were situated into new structures of knowledge and practice. The mobility of duplicates, combined with their representativeness, creates a situation where these specimens are poised to create anthropological subjects and interpretive positions in new contexts, albeit in different curatorial hands. Exchanges between curators and anthropologists demonstrate that negotiations were impacted by a suite of factors, including those that were not wholly intellectual. Though curators engaged in exchanges as disciplinary practitioners, the institutional context—their work in and responsibilities to the museum—also figured in to exchange dynamics. While USNM curator Otis Mason’s anthropological products, specifically his publications, can be read in terms of their contributions to the production of disciplinary methods and theory, I emphasize the institutional context by examining how specimen exchange opened particular channels to the dissemination of anthropological knowledge. I conclude by exploring the decline of specimen exchange in the USNM’s anthropology department, developments that largely correlate with personnel changes.

Giving and Receiving

137

Collections Refinement: Exchanging to Fill Gaps Städtiches Museum, Weimar, Germany Exchanges were undertaken for research purposes, to provide comparative specimens. One of the USNM’s exchange partners, Dr. L. Pfeiffer, director of the Städtiches [Municipal] Museum in Weimar, Germany, was known for his work on lithic technology, particularly the techniques and materials used in the manufacture of implements from European sites. Following his visit to the USNM and meeting with Holmes, who was a recognized expert on stone implement manufacture in the American context, Pfeiffer concluded, “The work which is being done in America must become better known in Germany. I regret that the book on stone technics was not written after my visit to America.”6 He bemoaned his limited access to commensurate specimens from the Americas and the influence of the omissions in his own work. He wanted access to Holmes’s data set so that he might confirm Holmes’s conclusions. Specimens were essential. He wrote, “The study of your works on shell-work and stone implements has inspired me with a desire to possess specimens from America to confirm your statements from a technical standpoint. It is intended to make the museum in Weimar a kind of headquarters for information regarding the technique of the stone age.”7 Unable to rely on donations or his personal collecting in America to achieve a comparative collection, Pfeiffer offered from the Städtiches Museum “a piece of stone from the calcareous tuff of Taubach-Ehnugsdorf, with ashes, bones, coal and flint.” Faunal remains could also be sent to ensure equivalence, but Holmes should know that in Europe “flint is very rare and generally imported. Usually mere chips are found,” thus indicating the relative value of European flint. Going further still, he suggested possibly sending cast skeletal material. In exchange, he wanted “objects which relate to the technique and stone material in your [Holmes’s] writings.”8 To satisfy Pfeiffer, Holmes would need to select duplicates that were comparable to specimens discussed and illustrated in Holmes’s publications. The ability to exchange representative duplicates meant that a larger community of anthropologists would be able to evaluate his findings in terms of their own discoveries, leading to consensus around conclusions, or further questions. Honoring the spirit of Pfeiffer’s inquiry, Holmes selected 430 specimens that gave “a complete history of the evolution of American stone industry.” Holmes’s transmission was well received, and Pfeiffer noted that the collection would grow the interest and familiarity of German students with “American paleontology.”9

138

Exchanging Objects

University of Buenos Aires Ethnographic Museum, Argentina Juan Ambrosetti’s strategy for building the ethnographic museum of the University of Buenos Aires relied on collecting Andean archaeological material from Argentina to exchange “for ethnographic or archaeological objects from any part of the world,” in order to “enlarge the scope” of the university museum. In particular, Ambrosetti was interested in “casts of objects, monuments, etc. . . . [especially] casts of the ruins of the Southwest [made by the BAE]” in order to “stimulate the study of ethnology and archaeology among our people.”10 Ambrosetti made it a point to assure Holmes that all the duplicates the USNM would receive in return were scientifically authenticated. Collected and cataloged by museum-based scientists, the objects “and the numbers they bear are those of our own catalogue, so that you [Holmes] may feel perfectly safe regarding the material and its origin.” The selection would be made with Holmes’s research interests in mind: “Knowing that you are fond of making comparative studies concerning the technic of the manufacture of stone objects and remembering your beautiful works, I send you a lot of stone instruments in all stages of evolution, which we found among the ruins of the prehistoric city of Telcara, Humahuaca pass, province of Jujuy ([via the] railroad to Bolivia), the results of which exploration I hope to be able to publish this year.”11 In addition to the gap that the Andean material would fill at the USNM, exchanges that were intended to increase collection completeness were undertaken with particular curatorial research interests in mind. Ambrosetti chose objects not necessarily to broadly represent the archaeological traditions of Argentina but rather based on Holmes’s research interests. Though general collections-building and development was a curatorial responsibility, exchanges that contained objects of special interest to particular curators were well received. In both the German and Argentine cases, the impetus to exchange and the selection of objects that would ostensibly fill gaps could be easily influenced by the research interests of curators.

The Mechanics of Exchanges between Curators: Prospecting, Bargaining, Lapses, Favors Nineteenth-century global scientific networks were diverse in terms of vocation and social position, bringing together amateurs and avocational practitioners, museum staff and administrators, missionaries and military men. Global networks “maintained lines of communication for the exchange of ideas and specimens between locales even as they included

Giving and Receiving

139

and augmented knowledge from leading authorities and professional publications.”12 Access to publications and membership rolls of professional associations, and attendance at scientific congresses and museum visits, allowed potential exchange transactors to share information and specimens, oftentimes communicating knowledge, interests, and desiderata through correspondence. Most exchanges were negotiated via correspondence, but initial social connections between museum curators and administrators can oftentimes be traced back to a personal meeting.13 Exchange negotiations are characterized by a desire for equivalence and facility with museum work and the requirements of scientific knowledge production, so that each transactor exhibited a shared understanding of what materials would be useful to exchange. While exchange strengthened individual relationships of the time, it has continued to create ties between giving and receiving museums, transcending the actions of those individuals. The opening of the USNM building in 1881 meant a more prominent and visible role for collections work and museum-based activities at the Smithsonian. Spencer Baird and George Brown Goode spent a great deal of time and energy pursuing exchanges, particularly with major natural history museums and scientists at international expositions. Their positions in the US Fish Commission allowed the Smithsonian to participate in European fisheries expositions and to initiate exchange relationships, resulting in additions of fishing equipment into the anthropology department. Goode’s European travels and Baird’s established reputation in the scientific community were major influences on the initiation and negotiation of the USNM’s international specimen exchanges in the 1880s, while the USNM anthropologists played a smaller role. However, Baird and Goode’s haste to secure as many extensive exchanges as possible led to some unanticipated complications.14 Exchanges with Julius Haast of New Zealand’s Canterbury Museum paint a picture of Baird and Goode as administrators with too many irons in the fire and a tendency to not always follow through on promises to exchange.

Canterbury Museum, New Zealand In 1885 Baird promised to send a North American ethnology series to Haast, who was known for trading moa bones for foreign specimens, since he had little money to purchase collections.15 Upon his return from Europe in 1887, Haast expressed “disappointment” that he had not yet received the North American specimens promised, having “always declined” the latest offers from other museums, dealers, and collectors in Europe.16

140

Exchanging Objects

The USNM’s failure to send ethnological specimens seems to have disrupted the flow of all materials with Haast, halting exchanges. He had sent specimens of nephrite in 1885 but the USNM did not reciprocate.17 In a letter to Goode two years later, Haast wrote, “You have doubtless received the case of duplicate specimens I forwarded to you in August 1885 which showed you that I am always anxious and ready to meet your wishes. . . . You have doubtless a great many duplicates and a large staff and I will not give you much trouble, to get the collection ready for us.”18 Haast further promised to send more New Zealand collections in the future. Haast died suddenly, only five days after writing to Goode. Before the USNM could honor their promise to send ethnological material, a letter arrived from Frederick Hutton, who would take over as director of the Canterbury Museum, announcing Haast’s death. Attempting to continue Haast’s exchange negotiations already in progress, Hutton offered the USNM “a very good skeleton” of a leopard seal but reported “no skeletons of whales for exchange; i.e. none in duplicate.” There were available “plenty of leg bones, vertebra and crania” of moas “but nothing like a whole skeleton; and such are not to be got except by chance.” The Canterbury Museum did not even possess a full skeleton “of a single individual” moa—theirs were made up of skeletal material from “numerous individuals.”19 Referencing the seal, mammals curator Frederick True noted in internal correspondence that it “would be a very valuable accession and this opportunity to get one ought not be neglected.”20 Mason was informed of the offer and True’s desire for the seal skeleton, and thus directed his assistant E. P. Upham to “please select 100 type specimens of common stone implements” to send in exchange.21 Since exchange negotiations were typically lengthy affairs, Baird and Goode focused their efforts on securing an initial agreement to exchange and manage the relationship, while the administrative staff and curators were left to the business of negotiating the specifics.

National Ethnographic Museum, Leiden, The Netherlands Baird’s death in 1887 changed the situation.22 His museological and scientific reputation in the United States and Europe was at the heart of many exchanges. The USNM’s anthropology curators—Mason, Holmes, and Wilson—now shouldered more responsibility for initiating exchanges. Though convention mandated that all official exchange correspondence come from the assistant secretary’s office, curators generated the content. By the early 1890s Mason had visited European museums and attended

Giving and Receiving

141

scientific meetings, which opened a more extensive network of anthropological curators and collectors. He took the lead role in an exchange between the USNM and the National Ethnographic Museum in Leiden, the Netherlands. Responding to Mason’s inquiry about scientific societies in Leiden and request for “a representative collection” of the Dutch colonies, Dr. Lindor Serrurier, the museum’s director, sent “a list of duplicates” of the Netherlands’ “East India colonies made up so as to contain representations of all groups of ethnological objects.” Before sending the collection, Serrurier wished to know which “ethnographical objects of North American Indians” Mason could spare. Mason had significant latitude: there was “very little chance” of sending objects Serrurier already possessed since he was “so extremely poor in North American objects.”23 However, Mason’s offer to send “specimens illustrating American archaeology from Alaska and from the Pueblo region” was not well received. In lieu of a proffered inventory, Mason asked Serrurier to “forward your collection first” so the USNM would “be in a better position to judge as to the extent of the collection to be prepared by us in exchange.”24 Equivalence would need to be assured. Sending no response for more than a year, Serrurier then wrote, The reason why I have kept so long a silence on your letter of the 11th of December 1893, is that I have been somewhat disappointed by it, finding that for my duplicates you offer me only specimens of American Archaeology. I do not care for objects of that nature, my Museum being an institute for Ethnology only. Please, be so kind as to clear up this misunderstanding. Are you disposed to give me ethnological objects, objects in use by the actual American tribes, in exchange for my duplicates, such as you have forwarded to my friend Dr. Hamy at Paris? I should like to know it. This principle once settled there should be no obstacle to forward to you first my duplicates, in order you might judge the extent of the collection to be prepared by you. I might give you interesting objects illustrating the ethnology of our colonies.25

Mason responded immediately, expressing regret for his gaffe. He assured Serrurier that “without doubt” the USNM could supply “a full series of ethnographical objects in actual use by existing American tribes.” Serrurier had previously mentioned that if the USNM was not in a position to exchange, they were welcome to buy the collection. Because of “limited appropriations,” the USNM was “unable to use the money for the purchase of collections made outside the limits of the United States.”26 The USNM was routinely offered collections for purchase but had to prioritize spending to secure important North American material to preclude it from entering the international market. Mason’s response went unanswered, since Serrurier had left the museum in 1896 and was replaced by German ethnologist Johann Schmeltz.

142

Exchanging Objects

Two years following Mason’s letter, in an effort to address the backlog of correspondence, Schmeltz wrote to see if the USNM remained interested in the exchange. The objects promised by Serrurier were ready to go.27 Mason consented—and not a moment too soon. Schmeltz responded, noting “another American museum has just asked me for sending duplicates from Africa and the Dutch East Indies in exchange for specimens from America.”28 Mason promised the USNM could send “good duplicate materials” from the Western Eskimo, north Pacific coast of California, California tribes, Pueblos, Mississippian mounds, and quarry workshops, asking that Schmeltz specify what he “need.”29 Schmeltz decided he would prefer to receive “ethnological specimens from the North Pacific coast of America and the California tribes.”30 Of the ninety-six specimens sent, the majority were from the Northwest Coast and Alaska, with the remainder from Plains tribes and the Pueblos. Mason suffered a stroke in 1898, so it is possible he did not make the exact selection, as conspicuously absent from the inventory list were California baskets, which Mason often exchanged.

Natural History Museum, Brussels, Belgium In 1912, during Aleš Hrdlička’s international trip to initiate exchanges of archaeology and physical anthropology, he wrote to Holmes with news of his progress. At Liege I have arranged an exchange for us. M. Chas Fraipoint, Conservator of the collections at the University will send us, . . . if possible, a complete, first-hand and properly colored set of the casts of the two Spy skeletons, . . . I think further it would be well to offer a large set of the Piney Branch stones, with perhaps some other primitive implements, etc., such as the “turtle-backs,” and a few “argillites” from Trenton, to Rutot (Mus. d’Histoire Naturelle, Brussels), for a selection from his paleoliths, many among which are wonderful specimens. The whole thing, the skulls, bones, stones, is, indeed, wonderful and is growing more so the more is found. And it is everywhere perceptible that Anthropology is reviving in consequence, assuming the position of a science not merely with a growing and promising superstructure but also with a solid and precious foundation.31

Following his departure from Brussels, anthropologist Aimé Rutot wrote to Hrdlička, citing plans to send additional specimens. He noted, “After your departure it occurred to me to make casts of my finest pieces of the Pre-Strepyian, of which I send you an original series. I desire to add the casts of the principal pieces to the original series. They will thus make a magnificent series.”32 Having promised to reciprocate but wanting also to preserve the personal and professional relationship, Hrdlička sent a memo

Giving and Receiving

143

to the USNM registrar’s office, noting the specimens Rutot sent were “really a gift to our Museum, secured by me while abroad and due in a large measure to the friendly personal relations which I had with the Professor.” Because Hrdlička had floated the possibility of reciprocation with specimens, he further clarified that Rutot “is very desirous of obtaining a few specimens showing the manufacture of Indians implements, from us, and they should be sent to him as a matter of courtesy. Officially, the whole transaction may be entered as an exchange but the word ‘exchange’ should not be used in correspondence with Prof. Rutot because it might not please him.”33 While this represents a singular instance in which a curator specifically characterized an exchange as essentially reciprocal gifts, it calls attention to the importance of individual scientists, and how exchange served to strengthen their relationships. Exchanges of specimens reflects notions of the role of data in the discipline, and the museum’s role in archiving comparable data sets, and did not serve only as procurement methods for curator’s research interests.

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii Specimen exchange offers a glimpse into how museums positioned themselves. National museums typically held extensive collections replete with exchangeable duplicates from their national or colonial territories. They exchanged with other national museums, who could supply representative or typical specimens from their national and colonial geographies. Reality was more complex. A museum’s collection depended on its date of establishment, and histories of collecting in national and colonial holdings. Writing to USNM taxidermist William Hornaday in 1891, when Hawaii was a sovereign polity, William Brigham, the curator of Hawaii’s Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, requested the USNM send publications and, if interested, propose exchanges. Brigham’s object was to “make a complete collection of all that pertains to the Ethnology and Natural History of Polynesia and Micronesia.” The Bishop held substantial Hawaiian collections, and in Brigham’s estimation they were unrivaled “except in London and Berlin, and in scientific value the British Museum must yield.”34 Due to Britain’s extensive colonial territories, the British Museum was often characterized as the most encyclopedic museum in existence. Brigham’s letter was referred to Mason, who showed immediate interest. “By all means speak for his Hawaiian duplicates. We have many Wilkes duplicates to offer in exchange.” Mason’s interest was piqued based on a relative lack of Hawaiian material in the USNM, since “the Wilkes Hawai-

144

Exchanging Objects

ian things all went to the bottom of the sea.”35 Brigham was specifically interested in studying tapa cloth, which was produced extensively in Hawaii; by the 1890s he considered it “a lost art.”36 From the Bishop’s high-quality collection of Hawaiian tapa, Brigham “prepared a series of some 200 specimens for the National Museum” of uniform size. In return, he requested tapa specimens from Easter Island, collected by W. J. Thompson.37 In addition to his eagerness to procure Hawaiian specimens, Mason also sought to support Brigham’s research interests in the hope that he would contribute to museum-based anthropological literature. He inquired if Brigham was “collecting data on the feather robes of the world,” if so, he would be happy to turn over his “list.” Sending the Easter Island tapa was possible, as long as Thompson consented, and Mason thought Brigham “ought to see what is said about Easter I[sland].”38 On May 22, 1893, Brigham sent word that he was sending the USNM “two volumes of specimens of Hawaiian kapas [tapas],” that “comprise more varieties than can be found in any other museum.” He prepared four copies: the first was his “own for study and comparison,” the second was for the USNM, the third was to go to the British Museum, and “the fourth to such museums as will give us the best exchange.”39 Brigham again asked for specimens of Easter Island tapas or other Polynesian material, but to please not send anything beyond the Pacific. The USNM sent publications, but it took another request to precipitate the exchange of specimens. Though political relations between Hawaii and the United States were tense due to the US occupation in January 1893, Brigham wanted to continue building his research and display collection. He mentioned he had recently visited “the principal museums of New Zealand and Australia” where he had “arranged many interesting exchanges.”40 The USNM sent one plaited paddle from the Solomon Islands, eight war clubs from Fiji, and two female cinctures, one from Fiji and one from the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).41 Before the collection was transmitted, a Smithsonian administrator asked Mason to “add Easter Id. [Island] kapas [tapas] to the proposed (and approved) sending.” Mason responded, “We could send little clippings only.”42 Perhaps compared to Brigham’s extensive catalog, the USNM’s tapas would appear paltry. Despite Mason’s interest in encouraging Brigham’s research, the men were also attentive to the quality and extent of their respective collections. Mason did not want to be outdone by Brigham. Both the Hawaii and Leiden museum cases exemplify exchanges as opportunities to create and strengthen professional relationships between scholars and their respective museums. Negotiations took into account collection quality and competing offers. Exchanges of specimens were not

Giving and Receiving

145

simply commodity market-style transactions, since the field of exchange was built solidly on social relationships. Respect for professional relationships and reputations mattered in the scientific community; even drawn out exchanges were not terminated easily simply because a better offer was on the table. Exchanges were only part of the ongoing flows of favors and knowledge sharing.

Golden Gate Park Museum, San Francisco, California One of Otis Mason’s interests was basketry—techniques, materials, and cultural variation. In 1902 Mason sent C. P. Wilcomb, custodian of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Museum, five baskets: two Zuni baskets collected by James Stevenson and three Canadian baskets, one collected by Charles Rau, and two collected by Mason himself from Pierreville, Canada.43 Mason depended on the generosity of fellow scientists and collectors not only for exchanging specimens, but also for borrowing objects from their collections for his basketry studies. In his monograph published in 1905, Indian Basketry, Mason thanked “friends . . . especially those on the Pacific slope” for giving access to their “valuable” collections, furnishing information, and sending photographs.44 Wilcomb had sent a “ ‘Grasshopper’ basket made by the Wut-chum-na Indians, Yokut tribe (Mariposa family)” in exchange for five USNM baskets. He also sent Mason four baskets from his personal collection for study.45 These Pomo, Tulare, and Yokut baskets were featured in eleven plates in Indian Basketry and described and illustrated in one figure in the text, with Wilcomb credited.46 An exchange ratio of five baskets to one speaks to the fluidity of specimen value (based on quality, rarity, representativeness, and provenance) and exchange equivalence. It was also not uncommon for the USNM to send duplicates in exchange for courtesies from the collector. Wilcomb’s loan of baskets for study may have been one of these courtesies. The baskets Mason sent to Wilcomb were “most interesting” and “not represented” in Wilcomb’s collection, demonstrating the mutual advantage of exchanges in diversifying collections within each partner’s area of expertise.47

Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania While international exchanges could drag on for years, domestic exchanges tended to move more quickly. In 1898 W. J. Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, part of the Carnegie Institute, contacted

146

Exchanging Objects

Holmes to procure specific objects needed for an upcoming exhibit. Holland was making a “few groups” of lay figures similar to those used by the USNM “for the purpose of illustrating the manners and customs of the Indians” of the United States. The figures themselves were made by the Carnegie but there were “certain accessories” needed to “properly attire and adorn” them. The exhibit would open at the Founder’s Day celebration, so Holland needed quick action, asking for about twelve objects, including necklaces, earrings, blankets, clothing, and baskets. He used ethnic designations in requesting “two sets of Zuni earrings,” and “one skirt and waist [blouse] for Navajo women.” Hopeful that the museum, which was “still in its infancy,” might receive more than the twelve objects requested, Holland suspected he might encounter resistance because there was little “duplicate material from which [to] offer to make a return.” He expressed concerns over how he might reciprocate. I would suggest that possibly it would be best for you to fix a price for these articles, allowing us to send you the money with which you may then purchase desiderata for the National Museum, which might possibly be designated as having been received in exchange. I do not know how this proposition will strike you, but if it is at all feasible to arrange the matter in this way it appears to me that it will be easier for us and more satisfactory to you. However, if you adhere rigidly to the system of exchanging material, we will ask you to send us what we desire and we will account ourselves your debtors until such time as we may secure collections of duplicate material in this Museum which will enable us to discharge our debt.48

Walter Hough, who had seen Holland a few days earlier, assured him that it was quite likely that Holmes would agree to select what was required from the USNM’s store of duplicate material. Holmes was agreeable to the request, though he believed it necessary to note that Holland should have made the request directly to the executive curator (True), but “we cannot have things done the right way always.” Under Holmes’s directions, Hough chose a group of objects “valued at $50.” With regard to the matter of exchange Holmes deferred to True: “I hardly know what is best in the matter and will ask you to please decide whether the things can be sent and whether we are justified in trusting the Carnegie Institute to send us a proper exchange.” Hough recommended the exchange and believed it would “result satisfactorily” to the USNM sometime in the future, which assuaged Holmes’s concerns. Holmes noted, “Considering all the points I feel inclined to recommend the forwarding of the selections made by Mr. Hough, all of which are virtually duplicates, thus helping the Carnegie people accomplish a result that may seem very beneficial to them.”49

Giving and Receiving

147

Personal and social networks that precipitated exchanges were subject to internal, organizational hierarchies at the USNM. Though Hough wanted to assist Holland in obtaining the necessary specimens, he needed approval from his superiors, both Holmes and True. Because the Carnegie Museum could not immediately reciprocate with specimens, Holmes broached the subject of whether Holland and the museum were trustworthy, essentially weighing the pros and cons of possibly diminishing the USNM’s duplicate stores for a potentially protracted exchange. If successful, this would place the Carnegie Museum in the USNM’s debt, creating a future obligation. The question was whether the Carnegie Museum, and specifically Holland, would respect the obligation and if such an obligation was even worth having.

Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri Since world’s fairs and expositions were places where scientists and curators commonly met, they were also places were exchanges were negotiated. Fairs were considered collecting venues, where private collectors and American museums engaged in a “feeding frenzy” of intense competition for Indigenous artifacts, many from the displays erected by foreign governments.50 Exchange was one method of procurement. At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (commonly known as the St. Louis World’s Fair), the USNM “promised to donate to the Imperial Japanese Commission some educational exhibits” in exchange for the objects (including model costumes, dining apparatus, and lacquers) given by the Japanese Commission to the USNM.51 The USNM sent mostly anthropological material to five institutions in Japan. The Kyoto Girls’ Higher Normal School received eighteen specimens of baskets and weaving in exchange for model costumes; the School of Aizu received twenty-one varieties of oils; the Tokyo Normal School received twenty-two specimens of ethnologica primarily from the Southwest, six casts of stone implements, and six biological specimens (mammals) from the United States; the Tokyo Higher Technical College received twenty-one specimens of Puebloan pottery; the College of Science at the Imperial University received 195 specimens of archaeological material, four Southwest ceramics, and two skulls.52 The university received the largest collection. While exchanges at world’s fairs remain somewhat difficult to document in the exchange records, there is evidence that the fairs facilitated movement of relatively small collections of American material into educational institutions abroad.

148

Exchanging Objects

Specimen Exchange as Anthropological Knowledge Dissemination In the late nineteenth century the networks through which specimens flowed were both diffuse and diverse. Relationships between major players— well-known museums and anthropologists—suggests tight-knit networks of professional community, but specimen exchange presents a view of natural historical, anthropological, and museum-based practice that was more expansive and inclusive, particularly toward those persons without institutional affiliation. Curation can be understood as a means of producing and disseminating knowledge through the use of the museum’s collection. While curation may take varied formats, I explore how specimen exchange, essentially the shaping of the collection through additions and subtractions, articulates strategies of knowledge production and dissemination. What is crucial to account for here is the interplay between knowledge and institutional context and constraints. By examining aspects of Otis Mason’s curation, I suggest that specimen exchange is associated primarily with practices of knowledge dissemination.53

Museum Studies: Otis Tufton Mason’s Curatorial Work Curtis Hinsley’s historical analysis of the work of the anthropology department at the USNM from 1884 to 1908 presents a comprehensive and incisive view of Mason’s disciplinary orientation, interests, and products. Mason joined the Smithsonian as a resident collaborator in the early 1870s and introduced culture history in 1873. He was influenced by the work of German ethnologist Gustav Klemm, who was in charge of Leipzig’s Museum of Ethnology, and saw the “only legitimate study of man” as “a composite history of human development through the familiar stages of savagery, barbarism, and enlightenment (or civilization) . . . representing a single, continuous historical growth.”54 Hinsley provides a comprehensive portrait of Mason’s intellectual interests, motivations, and developments, but, in brief, Mason’s use of the culture history approach involved tacking between the specific and the general. He engaged in minute examinations into particular contexts, as well as comprehensive theorizing about humans. Mason’s efforts toward the first were focused on what he called museum studies: publications that offered descriptions and typological schemas for groups of functionally similar objects such as throwing sticks, baskets, and bows. The collections available to describe were circumscribed to the USNM’s geographical reach, and so were largely concentrated in the North-

Giving and Receiving

149

west Coast and Alaska, prior to contributions from the BAE, which were sourced from the American Southwest, Southeast, and Ohio Valley.55 Mason’s collections-based studies were in service of loftier theoretical ambitions. As the USNM’s collections expanded to include a more global scope through collecting and specimen exchange, more non–North American objects were included in totalizing, developmental works.56 His early museum studies were “intended as models for a monograph series to cover the collections of all primitive inventions,” which he considered necessary to carry out prior to creating exhibits, as well as the more theoretical, generalizing works such as The Origins of Invention: A Study of Industry Among Primitive Peoples.57 Culture history was theory, but theory relied on close study of museum objects. The majority of material culture used in USNM curators’ scholarly publications came from field collections, not exchanges. In only some cases is there evidence that exchanges were carried out in order for curators to secure specific material germane to their intellectual interests, which would be used in preparation for a scientific publication. If particular materials were needed for a scientific study, the USNM could loan objects for a temporary period.58 The role of specimen exchange at the USNM was geared largely toward the dissemination of scientific knowledge, as duplicate specimens functioned as evidentiary illustrations of knowledge created by anthropologists through scholarly publications and exhibits. The contents of exchanges demonstrate a clear North American preference. In only some cases were duplicate specimens received by the USNM that curators intended to study and publish on. Rather, duplicate specimens received contributed to the formation of encyclopedic collections, in which duplicates as representatives of knowledge categories were used for comparison in the study of undescribed or unstudied objects. The most significant reason for this is one of practicality. Securing duplicate specimens was a slow and onerous process in terms of logistics, and negotiations of specimen equivalence and desiderata. Anthropologists, like many scientists, were heavily invested in policing intellectual territories largely mediated by collecting geographies.

Research Turf: Mason and Frobenius The exchange negotiations between Mason and Leipzig-based German ethnologist Leo Frobenius speak to how disciplinary knowledge is articulated within the institutional, museum-based context of exchange. In February 1898 Holmes sent Frobenius twenty-one specimens of Southwest pottery,

150

Exchanging Objects

primarily from the Pueblos of Hopi and Zuni. Ceramics were Holmes’s curatorial purview, but as division head Mason signed off on the exchange. Each duplicate sent represented a particular kind of object—a Hopi canteen, a dipper, a bowl, a vase, a rattle, and so on.59 A collection such as this would provide the viewer with a well-rounded view of functionally distinct ceramic objects, including those associated with domestic utilitarian use as well as ceremonial contexts. Frobenius had initiated the exchange by sending sixty-three archaeological specimens from Swiss lake dwelling sites, which Thomas Wilson valued at $50.00. Holmes detected potential in future offering from Frobenius. He told Mason he thought that “Frobenius may be of use to the Museum in the way of future exchanges.”60 Both Mason and Frobenius were interested in materially driven approaches to theorizing humans on a grand scale. In the late 1890s Frobenius was looking to strengthen his intellectual networks in North America, as his career was just beginning. Frobenius had had little formal education in his early life, and would later attempt to secure his academic footing by undertaking twelve expeditions to Africa between 1904 and 1935, collecting on behalf of museums in Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig, while gathering his own ethnographic data.61 At the time of his correspondence with the USNM, he sought to establish himself as a theorist of the culture area concept by advocating the spread of cultural traits by diffusion.62 But it was Mason who was the well-established senior scholar and curator. Though he was a persistent advocate for culture history throughout his tenure, Mason spearheaded the development of the culture area concept at the USNM, primarily through exhibition-style and the popular lay-figure dioramas. The publication of Frobenius’s article “The Origin of African Civilizations,” in the Smithsonian’s annual report for 1898, had allowed him to develop the Kulturkreis approach. Influenced by geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who suggested that cultural change “came from cultural interchanges precipitated by population increases and technological innovations,” Frobenius drew on materialist explanations, underscoring the importance of material culture in his analysis.63 Ultimately unsuccessful in trying to establish a reputation for himself among museum-based ethnologists, Frobenius became one of the first trained anthropologists “to leave his armchair to do field research.”64 Following the receipt of the ceramics, in April 1899 Frobenius sent an official request for another exchange of “duplicates from your rich store of North American bows—particularly Aleutian, Eskimo, N.W. Indian, Indian, and Mexican,” which would “constitute an exhibit of the North American forms in a comparative series of bows.” This study was to be published, and for that reason Frobenius hoped the Smithsonian would

Giving and Receiving

151

treat the request “as generously as possible.”65 Upon receiving the request, Holmes wrote to Mason: “It will fall on you to decide what is best to do in this matter. I suppose the exchange must be carried out—but take your time to it.”66 Mason’s reply suggests that he believed Frobenius might be treading on his turf: “Dr. F. does not seem to have heard that I have written an extensive work on North American bows, arrows and quivers and that Hermann Meyer has done the same for Brazil and we published his pamphlet. Furthermore, the things he sends don’t teach anything.”67 I interpret this latter comment to mean that Frobenius’s reciprocal specimens were not especially useful for Mason’s scholarship or exhibit work. Frobenius would need to be informed about Mason’s previous work on the subject of bows. A bibliography citing Mason’s “Bows, Arrows and Quivers of North America,” John Murdoch’s “Eskimo Sinew Backed Bow,” and Meyer’s “Brazilian Bow” was sent to Frobenius, publications that gave “a tolerably comprehensive view” of the bows and arrows of the American continents. The USNM would not supply Frobenius with a comprehensive set of bows and arrows, since the most representative objects had already been studied and published: “The specimens upon which the studies in North American were founded are among the treasures of the U.S. National Museum and, of course, could not be spared. We have some duplicates, however, but not enough to make up anything like a complete set.”68 While the USNM could supply some duplicates, a study on this category of material culture had already been published. While Frobenius might offer another theoretical treatment, Mason wanted to retain possession of the subject area. It was his turf. Still hoping to receive the bows, Frobenius changed tack and asked for Smithsonian publications, particularly early BAE reports. Holmes knew these were “very scarce” and it was unlikely that they could be provided.69 Frobenius thanked Mason for sending a published copy of the African civilization article and promised to send another article for consideration titled “The Problems of Culture,” which Frobenius intended would contribute to arguments promoting cultural diffusion. He was “desirous of collecting with red hot zeal” all the publications on America.70 Without any progress evident in publication or specimen exchanges, Frobenius again reminded Mason of his request for “different types of North American forms of bows, the Eskimo in particular,” noting his presumption that the USNM was “richly-stocked” and possessed “sufficient duplicate material to fill the gaps” in his collection. In return he promised to send “a pretty little series of African stone blades.” He commented that he had received Mason’s “admirable little publication on Bows, Throwing-sticks, etc.,” but was yet missing other USNM publications.71

152

Exchanging Objects

The African blades and spears Frobenius offered must have been desirable, as was access to Frobenius’s professional networks, for Mason approved the sending of eleven bows and five arrows from North America, including Alaskan, Plains, Great Basin, California, and Southwest specimens.72 However, the geographic and cultural distribution of the bows were illustrative of the intellectual work already performed by Mason in his study, rather than a collection with examples of intracultural variation that would be necessary for an original study. The USNM’s illustrated and published specimens were too scientifically valuable to be exchanged. The duplicates Mason eventually sent were meant to evidence knowledge claims already articulated in his published work. This case reveals a tension between specimen exchange and intellectual work. While anthropologists disseminated their publications as widely as practicable, they did not do the same for objects. Though the USNM had long relied on scientific work and monographs from non-staff collaborators, by 1897 and under the direction of Charles Walcott there were increasing moves toward ensuring more staff control over collections.73 No unaffiliated researchers were denied access to the USNM collections outright. Established anthropologists and students could engage in collections study as means of knowledge production, but the USNM intended to retain the specimens and essentially maintain right of first refusal to a resulting publication. Exchanging unstudied collections would erode the USNM’s scientific dominion over subjects that collecting resources had been invested in. Unless the return would lead to equivalence in knowledge production and comparable institutional prestige, specimen exchange was generally not an effective mechanism for knowledge-production work in the museum context. National traditions might have also figured in. David Wilcox argues that the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair “marked a consensus point for Americanists, an agreement about the bounds of anthropology.”74 The Americanist field was quickly professionalizing, with growth in anthropological departments and museums, job opportunities, and disciplinary journals. Frobenius, a foreigner, may have been too late to join the American field. Neither Mason nor Holmes exhibited much desire to exchange with Frobenius but it seems that doing so was in the interest of the USNM. Refusing Frobenius might result in lost connections to German museums or contacts, which could be important for future exchanges or intellectual work. The USNM found more value in sending Frobenius a small collection of representative specimens rather than make an enemy or be denied a future favor, though both Holmes and Mason seemed weary of his intellectual interests and plans. The ability to give is understood as evidence

Giving and Receiving

153

of status in a community, and the ability to give duplicates—specimens representative of knowledge already produced—contributes to the reputation of the USNM as having dominion over particular research areas. This status is achieved in both giving duplicates—specimens representative of knowledge—and keeping particular specimens that serve to evidence that knowledge. Mason’s ability to control the movement of particular specimens, which Frobenius sought for research, illustrates the USNM’s status as a gatekeeper for North American material, and possibly theoretical approaches. In this case, specimen exchange was not a means of knowledge production, but rather a means of knowledge dissemination. Perhaps it was experiences such as these that drove Frobenius out of the museum and toward fieldwork in Africa, though still collecting for museums (his only means of funding the expeditions) while recording ethnographic data.

The End of Specimen Exchange From its beginnings in the 1850s, the Smithsonian’s exchange of duplicate specimens was intended to address the intense resource pressures brought about by the high rate of incoming collections. Exchanges hastened the development of educational institutions across the United States and raised the Smithsonian’s scientific profile. But the realities of doing specimen exchange meant that resource reduction benefits were barely realized, especially for anthropology collections. Specimen exchange peaked in the late nineteenth century, when it was largely carried out by the curators and administrators trained and mentored by Spencer Baird. Baird’s legacy was sustained not only by curators like Mason, but also by Mason’s assistants, who later assumed the departmental curatorial posts. By the 1930s equivalent exchanges had been the norm for decades. But by the 1940s, a period marked by World War II, anthropological specimen exchange at the Smithsonian was declining. Specimens continued to leave the museum, but exchange had largely been replaced by mechanisms of transfer. Transfer is a well-known contemporary practice of accessioning and deaccessioning, more akin to generalized reciprocity. In a transfer, the object and its title are transmitted to a receiving museum because the originating museum cannot properly care for the object, or the object does not conform to the scope of collections. Transfers allowed the Smithsonian to return to its original preference for keeping the most scientifically valuable objects while giving less-valuable objects to museums equipped with the space and staff to care for and make use of them. I am reticent to definitively

154

Exchanging Objects

pinpoint the reasons for the decline of anthropological specimen exchange at the USNM in the 1940s, especially because anthropological specimen exchange does not decline at the Field Museum until the 1970s. There is no one explanation, but rather a combination of factors, including who served as curator and their training. Walter Hough worked in the USNM’s ethnological collection from 1886 until his death in 1935. The following year, Frank Setzler was appointed acting head curator for the Department of Anthropology and Herbert W. Krieger took over as ethnology curator. Setzler and Krieger were archaeologists whose focus was largely on field excavation, but who also contributed updates to the museum’s exhibits.75 While a decline in the prominence of material culture as data for cultural anthropologists is often associated with the twentieth century, I view this problematic generalization as secondary to issues of personnel (their research interests and their academic training) in this case.76 However, by the 1940s the majority of intensive ethnographic collecting expeditions had all but ceased, with few exceptions.77 A decline in large ethnographic field collections entering museums likely contributed to curatorial perceptions of a drop in the supply of duplicates. While the archival record does not clearly spell out the reason for anthropological specimen exchange’s decline, it has preserved USNM policies regarding transfer and condemnation. While more contemporary movements of anthropological objects out of museums under the guise of repatriation have been well documented, museum policies of the 1940s through 1960s may reveal conceptual shifts that partially explain the decline of specimen exchange.78 As the classification “duplicate specimen” retreated in disciplinary purchase, the classification “type specimen” remained tied to knowledge production discourses. A letter from July 1960 demonstrates an allegiance to the definition of type specimens and their disposition. The Division of Ethnology has seven model ovens, all apparently made in the USNM, which has no ethnological importance and which we wish to condemn. None of these seven ovens has been catalogued, and there are no accession records or catalog numbers. However six of them have been published (USNM Bulletin 141, Plate 97, and description on pages 105 and 106) and hence, presumably, are “type” specimens. Although it is understood that ordinarily “type” specimens cannot be condemned, permission to condemn is requested, in view of the facts that the specimens are unimportant, that they are only models constructed in the USNM, and that they are uncatalogued.79

Here, type specimens are characterized as such on the basis of their relationship to scientific publications. Though types are the evidentiary basis of

Giving and Receiving

155

knowledge, the fact that the ovens are models, likely made by anthropologists for illustrative or experimental purposes, suggests a lower scientific value. What is clear is that, in 1960, a museum object illustrated in a publication was still considered a type, which required it to be kept. However, this condemnation request calls into question the relevance of type status and its definition, to the scientific character of the anthropological collections. The ravages of time, transport, and poor environmental conditions wreaked havoc on some objects, which disintegrated to a point where the USNM no longer considered them worthy of keeping. But specimen exchange had never been an expedient method of disposal. Removal of poor-quality specimens necessitated condemnation and destruction, not transfer to another educational context. “After detailed examination and due consideration to the possibility of using these [dioramas] for exchange purposes, or sending them to children’s or school museums, we considered them in such poor condition, as well as being inaccurate, that it would be a reflection on the Smithsonian Institution if these diorama-like scenes were to be disposed of in this manner.”80 Sending objects of sufficient visual and material quality as representative of anthropological knowledge remained an important principle, as it always had been in the context of specimen exchange. Curators and administrators understood that what was sent out from the museum reflected on the museum, and they had no intention of providing low-quality objects or outdated information. Transfer was ultimately embraced as means to provide objects of serviceable quality to nonspecialist establishments (“smaller museums throughout the country”), even if they were not valuable from a scientific perspective due to lack of documentation.81 Quality meant whole or “fairly complete” objects.82 “Those items that no longer serve a useful purpose in either the exhibition series of the study collections should be assigned for distribution to school museums and other similar educational organizations. It is requested that particular attention be given to the retention of specimens that illustrate variations in manufacture, including pottery source materials, and variations in design, shape, or size.”83 In this case, USNM administrators seemed to return to a version of Henry’s initial attraction to specimen exchange—that it would reduce the burden of storage, while distributing not for purposes of knowledge production, but to promote the development of museums in local contexts. This directive invokes an idea of the local museum or collection not as a locus of research output, but rather as a site that offers visual arrangements of objects illustrative of culture and humanity.

156

Exchanging Objects

The reference to retaining specimens that “illustrate variations” speaks to the influence of taxonomy and description in shaping museum collections. The major caveat here is that the conceptualization of meaningful variation is constituted through disciplinary methodologies and interpretations. Mason and his contemporaries sought to preserve formal, functional, and material variation in their collections, but paid less attention to ornamental variation, which largely contributed to the designation of anthropological specimens as duplicates. What Mason understood as ornamental variation also holds the potential to be operationalized as a meaningful and independent unit of analysis by later anthropologists. Museum collections are continually shaped by a constellation of factors. For Mason, exchangeable duplicates and cross-cultural analytical units were a primary need. For contemporary anthropologists involved in repatriation, those factors are situated in ethical and recuperative discourses.

Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns Relationships are important, especially when museum professionals work in small organizations or are the only person working in collections, or education, or development. It is too easy to lose sight of the importance of extra-organizational relationships amidst the constant din of operational tasks and responsibilities. Specimen exchange demanded the creation and nurturing of relationships of this sort, and while time-consuming and always under threat by pressing internal tasks, these relationships were integral to organizational capacity-building and the realization of museums as valuable cultural institutions. As museum professionals, we make our case to the public collectively. Intercontinental travel was quite rare for USNM curators, but they made the most of their journeys abroad, prioritizing in-person meetings and museum visits. Fostering community was as important then as it is now because of the remarkable power that museum professionals have to continually shape their collections. They may do this now not only through accessioning and deaccessioning, but also by inviting more diverse stakeholders into this process. This can mean decreasing barriers to researcher access and expanding the definition of what the word “researcher” means. It can mean bringing a broader range of ideas to bear on how the contents of the collection will change over time, and not limiting access (or the terms of interaction) to those who can “improve” object data. One of the issues that specimen exchange allowed curators and administrators to articulate was the relationship between the collection and the museum.

Giving and Receiving

157

Answers to this question were as important then as they are now. Collections were not monolithic, untouchable black boxes. They were resources for knowledge production and education; the realization of these ideals required a dynamic approach to the museum’s archival functions, which USNM curators embraced with as much forethought and care as they could muster.

Notes 1. Chris Wingfield, “ ‘Scarcely More than a Christian Trophy Case’? The Global Collections of the London Missionary Society Museum (1814–1910),” Journal of the History of Collections 29, no.1 (2017): 110. 2. Ibid. 3. Fredrik Svanberg, “The World as Collected; Or, Museum Collections as Situated Materialities,” in The International Handbooks of Museum Studies: Museum Theory, eds. Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 394. 4. Robert Oppenheim, An Asian Frontier: American Anthropology and Korea, 1882–1945 (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 27. 5. Anthropological exhibits at world’s fairs have been the subject of contemporary scholarship; see, e.g., Nancy J. Parezo and Don D. Fowler, Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); Curtis Hinsley and David Wilcox, eds., Coming of Age in Chicago: The 1893 World’s Fair and the Coalescence of American Anthropology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016). Within the Americanist tradition there has also been significant scholarly attention on the Mason– Boas debate, which assesses the evolutionist and particularist approach notably in terms of exhibitionary practice. See Ira Jacknis, “Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology,” in Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 75–111; Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 98–100; Don D. Fowler and Nancy J. Parezo, “Nomenclature Wars: Ethnologists and Anthropologists Seeking to be Scientists, 1840–1910,” Journal of Anthropological Research 74, no. 3 (2018): 401–3. 6. On Holmes, see David Meltzer, “When Destiny Takes a Turn for the Worse: William Henry Holmes and, Incidentally, Franz Boas in Chicago, 1892–97,” in Histories of Anthropology Annual, vol. 6, ed. Regna Darnell and Frederich Gleach (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 122. 7. Pfeiffer to Holmes, 10 December 1912, Accession File 55436, RU 305, SIA. 8. Ibid. 9. Pfeiffer to Holmes, 22 August 1913, File D27026, RU 186, SIA. 10. Ambrosetti to Holmes, 20 April 1909, Accession File 51680, RU 305, SIA. 11. Ambrosetti to Holmes, 14 April 1910, Accession File 51680, RU 305, SIA.

158

Exchanging Objects

12. Thomas J. Anderson, “Aepyornis as Moa: Giant Birds and Global Connections in Nineteenth-Century Science,” British Journal for the History of Science 46, no. 4 (2013): 677–78. 13. See, e.g., Otis Mason’s meeting with European museum anthropologists in Kohlstedt, “Mason’s Tour of Europe.” 14. See Andrew McClellan, “P.T. Barnum, Jumbo the Elephant, and the Barnum Museum of Natural History at Tufts University,” Journal of the History of Collections 24, no. 1 (2012): 50, for a discussion of Baird’s competitiveness. 15. Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century (Kingston, ON, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 80–83. 16. Haast to Baird, 9 August 1887, File D5333, RU 186, SIA. 17. “Condition of Exchanges with Canterbury Museum,” [1900], Accession File 36389, RU 305, SIA. 18. Haast to Goode, 9 August 1887, File D5333, RU 186, SIA. 19. Hutton to Assistant Secretary, 1 November 1887, File D5333, RU 186, SIA. 20. True to Geare, 3 December 1887, File D5333, RU 186, SIA. Emphasis in original; in True’s memo the word “very” is underlined three times. 21. “Archaeological Specimens for Julius Haast,” scrap note written by Mason, undated [1887], File D5333, RU 186, SIA. 22. I have previously discussed the example of this museum in Catherine Nichols, “Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates,” 137–38. 23. Serrurier to Mason, 7 March 1893, Accession File 33997, RU 305, SIA. 24. Goode to Serrurier, 11 December 1893, Accession File 33997, RU 305, SIA. 25. Emphasis in original. Serrurier to Goode, 4 February 1895, Accession File 33997, RU 305, SIA. 26. Mason to Serrurier, 20 February 1895, Accession File 33997, RU 305, SIA. 27. Schmeltz to Goode, 5 May 1898, Accession File 33997, RU 305, SIA. 28. Schmeltz to the USNM, 21 December 1898, File D12741, RU 186, SIA. 29. Draft letter [by Mason] to Schmeltz, 10 January 1899, File D12741, RU 186, SIA. 30. Schmeltz to True, 3 March 1899, File D12741, RU 186, SIA. 31. Holmes to Rathbun, 12 July 1912, Accession File 55867, RU 305, SIA. Holmes reproduced the quoted text in his letter to Rathbun from a letter he received from Hrdlička. 32. Rutot to Hrdlička, 19 May 1913, Accession File 55867, RU 305, SIA. 33. Memorandum by Hrdlička, 12 September 1913, Accession File 55867, RU 305, SIA. 34. Brigham to Hornaday, 6 July 1891, Accession File 27074, RU 305, SIA. 35. Mason to Goode, 31 July 1891, Accession File 27074, RU 305, SIA. 36. Brigham refers to tapa cloth as “kapa” cloth in his letters. 37. Brigham to Goode, 22 August 1892, Accession File 27074, RU 305, SIA. 38. Scrap note from Mason to (Smithsonian administrator Randolph) Geare, undated [1892], Accession File 27074, RU 305, SIA.

Giving and Receiving

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

159

Brigham to Goode, 22 May 1893, Accession File, 27074, RU 305, SIA. Brigham to True, 28 February 1894, File D8398, RU 186, SIA. “Distribution of Specimens,” 26 May 1894, File D3898, RU 186, SIA. Geare to Mason (with reply), 16 March 1894, File D3898, RU 186, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” 18 March 1902, File D15458, RU 186, SIA. Otis T. Mason, Indian Basketry: Studies in a Textile Art Without Machinery (London: William Heinemann, 1905), 7. Accession Card, 19 March 1902, Accession File 39098, RU 305, SIA. Mason, Indian Basketry, 69 (see Plate 19), 72 (see Plate 20, Figure 20), 76 (Plate 22), 93 (Plate 25), 98 (Plate 29), 157 (Plate 53), 176 (Plate 69), 208 (Plate 83), 235 (Plate 97), 236 (Plate 98), 247 (Plate 112). Wilcomb to Langley, 10 April 1902, File D15458, RU 186, SIA. Holland to Holmes, 29 August 1898, File D12166, RU 186, SIA. Holland concludes the letter with this plea: “Under any circumstances, my dear Holmes, please do not fail to aid me in what I conceive to be my laudable design to rescue these Indians from the shame of their nakedness and to provide them with the necklaces, earrings, etc., which are necessary to properly apparel them.” Holmes to True, 17 September 1898, File D12166, RU 186, SIA. Parezo and Fowler, Anthropology Goes to the Fair, 301. Usharito Beppu (Acting Commissioner General, Imperial Japanese Commission) to the USNM, 21 February 1905, File D19285, RU 186, SIA. “Invoice of Specimens,” [1905], D19285, RU 186, SIA. Mason was curator in charge of the USNM’s ethnological collections from 1884 to 1908; see Curtis Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 83–117. For scholarship on Mason’s European scientific and museum tour, see Kohlstedt, “Otis T. Mason’s Tour,” and Nichols and Parezo, “Social and Material Connections.” Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 88. Ibid., 97. For example, Otis T. Mason, “Primitive Travel and Transportation,” in SIAR for 1894 Part II Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1896); Walter Hough, “Fire as an Agent in Human Culture,” Bulletin - United States National Museum, no. 139 (126): i–xiv, 1–270. Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 95; and Otis T. Mason, The Origins of Invention: A Study of Industry Among Primitive Peoples (1895). For example, the USNM loaned gaming specimens to Stewart Culin. Distribution to Dr. L. Frobenius, 17 February 1898, File D11624, RU 186, SIA. Holmes to Mason, 13 January 1898, File D11624, RU 186, SIA. Renée Sylvain, “Leo Frobenius: From Kulturkreis to Kulturmorphologie,” Anthropos 91 (1996): 484. Alan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 50–52; J. M. Ita, “Frobenius in West African History,” Journal of African History 13, no. 4 (1972): 673–88. Sylvain, “Leo Frobenius,” 486.

160

Exchanging Objects

64. Richard Kuba, “Portraits of Distant Worlds: Frobenius’ Pictorial Archive and Its Legacy,” in Global Photographies: Memory, History, Archives, eds. Sissy Helff and Stefanie Michels (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2018), 109. 65. Frobenius to Langley, 16 April 1899, Accession File 35240, RU 305, SIA. 66. Holmes to Mason (scrap note), July 1899, Accession File 35240, RU 305, SIA. 67. Mason to Holmes (scrap note), July 1899, Accession File 35240, RU 305, SIA. 68. Unsigned letter to Frobenius on USNM letterhead, 10 May 1899, Accession File 35240, RU 305, SIA. 69. Holmes [?] to McGee, 1 May 1901, File D15023, RU 186, SIA. 70. Mason to Holmes (contains translated letter from Frobenius), 4 May 1901, File D15023, RU 186, SIA. Frobenius used the German word “Feuereifer” which the USNM translated as “red hot zeal.” 71. Frobenius to Mason, 28 July 1901, File D15023, RU 186, SIA. 72. “Invoice of Specimens,” 9 October 1901, File D15023, RU 186, SIA. 73. Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 95. 74. David Wilcox, “Going National: American Anthropology Successfully Redefines Itself as an Accepted Academic Domain,” in Hinsley and Wilcox, Coming of Age in Chicago, 414. 75. See Frank Maryl Setzler Papers, NAA, SI, and Herbert William Krieger Papers, NAA, SI. 76. For a discussion of the material culture data issue, see Raymond H. Thompson and Nancy J. Parezo, “A Historical Survey of Material Culture Studies in Anthropology,” in Perspectives on Anthropological Collections from the American Southwest, eds. Anne Lane Hedlund and Margaret W. Conkey (Tempe: Arizona State University, 1989), 33–65. 77. Rodney Harrison, “Assembling and Governing Cultures ‘At Risk’: Centers of Collection and Calculation, from the Museum to World Heritage,” in Harrison, Byrne, and Clark, Reassembling the Collection, 93. 78. Timothy McKeown, In the Smaller Scope of Conscience the Struggle for National Repatriation Legislation,1986–1990 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012). 79. Condemnation Committee to Remington Kellogg, 5 July 1960, Memo: Permission of condemn “type” specimens, Box 67, Memoranda and Lists Concerning Condemnations, 1910–1965, Folder: Department of Anthropology Condemnation Committees, USNM-DoA, NAA. 80. Condemnations Committee to Kellogg, 12 August 1959, Box 67, USNMNAA. 81. Condemnations Committee to Kellogg, 24 March 1952, Box 67, USNMDoA, NAA. 82. E. P Henderson, W. R. Wedel, and F. M. Setzler to Kellogg, 25 May 1951, Box 67, USNM-DoA, NAA. 83. Remington Kellogg to Frank Setzler, 15 February 1952, Box 67, USNMDoA, NAA.

Part II

The Duplicate

Chapter 5

Duplicates Specimens in Motion Specimen exchange served to reduce the number of duplicate specimens from museum storage, which freed up space for specimens not represented in the collection. It was a widespread strategy used in forming personal and institutional relationships. At the USNM, specimen exchange infrastructure was also used to great effect to supply educators across the nation with teaching and study collections, meant to hasten scientific pedagogy and modern museological practice. In part I of this book I tracked exchange trends over time, attending to the details of individual transactions framed by considerations of the relationship between collections-building and curatorial work. In part II my focus turns to the specimens being exchanged—the duplicates. Duplicate refers to a contingent classification, which was mapped onto both natural history and anthropological specimens at the USNM in relation to a host of variables. Though duplicates across natural history and anthropology museum departments share conceptual origins and are both created through acts of curatorial praxis, my focus here is on duplicate anthropological specimens.

Defining Duplicates Duplicate is a contingent classification. Duplicates are specimens in that they are objects used by scientific museums. The contingency of this classification hinges on the concept of similarity. Duplicate, in the context of the collection, refers to double, surplus, repetitive, and excess. A duplicate is more than one of a kind-of-thing. This is a deceptively simple definition, invoking a host of further considerations and questions that stem from the relationship between scientific methods, evidence, analytical methods, and knowledge claims. One of the most striking considerations

164

Exchanging Objects

asks how similar one object must be to another to be considered the same kind-of-thing. The application of biographical methodologies to objects, which requires that an object’s classification or status be understood in relation to its context—the broader social and material environment—has emphasized the contingent nature of an object’s status and value. Objects may be commodities at certain points in their social lives, or, more specifically, an object’s commodity status may be its most socially relevant feature at certain times and not others.1 Within the course of its social life within the confines of museums, an object may also be designated a duplicate specimen. Therefore, it is most productive to ask, “In what situation is an object a duplicate specimen?” Exchangeability necessitates duplicate status. Because duplicate specimens were considered repetitive or surplus, but also representative of knowledge categories, they were suitable for exchange. Both of these qualities are crucial in the formulation of duplicates. Objects are circulated between museums through acts of exchange. Their classification as specimens is dependent on their ability to represent knowledge categories. They are duplicate only in relation to other specimens in their practical vicinity. If an object collected at the Pueblo of Zuni resembles the form and function of a Zuni eating bowl, it is made of fired clay, and its ornamentation falls within a stylistic category, it is representative of a Zuni ceramic eating bowl at the USNM. If it is one of many of these bowls at the USNM, it may be classified as a duplicate specimen. If it is no longer repetitive as it moves to another museum that lacks representative specimens of that knowledge category, it is no longer a duplicate, though it is still a specimen representative of the anthropological knowledge category of Zuni ceramic eating bowls. If the receiving museum later holds some number of this kind of object, the (former) duplicate specimen-turned-specimen may acquire duplicate status once again. Thus, the field of duplicate specimens is populated by objects entering and exiting via their relationship to other objects in the spatiotemporal contexts of the museum’s collection, as well as the intellectual contexts that mediate concepts of similarity in relation to evidence, methods, and knowledge claims. A duplicate specimen is a specimen in motion, or at least designated with a kind of potential energy, awaiting circulation.

Natural History: Description and Taxonomy Natural history methods and intellectual schemas shaped the development of anthropology at the USNM.2 The same ledger books Baird used to

Duplicates

165

catalog bird specimens were deemed appropriate for cataloging anthropological collections.3 Just as there were duplicate stores of rocks, fish, and plants at the USNM, anthropological duplicates emerged from the organizational requirements of institutions that collected natural history specimens. From its emergence in Renaissance Europe to its disciplinary manifestations in the scientific institutions of the nineteenth century, natural history was considered a particular knowledge form, conceptualized by Francis Bacon as “a kind of learning in its own right.”4 Renaissance natural history relied on the development of shared techniques for observation and description. Communities of naturalists emerged across Europe, requiring methodological consensus in order to distinguish meaningful differences within the endless diversity of the natural world. Descriptions of botanical specimens prioritized texts dealing with morphology over documentation of habitats and ecology. Following early efforts to observe and describe, it was phenotype and not environment that took precedence in the development of classification schemas. In the mid-sixteenth century the significance of collections housed in scientific cabinets, precursors to modern museums, functioned as spaces where knowledge was produced and centralized in order to build a catalog of the natural world. The exchange of specimens was instrumental in naturalists’ efforts to amass comparative collections in order to move toward uniform classification systems.5 Most Renaissance natural historians were concerned with developing methods of observation and description, leaving issues of taxonomy—a system or method of classification—to be dealt with by their descendants. Nascent groupings were initiated on the basis of “general outward appearance,” and by the mid-sixteenth century more hierarchical schema based on recognition of degrees of similarity and difference were made by herbalists to establish “genera” and “families.”6 The development of a taxonomic structure and taxonomic nomenclature was taken up in the seventeenth century as cabinets grew and naturalists required a more robust organizational system. These systems “had a place for what was still unknown,” a totalizing framework that would accommodate objects yet to be discovered and described.7 Mary Slaughter defines taxonomy as “arrangement of the categories of things.”8 The earliest taxonomists were botanists, predating Carl Linnaeus. Their systems of classification drew on utilitarian or theoretical considerations, the latter influenced by long-established Aristotelian essentialism. This method was based on the use of characteristics for making successive organizational divisions, but the choice of characteristics necessarily defined the essence of things. Sixteenth-century botanist Andrea Cesalpino

166

Exchanging Objects

considered nutrition and reproduction as essential functions of plants, and thus made primary divisions in botanical classification based on nutritive parts, and subordinate decisions based on reproductive parts. John Ray’s critique of Cesalpino’s divisions noted that they were based on the “lumping and splitting of groups which had been accepted as natural” by European naturalists.9 Ray argued that characteristics that might be rejected on a nonessential basis should instead be used to reflect natural groups. Schema that were logical but did not reflect observed similarities and differences, and the true order of nature, were problematic. Essentialism was highly influential in early taxonomy, as it supported the idea that categories reflected and revealed a basic or essential similarity between things (e.g., biological individuals) that exhibited visible differences. Foucault’s influential The Order of Things argues for a shift from Renaissance methods of association based on similarity, to the ordering of these categories in the episteme of the Classical era. Classical mathesis (the science of order) emerged in the seventeenth century, and was characterized by an ordered succession of categories. These categories invoke difference while carrying an identifying linguistic signifier—a name. Foucault’s taxonomia is the ordering of signs into a table of visible differences. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the table—constituted by abstracted categories contingent on differentiation by name—that became the center of knowledge.10 Natural history taxonomy gave way to the modern scientific disciplines through sustained engagements with critique of the logical basis of the classification system. Foucault’s Modern episteme is characterized by the reworking of relationships between categories in terms of time, specifically that of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. The modern discipline of biology emerged from the intersection of evolutionary theories and the arrangement of the abstracted categories of natural history. Instead of a table with merely the ability to accommodate and name any new thing discovered, categories were now viewed in sequence.11 The named categories that had been once arranged as a two-dimensional table were now arranged three dimensionally, in relation to a temporal axis. Evolutionary thinking required new arrangements of categories with respect to temporal changes. In the nineteenth century the scientific discipline of anthropology emerged from these intellectual antecedents that for centuries had developed methods for the systematic abstraction of natural objects into knowledge categories. Critical to these intellectual shifts were the role of collecting institutions and specimen repositories. Natural history work relied on both communities of practitioners and institutional infrastructure. The great natural his-

Duplicates

167

tory museums of the nineteenth century were built on comparative work that had long been performed in the space of natural history cabinets, where empirical comparisons were still based primarily on differences in object form.12 The emergence of museums as centers of calculation reflects the congregation of known and yet-to-be known things, as well as increasingly complex and networked institutions and professional practices.13 Nineteenth-century museums functioned as depots, where objects could be assembled and classified, amplifying scientists’ abilities to undertake comparative work. The spaces of the museum required accumulative and centralizing movements, but also provided a filtering function to extend disciplinary knowledge outside its physical space.14

Theorizing Duplicates If duplicate specimens are characterized by their exchangeability, they may also be defined through opposition, by the specimens that evade exchange. By the end of the nineteenth century specimens that were largely prohibited from being exchanged were referred to as “type specimens.” The way natural historians understood the term “type” underwent significant changes between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the end of the eighteenth century, a type of a taxon (or knowledge category) referred to “a typical element that could serve as a model member for exploring the limits of its encompassing taxon.”15 A typical, representative specimen. A century later, the type of a given taxon, “had come to refer to the fixed (and potentially atypical) name-bearer of a taxon name.”16 Type specimens can be understood as the material thing (the individual insect, plant, etc.) that is anchored to the knowledge category, distinguished by name and description.17 In the biological sciences, the taxon refers to classificatory group, such as the genus or species. In contemporary scientific discourse, the term “type specimen” usually refers to the holotype, a single specimen to which a scientific name is tied. The importance of the holotype’s institutional correlation manifests in an emphasis on registration and preservation of these specimens by museums.18 Because the scientific value of holotypes was recognized by museums, their mobility was greatly restricted. For contemporary museum professionals, the notion that careful retention and preservation of holotypes emerged as late as the closing decades of the nineteenth century may come as somewhat of a surprise. Lorraine Daston argues that the reason for this change lies in the global expansion of natural history practice—both the practitioners and the institutions. In eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century natural history practice, species

168

Exchanging Objects

definitions developed by botanists such as Linnaeus and his contemporaries aspired toward the typical and ideal, and made use of descriptions, illustrations, and study of a wide variety of specimens. This practice was meant as “a truth of synthetic perception . . . [and] the ability to detect a common form uniting many individual exemplars of a kind.”19 Taxonomists used specimens to establish types, but these type specimens were not holotypes. Instead of the type being constituted using a single specimen, many were used. The shift from the conceptual type as exemplification of the taxon to the holotype as the material representative of the taxon results from the rapid expansion of natural history practitioners and institutions in the nineteenth century. In the heyday of colonial collecting and exploratory voyages, the number of new species grew enormously. As science was becoming increasingly globalized and democratized, so were the number of practitioners. These conditions resulted in problems of synonymy—multiple names for the same taxon. As many collections managers familiar with the challenges of controlled vocabularies might attest, a common lexicon is critical to gaining intellectual control over collections. Reforming the problems of synonymy propelled individual specimens into the center of naming practices. New nomenclature codes mandated that naturalists tasked with evaluating the novelty of specimens consult both the literature and the specimens on which the type was based. According to Daston, the importance of the holotype emerged in the 1890s, largely from the initiatives of American botanists since they were geographically cut off from Europe’s extensive herbaria. “Names and species” were to be “defined by the type specimen, ‘the first individual to which the name was applied constituting the type of the species.’ ”20 Thus, type specimens acquired value in light of the challenges of taxonomy, the doing of natural history work on a transnational stage in which the search for information that exemplified the knowledge category was increasingly dispersed across collecting institutions. Type specimens (including those designated as such before the ascendance of the holotype) have consistently registered scientific value, but with the advent of the holotype there is an increasing emphasis on the restricted movement of specific specimens. Both the type and the duplicate exist within this scientific milieu, characterized by complex and shifting relationships between specimens and the name associated with a knowledge category. As Joeri Witteveen argues, prior to the late nineteenth century, at which time the type specimen was understood as the name-bearer, “the notion of a ‘duplicate specimen’ had [been] applied symmetrically: two collected specimens of the same species counted as duplicates of each other, and any specimen in a set of duplicates could be traded with another museum. . . . This changed when original

Duplicates

169

specimens acquired a special status qua originals . . . A duplicate specimen became a duplicate of the original specimen.”21 Duplicates are perhaps best characterized on the basis of their representativeness of the category and their potential for mobility. The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following definition of the word “duplicate”: “3. adj. That is the exact counterpart or ‘double’ of something already in existence: applied to any number of such copies or specimens of a thing.”22 Citations for use of the term in reference to similar natural objects date to the nineteenth century. Both type specimens and duplicate specimens are connected to knowledge categories. The primary difference between these specimens is their potential for mobility. Specimens associated with the creation of types (i.e., knowledge categories) are valued on the basis of their evidentiary nature. In a sense, they define the type. Duplicates must also signify representativeness of the category and carry the name, but they are used in a less definitive manner. In terms of institutions—that is, the museums that retain type specimens and exchange duplicate specimens—both of these classifications are tied to practices of knowledge production and dissemination. These specimens are the basis on which museum institutions establish their claims to scientific authority. To put it another way, type specimens must be retained by museums to evidence the type, designated by the name of the knowledge category. Duplicates, through their mobility, offer proof of the type through their materiality and were circulated in order for the comparative work of natural history and descriptive natural science to continue. The circulation of duplicates increased the value of type specimens and, accordingly, increased a museum’s prestige.23 With attention to their contingency in relation to moments of mobility, I suggest duplicate specimens be understood through Star and Griesemer’s theorization of boundary objects, which are defined as “objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.”24 Since duplicate specimens are adapted to local needs, they serve the purpose of providing materials for exchange. Because they are not needed for scientific work and the evidencing of knowledge claims for the museum that intends to exchange them, they provide a kind of currency with which to trade. Through their receipt and the shedding of their duplicate status at the museum that receives them, they are adapted to the local needs of their new context: they are material representatives of a knowledge category. It is the constitution and widespread adoption of the knowledge category as disciplinary evidence that imbues (duplicate) specimens with a common identity across sites—museums with anthropological collections.

170

Exchanging Objects

Types and Duplicates in a Curator’s Report In the late nineteenth century, in order to prepare the annual report for the USNM, the director instructed scientific department heads to report on the status of activities in various domains of museum work for that year. In contemporary museological terms, these include accessions and field collecting, collections management, in-house exhibitions, loans and educational outreach, collections-based research, visiting researchers and correspondents, publications, and future plans. Curators’ reports were edited and included in the published annual report, providing readers a detailed depiction of each department’s activities and progress during the fiscal year. The section about the ethnology department in the annual report for 1895-96 resonates with many of the ideas I have just introduced.25 But the draft texts of Mason’s responses to the standard departmental questionnaire are even more revealing. Here I excerpt two selections from Mason’s report, submitted to museum director George Brown Goode in 1895 that provide an insider’s glimpse into the relationship between anthropological type and duplicate specimens at the USNM in the closing decade of the nineteenth century.26

Problems with Record-Keeping The Curator would call the Director’s attention to the fact that, during the year past, a great deal of time has been spent in preparing a minute catalogue of every specimen acquired in the Department of Ethnology during the last 50 years. This work is all done, not every specimen in the collection has been separately listed, but every specimen that would seem to have any value in a comprehensive and comparative study. In this connection the Director should know that there is a great discrepancy between this list, as now in the Curator’s hands, and the specimens under his charge. This discrepancy grows out of the following causes; first, in former times, before the organization of a separate Department of Ethnology, ethnographic specimens were given away or exchanged and no record of that fact exists; for example, a large and valuable series of Polynesian material was contributed to the Toronto museum and was subsequently destroyed by fire. Very large exchanges were made with the Trocadero Museum, in Paris, but the specimens were not checked off on the catalogue of the Department. [F]ortunately, the Registrar has, in his office, lists of these exchanges and it would be very easy, with a little clerical help, to make the record of the Registrar agree with the record of the Department.27

Museum staff had been removing anthropological specimens from the collection since cataloging had begun in 1859, designating them as duplicates and exchanging them with all manner of domestic and foreign

Duplicates

171

museums, collectors, governments, and educational institutions. While the registrar maintained the ledger books and corresponding paperwork for the distribution of specimens, there were few notations of these removals in the catalog maintained by the ethnology department. The problem was clear: there were thousands of individual catalog numbers recorded in the departmental ledgers with no corresponding physical specimen in the collection. These were not simply problems of physical control of collections that could be solved through inventorying and reconciling registration distribution records with departmental catalog records. Mason’s plea for assistance suggests that there were minimal organizational policies and established procedures for designating specimens as duplicates. There are some indications that duplicate specimens may have been stored separately, but with the overall contents of the ethnological collection constantly shifting with accessions streaming in and exchanges proceeding at a regular rate, decisions determining which specimens were exchangeable duplicates were left up to curators and their assistants, who were constantly beleaguered with varied and unrelenting demands on their time. What were these minimal organizational policies for designating duplicates? In the 1884 USNM annual report, George Brown Goode laid out a general schema for how specimens in the museum should be classified, addressing the relationship between the museum and its collections. Following the “laboratory work” performed by curators where “collections [were] received, unpacked, classified, identified, and catalogued,” it was then determined “whether specimens should be placed in the exhibition series; or, if not thus assigned, whether or not they are sufficiently important as material for investigation in the study series, or should be called ‘duplicates’ and distributed to other institutions.”28 The division of the collection into series, a “deliberate fragmentation” of specimens into originals and duplicates, supported practices of knowledge production and dissemination.29 Originals were to be kept for purposes of knowledge production, while duplicates could be exchanged for purposes of knowledge dissemination. This seriation mirrors the division of the Brazilian ethnographic collection at Vienna’s Imperial Museum of Natural History into cataloged specimens that would be kept, and the placement of duplicates or “doublets” into an “exchange reserve.” The objects were “sorted out for exchanges with other museums in order to build up a balanced collection.”30 The reserve series, composed of a scientific study series and an exhibition series, was the evidentiary basis for disciplinary knowledge. This series was composed of specimens meant to be kept for current and future scientific investigation, to serve as a guide to determine similarity and difference

172

Exchanging Objects

within and across knowledge categories, necessary for the classification of objects as they accumulated. The “reserve series” in the Museum includes all the specimens which are retained for purposes of study, the exhibition series consisting of objects which are suitable to be exposed to public view in glass cases, selected from the reserve series of which it forms a part. The study series is formed by the residue, which are kept compactly stored either in cases in the laboratories or in the closed tables which serve as pedestals for the smaller show-cases in the exhibition halls. The study series for any special group may generally be largely reduced in extent after an exhaustive monograph has been published upon that group, it being the long-established policy of the Museum to reserve only a sufficient number of specimens to permit the author of such monograph to entirely rewrite it, should the manuscript of his essay be destroyed.31

The duplicate series contained objects considered by knowledge producers (collectors, experts, and/or curators) and knowledge stewards (curators) as nonessential for legitimating existing and past knowledge claims, but useful in representing and disseminating knowledge through indexical relationships with knowledge categories. As such, duplicates were not required to be kept in a museum’s collection. They could be exchanged for specimens needed to extend and diversify the reserve series. Both knowledge producers and knowledge stewards have a stake in the process whereby objects, or specimens, are classified, placed, and kept in the reserve series. These specimens function as the empirical basis on which scientific observations are made. Specimens must be kept in order to verify interpretations and revise knowledge claims on which they are based. In its capacity as a scientific institution and repository, the museum’s ability to keep, care for, and make accessible when needed such objects is one of its social justifications—why society supplies a large amount of money to keep the institution functioning. Failing to keep certain objects would raise questions about a museum’s ability to serve as an institution dedicated to empirical and descriptive science. The scientific method depended on study collections, since they allowed scientists to claim rigor and validity (different people studying the specimens and reaching the same conclusions). The reserve series played a significant role in determining the museum’s reputation, and for the USNM reputation and leadership status were highly valued. Demands for the exchange of duplicates operated on two levels: disciplinary (among curators and collectors) and organizational (as an institutional strategy). The overall success of the latter depended on interdepartmental exchanges, thus all scientific departments needed to have a stock of duplicates to exchange. As soon as specimens were cataloged, they were placed

Duplicates

173

in the “grand series,” where they would be “render[ed] accessible . . . for the exhibition series, the study or type series, and the exchange series.”32 While museum administrators determined the different series the departments would maintain, there were persistent lapses in the implementation of procedures for recording in the catalog which specimens had been exchanged as duplicates. Even more troubling was the fact that specimens that were considered types (on the basis that they had been illustrated in a publication and therefore gained critical evidentiary status) had been exchanged due to problems of record-keeping. Writing in 1896 to Frederick Hodge at the BAE, Mason lamented, I have for a long time been anxious to keep up the relationship between the publications of the Bureau of Ethnology and our work here, and, as far as I have been able, I have put green tags upon all the specimens that you have illustrated. In the early days of the Bureau, however, no record of this kind was kept and I was mortified to find that when material had been drawn and illustrated in your books the specimens could not be found in the National Museum. Evidently, they had been given away or exchanged and no relationship preserved between specimens and the book that described them.33

Mason expressed a sense of professional embarrassment about the failure to retain certain specimens. As part of a record-keeping effort, the placement of green tags on particular (type) specimens was a practice that originated with Baird.34 These tags may still be found on some objects in the anthropological collections. The cursive lettering on the tag reads, “Type” or “[Name of Collector] Type.” The use of the term “type” signifies a connection to anthropological knowledge in the form of illustrations in publications, and a mandate to keep these specimens in the collection for evidentiary purposes. The classification schema for the different series Goode proposed in 1884 was further elaborated by departments according to their intellectual and practical needs. In 1905 Mason proposed modifications to the general schema in an effort to respond to the difficulties that anthropologists who had assembled field collections were faced with, when returning to Washington to study and publish on their collections. Mason suggested that these collections be categorized as “research material” which would be distinct from the “study series; exhibition series; and storage, or reserve.”35 Specimens classified as research material would “not be exhibited or mixed with the vast collections, but kept where the collector and student could write it up ethnographically.” The problem for Mason was the spatial dissemination of accessions prior to publication by anthropological collectors. Instead of storing collections made by Matilda Coxe Stevenson in

174

Exchanging Objects

“storage” where access required the assistance of a museum staff member to “open boxes and repack them,” Mason suggested placing Stevenson’s collections in a “series of drawers where the lady could get at them without all the trouble of a whole day with two men packing and unpacking.”36 This physical arrangement would lessen demands on Mason’s department and assist Stevenson with research logistics. Though the series divisions reflect the requirements of scientific knowledge production, this intellectual schema was amended to address practical organizational needs of the museum environment. The use of the series schema links specimen classification to practices of knowledge production and dissemination. Mason’s suggestion of an interim classification of “research material” speaks to the dynamic nature of the collection-as-archive. Specimens were caught up—somewhat literally in the way—amidst the practical problems of storage and spatial arrangement. Decades of record-keeping procedures (or lack thereof ) resulted in major inaccuracies in the catalog. Failure to retain type specimens threatened the Smithsonian’s scientific reputation. All the while, how the classification of duplicate for anthropological specimens would be enacted loomed, contingent on approaches to anthropological knowledge made through the workaday decisions of the curatorial staff.

Encyclopedic Aspirations The Curator would respectfully make the following suggestions to the Director with regard to the development of the Department of Ethnology. First, hereafter collections from the American Continent should be made with especial reference to completing, as far as possible, illustrations in things of the technical life of the principal tribes and families of America. A list of these families, so far as they are known, is here appended. The information is derived from the 7th Volume of the Bureau of Ethnology Report by Major Powell and from the American Race by Dr. D. G. Brinton and other sources. In order to understand the true life of the aboriginal tribes of the Western Hemisphere, this Museum ought to contain a typical specimen from each of them belonging to every one of the great domestic industries; for instance, there should be a model of every kind of house ever lived in by any large number of people on this continent. There ought to be in miniature, in picture or in description the prevailing and customary furniture of the kitchen, the dining room, the bed room, the living room and the social gathering room or its equivalent in-doors or out-ofdoors in every one of these collections. There should be in picture, in miniature or in actual specimens every kind of costume worn by a large number of individuals in every one of these tribes. Of course, it would be impossible to represent, in such a collection, all the little eccentricities of dress among savage people, where great varieties prevail among individuals of the same family. After all in every tribe there

Duplicates

175

is a composite dress, a dress which would take in pretty much all the dress of the tribes, and of this typical dress there should be one full example from each tribe in this Museum. There should also be gathered the common tools of all those tribes for all sorts of purposes; for pounding, for cutting, for boring, for smoothing; and for various purposes of common use. The metric appliances of all the tribes should be here, and in sufficient numbers to set forth the characteristics of each tribe. There should be a comprehensive series relating to the great industries of their lives; of quarrying, mining, fishing, hunting, planting and gleaning, the intermediary arts by which, the substances gathered in the primary arts, are transformed to the uses of life, and the final arts and activities by which these products of industry should be turned into the channels of consumption or enjoyment. Also the apparatus by which substances are moved from place to place upon the backs of men or beasts whether on the land, on the water or on the snow. This, of course, is an ideal collection but instead of gathering in the desultory way duplicates of material already in hand, the Curator is now in possession of information which enables him to say whether a specimen, which it is possible to acquire, will fill one of the gaps herein indicated or will add one more to a collection already represented in superabundance. The Curator would crave the encouragement and assistance of the Director in this matter. The cramped space allowed for the collection is also another reason for not wanting so many duplicates of specimens for the sake of numbers.37

As Mason gained increasing intellectual control over the content of the ethological department’s collections, he aspired toward achieving a morecomprehensive and more-encyclopedic scope. His early intellectual interests in culture history were aligned with the synoptic series showing technological change through human history, a manifestation of the modern epistemic engagement with evolutionary thought. Exhibits on the history of inventions (such as tools) required specimens from production and use sites worldwide.38 By 1896 Mason was pursuing the development and refinement of the ethnological collections under the theory of culture areas. The more geographically and environmentally oriented collections-growth and refinement efforts through the 1890s were responsive to work on this theory by Powell and Boas.39 Field collections were often large, containing numerous specimens within a knowledge category where one could observe a range of individual diversity and variation. Duplicates functioned as representative examples of the knowledge categories that emerged through the observation, description and cataloging of field collections. Close reading of Mason’s future plans suggest that both field collecting and, perhaps more significantly, exchange activities be promoted as a means of collections-building that would support the culture area concept modeled on the classical table of knowledge. One axis would be occupied by the “principal tribes and fam-

176

Exchanging Objects

ilies,” articulated in his report, including “N. Algonkian, Canada; E. Algonkian, N.E.; Middle Algonkian,” etc.40 On the intersecting axis would be major domestic industries, tools, appliances, and arts. The axes of tribe and object function formed Mason’s categories of anthropological knowledge, abstracted through their characterization of the type as a composite. As Mason became increasingly confident of what specimens and knowledge categories were present and absent in the USNM’s collection, he could more efficiently direct collecting efforts and strategically carry out exchanges to fill holes in the table, which was focused particularly on Indigenous peoples of the Americas. A global encyclopedic collection would be ideal, but probably not practical. Duplicate specimens that had been previously accepted without regard for what was actually needed to fill gaps to achieve an encyclopedic collection, focused particularly on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and were simply adding to the abundance of some knowledge categories, while others lacked a material representative. Intellectual control of the collection was prerequisite to the savvy exchange of duplicate specimens. This excerpt also speaks to the operationalization of the type concept. Working from the empirical reality that material culture could be highly variable, particularly in its decoration, Mason suggested that each box in the table be represented through a composite knowledge category (using the example of “dress”), collapsing tribal variation into a singular or typical form, which would ideally be represented by a complete example (or specimen). Here, a duplicate specimen traded to the USNM could act as the material representative of the type in the table of knowledge, though the report’s request for a “prefigured type . . . effectively constructs the thing as a type prior to its material existence as a specific collected object.”41 A received duplicate specimen would need to meet Mason’s expectations for representativeness if it was going to constitute or exemplify the type in the particular space of the museum’s collection. Duplicates received by the USNM would become type specimens only through illustration in a publication.

Selecting Duplicates: Quality and Rarity as Considerations The original specimens that formed the reserve series were kept in order to evidence anthropological knowledge at the USNM. Duplicate specimens functioned as representative examples of the category, but were repetitive within their originating context, resulting in their exchangeability. When designating specimens as duplicates, curators considered both material

Duplicates

177

qualities of representativeness and the future use by potential recipients. While duplicates were alienable from the perspective of the giver, duplicates received were generally considered to be needed for the diversification of the receiver’s collection and were meant to be kept. Unrepresentative specimens or specimens of poor quality would not serve the knowledge production and dissemination purposes of specimen exchange. Curators accounted for the quality of specimens they offered and received in exchange. Assessments of specimen quality and rarity were made with respect to the broader market and perceived population, or supply, of objects when determining their value. Some exchange relationships were extended, and the USNM wanted to avoid any actions that might undermine their chances of further interactions—exchanges or otherwise—or sully a reputation based on an inability to recognize good craftsmanship. Exchange transactors understood that in some cases several transactions were needed to achieve mutual benefit. An exchange between New York’s Glen Island Museum of Natural History and the USNM provides insight into concerns over the quality of duplicate specimens. Curator L. M. McCormick wrote to Mason, I have unpacked our boxes from the West Coast of Africa, and find considerable duplicate material, (see enclosed list). How would you like to have me send on a set of this character, as evidence of our ability to offer good material in exchange? You see, I want to make this thoroughly satisfactory and to do it in the way most agreeable to you and the other U.S.N.M. Powers that Be. All of the West Coast material is first class—bright and attractive. Where hair is present it is not moth-eaten.42

McCormick’s “List of Duplicate West Coast of Africa Material” characterizes objects primarily in terms of their function, and secondarily by general locality (West Coast of Africa) and relevant formal description. 8—Swords—(with decorated scabbards), 1—Dagger—(with decorated scabbard), 1—Houssa battleaxe (with decorated scabbard), 1—War Cape—(leopard skin with charms against danger), 3—Calabashes—(carved)43

McCormick’s characterization of potential objects indicates ornamentation but does not provide specific design descriptions through additional text or illustration. This minimally signals that the offered objects were decorated in some way and were not plain. Typological schemas commonly used object ornamentation to establish types, and ornamentation was also useful for comparison and identification of objects lacking provenance data. At the time, the USNM’s African collections were limited,

178

Exchanging Objects

and Mason’s reply raises no concerns about duplication. McCormick’s assurance of the high quality of his duplicates indicates his knowledge of the expected uses of duplicates by receivers. In this case, the expected use was as additions to the USNM’s reserve series for study or display. Exchanging duplicates was not a practice used to dispose of low-quality material, but rather a means to diversify collections with material of sufficient museum quality to maintain or increase institutions’ professional reputations. Curators were cognizant about the use of the term “duplicate” to mean exchangeable objects. The availability of duplicates was contingent on the number of representative examples of a knowledge category, thus objects for which there were few examples were usually excluded from exchange. Rarity refers to supply, which could be reckoned in terms of an individual museum’s collection, or the local, national, or global market. Exchanges also took into account whether the duplicates were destined for an individual or institution, and their reputations. Archaeologist Warren Moorehead offered to exchange copies of Smithsonian publications for “archaeological specimens—duplicates—from your collections.” Publications, like specimens, were both valuable and limited in supply. Holmes’s experience with Moorehead precipitated a quip appended to the letter: “I think we have nothing for exchange of the kind that Mr. Moorehead will want.”44 Nevertheless a request for further specifics was sent and Moorehead qualified his initial request: “Dr. Wilson used to send out sets of casts. Surely you have some of these if not duplicates in originals that you could spare us out of your immense collection.”45 Satisfied that Moorehead would take the equivalent to the value of the publications (estimated at $10), Holmes told Mason, “Since Mr. M. does not seem to call for choice specimens I think we can well afford to write him accepting his offer.”46 The SI wrote Moorehead, stating that “an adequate series of archaeological specimens” would be supplied in exchange.47 USNM curators perhaps wanted to prevent Moorehead from a loose application of the “duplicate” designation, as he angled to solicit specimens that may have been equivalent in value to the publications, but were not considered an exchangeable duplicate because of low supply of specimens representative of the knowledge category. Exchange partner Appleton Sturgis, president of New York City’s Eagle Mill, manufacturers of jute gunny cloth used to cover ginned cotton, remarked that the “the clubs from Fiji and Samoa are especially good, being of a very old type, and difficult to secure now. The spears are also good and I am obliged for your kindness in exchange.”48 The six Polynesian objects he received were selected from the Exploring Expedition collections, assembled in the late 1830s, nearly half a century before this exchange. Both parties had to agree on valuation so there would be equivalence. The assess-

Duplicates

179

ment also speaks to Sturgis’s reputation as a knowledgeable individual worthy of assessing quality in the same manner or on the same basis as USNM curators. Sturgis’s comments on the objects’ high quality and market rarity suggests that curators did not necessarily exclude specimens based on high market value. Decisions were made with regard to the supply of objects in the USNM’s collection, as well as the value of objects offered in exchange. Each exchange transactor brought his or her own knowledge to assessments of specimen quality and rarity. The USNM’s status and reputation was taken into account by those wishing to secure an exchange. After his mound-builder collection was destroyed in a fire, Minnesota surveyor J. W. Brower sought replacements from the USNM, requesting “unbroken” objects or pieces “which have no known history, since they are much less valuable than similar objects with a catalog history of where found and how obtained.” In exchange he would “part with” some of his “most valuable and curious objects,” since the USNM “would be incomplete without them.”49 Brower was engaged with current debates in the field and published several volumes on his collections. His letters to Wilson negotiating the exchange voice theoretical suppositions regarding the relationship between the provinces of Quivira and Harahey, based on the presence of chert implements chiseled from a single cretaceous deposit in Kansas. With his specimens, Brower also sent his publication Memoirs of the Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi Volume I Quivira (1898). Wilson deemed Brower a worthy and knowledgeable exchange partner. The USNM sent a collection of American archaeological implements, a “valuable series” of European Neolithic implements, Mound pottery, Chiriquian pottery, and fourteen pieces of Puebloan pottery. With regard to the Neolithic implements, Brower commented, “This conspicuous generosity on your own part [Wilson], personally, is deeply appreciated.”50 Brower’s collection was viewed as a valuable addition to the USNM’s collection based on its scientific merit. Wilson’s ability to reciprocate specimens from a wide geographical range useful for comparative purposes pleased Brower, whose collections were sourced from his local excavations. Individuals who collected for the USNM had a particular advantage in negotiating exchanges for their personal collections. George Emmons, a well-known collector of Northwest Coast materials, offered a basket to the USNM for which he desired a rattle and piece of armor. Tending carefully to his request, Mason checked on the status of the rattle, which was in fact “a duplicate” which the USNM was “willing” for Emmons “to have.” The armor fell under a different classification. It was “a gift of a very dear friend, who lives in Washington and [who] comes often to the Museum.

180

Exchanging Objects

It is also a type specimen subject of armor, which Dr. Hough is studying with extra care. It also contains symbols which are now being studied in the National Museum exhaustively.” The armor could not be parted with since it was a type specimen, most likely referring to its illustration in a publication. Furthermore, it was actively being used in research and an exchange might cause upset from the donor. Not wanting to disappoint Emmons, Mason offered to give Emmons, in addition to the requested rattle, “duplicate baskets in the collection.”51 Though important, personal relationships did not always compel objects to be exchanged. As much as they were able, curators gave careful attention to assessing each object’s scientific and social value. These were not haphazard processes.

Assessing Quality Discussions of the quality of type and duplicate specimens are few in the archival record, though the previous examples indicate that these were characteristics taken into consideration during exchange. If quality is understood as an object’s condition, including the material qualities that allow it to function as a representative specimen, the determination of quality is a subjective endeavor. Connoisseurship involves the training of the eye, a process of close examination and skilled, embodied practice.52 Qualitative comparison of kept versus exchanged specimens from a contemporary vantage point assumes a common system of quality markers or attributes, as well as a phenomenological appraisal, so this approach is not without limitations.53 In terms of object quality, how do duplicate specimens rank? Using Zuni ceramic water vases as a knowledge category, I compared object quality indicators for two samples of vases: one kept by the USNM and one exchanged by the USNM. I collected data from a random sample of vases kept by the USNM from one accession, composed of objects collected during the first two BAE field expeditions to the American Southwest (1879 and 1880), led by James Stevenson with Frank Hamilton Cushing.54 I applied the same methodology for a sample of twenty-three exchanged Zuni ceramic water vases at five museums: the State Historical Society of Iowa (Des Moines, IA), the Carnegie Museum (Fairfield, IA), the Illinois State Museum (Springfield, IL), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada), and the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford, England). Quality assessments of kept objects were recorded prior to quality assessments of exchanged objects.55 I determined ten attributes of object quality specific to decorated Zuni ceramic water vases, and each attribute was assigned a value indicative of a quality assessment (table 5.1).

Duplicates

181

Table 5.1. Quality attributes of Zuni ceramic water vases, with values indicating low to high quality. Attribute

Low Quality

High Quality

Firing

Many Clouds

Few or No Clouds

Pitting

Moderate

Little to None

Pot Size

Small

Lumps

Many

Symmetry of Vase Shape

Moderately Symmetrical

Vase Wall Thickness

Thick

Symmetry of Design

Moderately Symmetrical

Regularity of Line Ornamentation

Uncontrolled

Ornamentation Line Size and Shape

Heavy

Balance of Ornamentation

Not Balanced

Medium

Large

Extra-Large

Some

None Very Symmetrical

Moderate

Thin Very Symmetrical

Moderate

Moderately Controlled

Highly Controlled

Fluid

Delicate

Somewhat Balanced

Highly Balances

Under this assessment, a high-quality vase would exhibit few or no unintentional fire clouds and no pitting, would be of a large size, have no lumps in the walls of the vase, appear symmetrical in overall form, have thin walls, have very symmetrically executed designs, exhibit both fluid and delicate lines in ornamentation, and have highly balanced ornamentation. These attributes demonstrate the skill of a potter with mastery of the techniques of pottery manufacture and design. The graphs in figure 5.1 indicate the quality values based on the suite of attributes for the sample of kept versus exchanged Zuni water vases. For the ornamentation line size and shape attribute, some pots were coded for multiple values. In several cases I did not collect data on all attributes. Duplicates were not cast-offs. Specimens that were kept present and preserve a continuum of quality (low to high), while exchanged vases are average to high quality. Though some vases given in exchange exhibit attributes with low-quality values, the sample of exchanged vases exhibit greater high and average quality values than those kept by the USNM. These data indicate that duplicates given in exchange were not objects of low quality. Exchange was not a mechanism to dispose of low-quality specimens; instead, it functioned to provide material representative of an-

182

Exchanging Objects

Figure 5.1a–c. Comparison of quality attributes for kept and exchanged Zuni water vases. Produced on behalf of the author, © Catherine A. Nichols.

thropological knowledge categories and data to museums, scientists, and the general public. Poor craftsmanship was not a criterion that was tolerated in exchanged objects. To have exchanged a poorly made specimen, assuming a universal quality measure of craftsmanship, would have been a sign of disrespect for the receiver and an indication that the USNM did not understand the concept of museum quality as it was defined at the time. Duplicates from the USNM would represent both anthropological knowledge categories and the USNM as an institution in subsequent collections, necessitating the exchange of average- to high-quality specimens. Exchange was an avenue to illustrate and legitimate the USNM as a reputable source of knowledge and data. Duplicate specimens emerged within the scientific practices, intellectual approaches, and institutional structures of natural history. They are

Duplicates

183

mobile specimens representative of knowledge categories, and this representativeness is in part based on notions of quality as it is conceptualized and practiced in the museum contexts of close study and display. The decision to designate an object as a duplicate is largely left up to the curators, and is influenced by local concerns—the realities of museum work, including the degree of intellectual and physical control curators have over their collections, and the supply of and demand for specimens in the larger market and circuits of exchange.

Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns Duplicates are mobile specimens. They are characterized by their movement and their exchangeability. My focus on duplicates is intended to encourage contemporary discourses of museum object mobility, contextualized within historical, intellectual, and ethical contexts. If we consider museums not as places that “keep things” but rather as places that “keep things when” or “keep things because,” then the discourses around these situations allows for a contemporary articulation of institutional values. Though collections managers are taught to perform inventories of their collections, inventory typically refers to efforts to gain physical control over collections. Auditing and editing catalog records allows for physical and intellectual control. But what would come from an inventory of collectionsoriented values? The ability to articulate why museums are keeping objects echoes the discourse that has been present in conversations surrounding repatriation—asking claimants why objects should be returned. Articulating why objects should be kept and interrogating the ideas that underpin the common responses of “preservation” and “education” are necessary in pursuing institutional identities that are reflective of a more inclusive sense and mission of public service.

Notes 1. Appadurai, “Introduction,” 13; Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 65–94. 2. Fitzhugh, “Origins of Museum Anthropology,” 181–82. 3. Greene, “Material Connections,” 149. 4. Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 4–5. 5. Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 210–12. 6. Dirk Stemerding, Plants, Animals, and Formulae: Natural History in Light of

184

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Exchanging Objects

Latour’s “Science in Action” and Foucault’s “The Order of Things” (Enschede, the Netherlands: University of Twente, 1991), 29. Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 229. Mary Slaughter, Universal Languages and Scientific Taxonomy in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 66. Stemerding, Plants, Animals and Formulae, 30–31. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994 [1970]), 46–77. For a summary of Foucault’s argument, see Stemerding, Plants, Animals and Formulae, 171–75. Oliver Impey and Arthur McGregor, eds., The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1985). Latour, Science in Action, 225. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, 176. Joeri Witteveen, “Suppressing Synonymy with a Homonym: The Emergence of the Nomenclature Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History,” Journal of the History of Biology 49, no. 1 (2016): 143. Ibid. Donald L. Frizzell, “Terminology of Types,” American Midland Naturalist 14, no. 6 (1933): 638. Lorraine Daston, “Type Specimens and Scientific Memory,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (2004): 160. Ibid., 167. Ibid., 174. Emphasis in original. Witteveen, “Suppressing Synonymy,” 170. Oxford English Dictionary Online, adj. “duplicate,” accessed 1 June 2020. See Witteveen, “Suppressing Synonymy,” 168–70. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39,” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 393. SIAR for 1896 Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1898), 86–88. SIA, Record Unit 158, USNM, “Department of Ethnology: Annual Report 1895–1896,” SIA_000158_B04_F01, http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/ siris_arc_216750. Ibid. SIAR for 1884 Part II Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1885), 23. Hopwood, Schaffer, and Secord, “Seriality,” 268. Feest, “Ethnographic Collection,” 79. SIAR for 1884 Part II Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1885), 24. Report of the curator of the Department of Ethnology, Nov 27/86. SIA, Record Unit 158, USNM, “Department of Ethnology: Annual Report 1885–1886,” SIA_000158_B03_F06, http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc_216750.

Duplicates

185

33. Mason to Hodge, 3 October 1896, MS.7.BAEL.1.88, Hodge Collection, Autry National Center. 34. Fitzhugh, “Origins of Museum Anthropology,” 181. 35. Mason to Holmes, 11 January 1905, Box 1, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 36. Emphasis in original. Ibid. 37. SIA, Record Unit 158, SIA_000158_B04_F01. 38. See, e.g., “Synoptic History of Inventions: Knife, Saw, Borer, Scraper exhibit case in Arts and Industries Building,” in Box 42, Folder 26, RU 95, SIA. 39. See Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 109–13. 40. SIA, Record Unit 158, SIA_000158_B04_F01. 41. Marisa Karyl Franz, “A Gathering of Names: On the Categories and Collections of Siberian Shamanic Materials in Late Imperial Russian Museums, 1880–1910” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2019), 156. 42. Emphasis in original. McCormick to Mason, 29 May 1894, File D8457, RU 186, SIA. 43. “List of Duplicate West Coast of Africa Material,” McCormick to Mason, 29 May 1894, File D8457, RU 186, SIA. 44. Emphasis in original. Moorehead to SI, 9 February 1903, File D16909, RU 186, SIA. 45. Moorehead to Holmes, 31 March 1903, File D16909, RU 186, SIA. 46. Holmes to Professor [Mason] written on the letter: Moorehead to Holmes, 31 March 1903, File D16909, RU 186, SIA. 47. Mason to Geare, 14 April 1903, File D16909, RU 186, SIA. 48. Quote in Sturgis to Goode, 13 July 1887, File D5195, RU 186, SIA; see also US House, Committee on Manufactures, The Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Fiftieth Congress 1888-’89 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1889), 177. 49. Brower to Wilson, 26 December 1898, Accession File 34670, RU 305, SIA. 50. Brower to Wilson, 25 February 1899, Accession File 34670, RU 305, and File D12556, RU 186, SIA. 51. Mason to Emmons, 26 April 1904, Box 1, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 52. David Ebitz, “Connoisseurship as Practice,” Artibus et Historiae 9, no. 18 (1988): 207–12. 53. My conclusions are based on the assumption my system of accessing object quality would be similar to that of Mason and his contemporaries. Because I have found no evidence of any system Mason might have used to assess quality, I am unable to claim that Mason would have used the system I used. 54. Accession 9899, RU 305, SIA. 55. The vases held at recipient museums were from a range of accessions, but were collected by the BAE in the late nineteenth century. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, my claim that the USNM exchanged objects that were not low quality would be strengthened by further testing, particularly in terms of the reliability of data collected.

Chapter 6

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency Designating Duplicates How did anthropologists at the USNM in the late nineteenth century designate specimens as exchangeable duplicates? As Karin KnorrCetina argues in Epistemic Cultures, scientific knowledge is differentiated through disciplines, which are characterized by their organizing principles. The discipline of anthropology studies humans across time and space; within the institution of the modern museum, anthropologists are involved in the collection, study, and exhibition of the material worlds that humans create, as well as expressive culture and human remains. Though there is consensus enough on the subjects and methods of anthropology to constitute a disciplinary identity, consideration of the particular “strategies and policies of knowing” that “inform expert practice” requires magnification of “the space of knowledge-in-action.”1 Knorr-Cetina’s focus is not on the production of knowledge, but on “the machineries of knowledge construction.”2 She considers the laboratory not only as a physical space for experiments, but rather a space where objects are subject to transformation. Consideration of the museum as a laboratory of natural history provides a perspective in which the curator is afforded an ability and platform to recontextualize natural and cultural objects as scientific specimens. The embodied practice of cataloging operates through a procedural workflow reliant on observation. The making of these observations, whether they are numerical measurements of an object’s dimensions or appraisal of an object’s proper function, are shaped by epistemic knowledge. In the museum, the catalog is not a “mere list,” but rather a technology that reflects a “systematic or methodological arrangement.”3 A museum collection requires a catalog not simply as a technology of inventory, but as the foundational technology of knowledge production and an integral part of knowledge

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

187

machineries. In this chapter, I consider museum catalogs, the development of disciplinary classification schemas, and the practice of designating specimens as exchangeable duplicates. I look not only at what curators say about duplicates, but also at the objects themselves.

The Conservatism of the Catalog Museum catalogs privilege certain kinds of information over others. This fact has motivated recent decolonizing work aimed at the recovery and restoration of Indigenous knowledge and agents into museum databases, exhibitions, and programs.4 Museum practice in this arena aligns with scholarship that critically evaluates how museum technologies like catalogs have summarily erased Indigenous knowledge all while naturalizing disciplinary knowledge.5 One of the challenges of practicing critical collections management is the fact that the disciplinary knowledge frameworks many museum catalogs continue to use are rooted in methodologies and theoretical frameworks from the nineteenth century. Candace Greene’s work on the history of the Smithsonian catalog system demonstrates that the catalog fields in the first ledger books used when anthropological cataloging was begun in 1859 have not only changed startlingly little over more than a century, but also their original design was meant for cataloging biological specimens. Her description of the ledger book pages where the first anthropological specimens were created emphasize the efficient imposition of order: They are written in elegant script in a large bound volume with neatly printed columns and rows. Columns carried headers defining the nature of the information to be entered, while rows were conveniently pre-numbered with the repeating series of 0 through 9. The cataloguer had only to write in the preceding digits. It is remarkably orderly and carefully preconceived, an efficient system with which to meet the challenge of creating intellectual order within the massive backlog of collections from government expeditions and other sources transferred to the new institution.6

In measured, gleaming rows, the catalog tidily standardizes the endless chaos of the world beyond the museum. Catalogs are technologies shaped by epistemologies. Because they are highly durable and persistent technologies, central to knowledge production in the museum context, they in turn influence how scientists transform objects into disciplinary data. The Smithsonian catalog of the nineteenth century exemplifies the materialization of the table of knowledge through the transformation of objects into disciplinary specimens. The catalog fields used to create anthropological specimens mirrored the ones Baird

188

Exchanging Objects

used to catalog bird specimens. Greene argues that catalogers working on the anthropological collections “dutifully followed the specified data fields fairly closely, although they chose to ignore the columns headed ‘Collecting date,’ ‘Nature’ (e.g. nest, egg, skin), and ‘Sex.’ ”7 Simply disregarding seemingly inapplicable fields was one option, but they struggled with other decisions, just as contemporary catalogers often do as they enter information into electronic databases. Still, decisions had to be made. Not surprisingly, their [the catalogers’] main difficulty seems to have been where to enter a cultural designation. At times they included it in the column “Name,” adding an ethnic designation to the object name, to create entries such as “Tlingit basket” in the field that Baird had used for scientific name. In other instances, the “Locality” field was used, and a cultural term was entered along with or instead of a geographic location: “Indians of the Upper Missouri” or “Pai-Utes, S. Utah.” In many cases, cataloguers limited themselves to information defined by the headers, and no culture was recorded. The “Remarks” column at the end of each row offered an opportunity for further comment, but that column was seldom used during original cataloguing and not for information of any consistent type. As ledger books filled with catalogue records, new books were ordered, but there was little change in format over the span of more than 100 years and 93 volumes. Not until 1899 did “Sex” disappear and “People” make an entrance as a column header in the Anthropology catalogue.8

Extremely conservative changes in catalog fields reflect the priority of standardization. Standardization is a pervasive, central feature of modernity that streamlines the work of description in the museum context. By considering standardization as a “necessary technique designed to facilitate other tasks,” it is possible to understand how the catalog was used to facilitate the designation of specimens as duplicates.9 Standardization is most robust when the same configuration of catalog fields is used across disciplinary collections, achieved through the use of identical ledger books. This system creates correspondent metadata across museum accessions and allows a broader range of museum personnel to use and create museum recording and organizational technologies. Registrars, secretaries, and cataloging assistants needed only to understand the basic tenets of the catalog to create documents that recorded the movement of specimens. The way that catalogs are used to produce knowledge categories is directly related to the designation of duplicates. In a catalog-based knowledge category, such as Zuni ceramic eating bowls, there may be some number of these bowls that constitute the type (and any illustrated bowls may be considered type specimens), and other representative specimens that can be designated as exchangeable duplicates. This is an ideal scenario that assumes curators—those making the actual selections of what speci-

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

189

mens to exchange—are disciplinary automatons who have internalized the deductive knowledge categories produced in conjunction with the catalog. What is evident in the situation at the USNM is that the organizational need for duplicates from all scientific departments coupled with conventional and consistent cataloging practices, are conditions that are mediated by curatorial prerogatives, relationships, and intellectual interests.10 Thus, attention to Otis Mason’s engagements with classificatory variables and anthropological knowledge categories merits attention.

Culture History Theory, Natural History Method Late-nineteenth-century Smithsonian anthropologists such as John Wesley Powell and Otis T. Mason subscribed to ideas of unilinear evolution whereby all societies were understood as progressing through distinct stages of social evolution at different rates.11 Lewis Henry Morgan’s three-stage scheme of social development (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) was based on evidence of technological change, which then correlated to patterns of social relationships.12 Evidence of technological developments could be found in material culture: the use of fire was evidenced by fire-making tools; the various methods of animal domestication and agriculture were evidenced by hoes, digging sticks, horse gear, and ox yokes. Thus, the objects and information collected from native tribes could be used to place peoples sequentially in this theoretical model of culture history. Mason brought culture history to the Smithsonian. A significant intellectual influence on Mason was Gustav Klemm, of Leipzig’s Museum of Ethnology, who professed a comparative approach. Anthropology involved the “study of the various peoples of the earth in different times and places; to consider carefully their condition; and then to classify them conjecturally according to their place in the series.”13 Like naturalists who assembled botanical collections from all areas of the globe to develop taxonomies, Klemm advocated for the collection and comparison of material culture within meaningful categories (technological types rather than assemblages of different materials that represented a group of people) as an anthropological approach to the history of humanity (culture). As historian Curtis Hinsley argues, Mason elaborated Klemm’s approach through a focus on invention, defined as “changes in materials and processes; as modifications in structure and function of artifacts; as changes in the inventor or society.”14 The progressive change experienced by societies could be understood through invention, which methodologically required the comparative study of material culture (as well as other forms of ethnological data).

190

Exchanging Objects

Mason’s approach to culture history is closely aligned with the practices of natural history: searching for evidence of continuous visible changes in the structure of artifacts through which the history of humanity (rather than the history of specific cultures) unfolded. Mason approached artifacts as a naturalist would approach a plant; his “first step with a specimen was to identify its geographic and ethnographic provenance, shape, structure, purpose, and unique properties.”15 This scheme had the effect of standardizing categories of material culture as units of ethnological analysis, which could be compared in order to provide evidence for an evolutionary narrative. Duplicates were the material helpmates for making the comparison of culture history. When ethnic specificity was unimportant—objects made by people in any cultural stage labeled “barbarian” could be used to illustrate “barbaric inventions”—fire drills from twenty cultural groups could be considered duplicates for any barbarian fire drill that was considered a type at this evolutionary stage of cultural/technological development. Mason embraced the classificatory nature of natural history as a way to logically organize the potential chaos of all of the artifacts ever made, quickly growing ever larger in representation at the USNM as the world was systematically explored. His scope was global. In his evolutionary scheme, human inventions progressed from simplest to most complex, mirroring the development of complex, rational, and contractual thought. Mason’s complexity-driven organizational scheme mirrored the framework of biological evolution observed in natural history specimens. In the study of the natural history of invention there occurs something very like the degrees of complexity in organic beings. For your unicellular organisms, which have no differentiation of structure for the performance of a variety of functions there is the non-organic tool, the stone knife, hammer, perforator, &c. Analogous to the highly organized plants or animals, running through a series of increasing complexity, the museum of invention has its poly-organic units of technology, such are a suit of clothing, a set of tools or weapons, the house and its furniture, the shops of the artisans, the paraphernalia of a ceremony or worship. And to perfect the comparison, the material, the pictures and descriptions to set forth the life history of a whole tribe or nation resemble very closely those studies of the best naturalists who include within the examination of a species a full description of its habits en masse. Such are Dr. Cook’s and Sir John Lubbock’s studies in ants, and such also are the ethnographic monographs sought in the little question book sent out by the British Association called “Notes and queries on Anthropological subjects.”16

Mason emphasized the value of the ethnographic studies, many of which were published by Smithsonian collaborators such as Alfred Niblack and Washington Matthews. Implicit in his statement is the value of these stud-

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

191

ies as servile to a larger anthropological project—the full developmental, evolutionary schema of human progress, which could be brought together under one roof at the USNM through systematic classification of anthropological objects and information. The culture history approach was evident in Mason’s developmental series exhibits. Commonly used for archaeological collections, specimens exhibiting similar forms were grouped together and placed in sequence. But most museums of the time arranged their anthropological collections according to geography and culture areas. Mason experimented with this approach in 1886 using the USNM’s “Eskimo” material.17 Upon seeing this exhibit, American Museum of Natural History Assistant Curator Franz Boas debated him on the merits of the geographic versus technological arrangement in a series of well-known articles published in Science. Mason demonstrated his preference for using natural history classification techniques, particularly use of the classificatory term “species” in reference to knowledge categories.18 One benefit of this method was the ability for the curator to classify objects with absent or vague provenance. Ten years following these debates, Mason still maintained his allegiance to this method: The Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States National Museum has endeavored, for some years, to insist upon the application and methods of natural history in the description of Ethnographic specimens. It is his opinion that objects connected with human activities may be arranged into families, genera, species and varieties deriving their substance, and form, and function from natural resources, exigencies and climates. It seems to be true almost, in spite of the question of race, that in certain regions typical arts have come to be in vogue to such an extent that a skilled curator is able to say with regard to a specimen, that it belongs to this or that class according to its structure, and that it belongs to a certain definite culture area by reason of its material, its form, and practically its refined ornamentations and accessories.19

Though Mason accommodated ethnographic exhibition arrangement and later became a proponent of culture area organization, his allegiance to classification based on natural history methods was central to his curatorial work and was captured in the informational infrastructure of the catalog.

Mason the Classifier The epistemological foundations of the ethnological department at the USNM during Mason’s tenure rests on the catalog and natural history methods, coupled with culture history theory. But the doing of museum-

192

Exchanging Objects

based ethnological work—classification, curation, exhibitions, exchanges— required these ideal schemas to be operationalized. Candace Greene notes inconsistencies and confusion in how cultural designations were recorded in the catalog.20 Though the classificatory techniques and technologies were widespread, the work was not formulaic or clear cut. Close attention to Mason’s efforts to designate ethnological variables was responsive to his intellectual needs and curatorial praxis. Here I consider Mason’s notes and publications in terms of the variables he proposed, and consider how these variables intersected with the designation of specimens as types and duplicates. In 1886 Mason published “Resemblances in Arts Widely Separated” in The American Naturalist, which sparked the well-known series of Science articles in which Mason, Boas, and Powell debated how ethnological specimens should be curated and exhibited. The theoretical question that kicked off the debate rested on the fact that a global museum collection would reveal similar inventions (implements, practices, institutions, etc.) from areas that were geographically separated. Mason’s theoretical interpretation operated on the principles that “like causes produce like effects,” and “men will everywhere, under the same stress and with the same resources, make the same invention.”21 Thus, comparison of objects resembling one another was a method to evaluate inventions within an evolutionary framework whereby all societies passed through distinct stages. To compare objects within and between stages, a system of classification was required. Mason articulated a general system in the curator’s annual report for the year, emphasizing the centrality of classification for anthropological knowledge production. The dominant ideas according to which anthropologists in various parts of the world arrange their specimens may be called the concepts of classification. These concepts are race or tribe, material, structure and function, progress of invention, and geographic distribution. No perfect scheme can omit any one of these concepts. Methods can differ only in the order in which they are considered and the prominence given to each.22

These variables accommodated Mason’s affinity toward the developmental or evolutionary approach, as well as geographical and ethnic group arrangements popular in other museums. The classificatory concepts in the Naturalist article are more specific. He suggests six “causes of actions” or classificatory variables: the efficient cause (the agent or maker of the object), the material cause (the materials used to construct the object), the formal cause (the design of the object), the instrumental cause (the tools used to create the object), the processional cause (the techniques used to

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

193

create the object), and the final cause (the function of the object).23 Using the example of an “Indian” basket, he describes each variable. To advance his theoretical argument of the independence of origin (as opposed to diffusion), he uses two kinds of like objects as evidence: baskets and throwing-sticks. Mason is able to make these comparisons because of the geographic breadth of the USNM’s ethnological collections. He compares baskets with a particular weaving technique, “the bird-cage type” from Cape Flattery, Washington, and those “on the Congo.”24 Both are alike in technique, but differ in other classificatory variables, including maker, form, material, and function. For throwing-sticks, he considers those from Australia, Brazil, and “Eskimo land.”25 He argues that throwing-sticks from all these areas resemble each other in maker, material, form, and function, “but not perfectly.” The Australian and Brazilian throwing-stick forms have only the “fundamental . . . handle and a peg or hook to catch the end of the dart or harpoon” whereas the Eskimo “developed a dozen species of throwing-sticks, so distinct that they can be separated by types.”26 Mason’s use of the species concept is applied to the varieties of throwing-sticks within the ethnological collection, designated primarily on the basis of geographic location, while the throwing-stick category itself would likely be considered a genus-level classification. In terms of the validity of Mason’s theoretical argument, the unevenness of the USNM’s ethnological collection proved problematic. Extensive collecting along the Northwest Coast and in the Territory of Alaska (hereafter Alaska) resulted in large numbers of throwing-sticks with documented geographic provenances. Compared to the throwing-sticks from the whole of Australia or Brazil, where the USNM had relatively few specimens (potentially received as duplicates from exchanges), Mason seems to be comparing genus-level and species-level specimens. The same is true for the baskets, where he compares Cape Flattery, Washington (a relatively small area), to the Congo (a relatively large area). What this reveals is not only the relationship between field collections and the production of knowledge categories (e.g., the types of Eskimo throwing-sticks), but the fact that the curatorial praxis of applying classificatory variables was shaped by the content of the museum’s collection. With clear type (and type specimens) for Eskimo throwing-sticks, duplicates could be designated, but this outcome is dependent on large and variegated collections made in the field and sent to the USNM for study. Following Mason’s paper in the The American Naturalist, Boas published in Science the following year, “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart.”27 The title of the paper alone indicates its nature as a rebuttal. Boas rejected Mason’s argument that superficial similarities always

194

Exchanging Objects

came from the same needs and through the same inventive processes.28 Boas objected to the application of any classificatory variable to objects other than ethnicity or culture (culture in the Boasian sense). According to Boas, each ethnological specimen was to be studied “individually, in its history and in its medium.”29 Boas’s challenge is leveled at the classificatory schema that produced types and duplicates. To Boas, all the specimens in a category—each with its own individual variation—were necessary in order to investigate the character of individual tribes. Whereas Mason was interested in comparison of culture stages, Boas was interested in change and variation within groups. Boas illustrated his argument in this way: From a collection of string instruments, flutes, or drums of “savage” tribes and the modern orchestra, we cannot derive any conclusion but that similar means have been applied by all peoples to make music. The character of their music, the only object worth studying, which determines the form of the instruments, cannot be understood from the single instrument, but requires a complete collection of the single tribe. Here, however, it can be seen that each ethnological collection affords only very fragmentary instruction; that its real use is only to illustrate descriptions of the tribes. For a study of native art and its development, they are indispensable. For this purpose, duplicates, of which the superficial visitor of ethnological museums frequently complains, are absolutely necessary. They are the only means of determining what is characteristic of a tribe, and what is merely incidental.30

The difference in approaching objects here is distinct. Mason’s classification of objects was not only in line with natural history techniques of determining the distinguishing features of a category while allowing for variation, but, also, his theoretical approach was one of generalization by analogy.

The Need for Duplicates In his first Science article reply to Mason, Boas writes that duplicates “are the only means of determining what is characteristic of a tribe.”31 As an anthropologist, his priority was to preserve individual variation at the specimen or object level in museum collections. As a curator, this would mean there would be no duplicates to exchange. Realistically, as a curator in the late nineteenth century trying to build a global anthropological collection and maintain relationships with other museum-based scholars and curators, this position was untenable. There was no way Boas could avoid participating in specimen exchange, as long as he maintained museum-based affiliations and support. In an exchange Boas arranged between the USNM and Adolf Bastian at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, Boas remarked on the selection of objects, noting what was needed by the receiving institution. They did not need

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

195

more of what they already had. They needed specimens that would illustrate unrepresented categories. Boas wrote, You acknowledged receipt of ethnological specimens from British Columbia in exchange. It was understood that the specimens were to be exchanged for others from the Naskapi Indians or from the mouth of the Mackey River, and I had requested that a list of the specimens was sent to me before they were transferred to Berlin, as Professor Bastian had asked me to see that no duplicates of the Berlin Collection were sent. Will you, please, inform me of what you propose to send in exchange to Berlin.32

Correspondence of this nature demonstrates that even though Boas might have harbored intellectual objections to diminishing the variability in a collection by exchanging duplicates, he was conversant with his colleagues’ use of the term. At times, exchanges served his museum work. On a visit to Europe in 1898, Boas arranged an exchange with Professor A. B. Meyer of the Dresden Royal Anthropological Museum. On November 2, 1898, Boas sent 124 specimens from Alaska and British Columbia, valued at $500, from the American Museum of Natural History to Germany. The inventory list prepared under Boas’s direction that provides the description of each object is titled, “Duplicates from the Collections of the American Museum of Natural History.”33 Boas uses the term “duplicates” as part of his curatorial work facilitating exchanges, indicating his familiarity with its common usage among curators and museum administrators. Though the concept of duplicate was antithetical to his theoretical pursuits and methods, he understood that it was necessary to refer to objects as duplicates in order to exchange them in the global museum community.

No One Ruling Concept After Boas’s first Science shot across the bow, Mason quickly published a reply where he expanded on his system of classification calling his variables “classific concepts.” He argued that variables that “all curators of anthropological museums must recognize” included “material, race, geographical areas, social organizations, environment, structure and function, and evolution or elaboration.”34 Here, Mason was expanding the anthropological data under consideration to include not only objects, but also behavior and belief. The question of which classific concept or variable would take precedence would depend on the questions being asked, the interests of the scientist, and the collection’s contents and breadth.35 Mason’s classificatory schema included Boas’s preferred variable of ethnicity, but many others as

196

Exchanging Objects

well. Some of these variables were clearly inscribed in the catalog, while others were privileged most effectively through publications and exhibitions. Boas responded, returning to the original question of object similarity. He characterized Mason’s method as comparison leading to “conclusions by analogy.” His method was to trace “the full history of a single phenomenon” for which “tribal arrangement of museum specimens” was the preferred approach as it best took into account environmental and cultural contexts.36 In Boas’s preferred model, the key to historical analyses of particular cultures necessitated study of object variation within knowledge categories. This was not only a difference of theoretical opinion, but also something deeper: duplicates could exist only within one of these divergent positions—Mason’s. The need to preserve the observed and collected variability in knowledge categories stems from a difference of opinion over the goal of anthropological study, the most important unit of analysis, and the level of generalization possible. Mason sought to understand processes of human invention as an analogue to tracing evolutionary development, while Boas sought to capture the particular quality of individual cultures from a more relativistic standpoint. The significance of this debate for specimen exchange and the designation of specimens as duplicates draws attention to how different curators tolerated object variability in their cataloging, research, and exhibitionary work. Mason’s classific concepts offered a larger number of meaningful variables that could be used in intellectual and organizational schemas, and that allowed for the designation of duplicates within knowledge categories constituted by specimens with individual variation. Though descriptive fields in the catalog were standardized across departments, Mason’s allegiance to anthropological questions were in many cases operationalized through the consideration of additions and revisions to classificatory variables. A life-long classifier, Mason continued to revise his variables. The variables he articulated in The American Naturalist and Science articles are still in common use by anthropologists working inside and outside museums. His 1890 address at Johns Hopkins University enumerated “major concepts governing the anthropological museums of the world,” which included, “Race, Nationality, Location, Materials, Elaboration and Function.” He continued, Indeed, so hopelessly are the first three confounded, that we can reduce the ruling concepts to four, Place, Material, Evolution and Function. The British Museum, the Trocadero, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Dresden, and in our own country, the Peabody, adopt the locative concept as uppermost; while Oxford, South Kensington, Guimet, Cluny, Leipsic, and the National Museum favor the other concepts for the dominant ones. It is not to be understood that any one of these

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

197

discards the ruling concept of the other, it is merely subordinated and this subordination establishes at once the tone, the genius, the total aspect of the place.37

Though Mason was thinking in terms of overall organizing schemes for anthropological museums, these concepts serve to illuminate the variables that Mason thought about and used when analyzing anthropological objects. Three of his four concepts are relatively clear: place, material, and function. Terms denoting place, especially in the catalog, could be a term for an ethnic group (e.g., Zuni) or a geographical location (e.g., New Mexico). The Boasian preference for primacy of the ethnic group in conducting anthropological research was influential even at the time. Mason’s fourth category encompasses technological elaboration and evolution. In presenting possible approaches for interpreting an object, he suggested, “Another curator will place the same example in a series according to the elaboration of its structure. The laws of inventions like the laws of evolution work from the simple to the more complex.”38 This category refers to overall form and ornamentation or design. His belief that there was no one ruling concept demonstrates that the particular value of an object for each of these categories would theoretically be taken into account when designating duplicates. Indeed, he understood that approaches would change over time when he quipped to George Emmons a year before his death, “Just now I am moving cautiously in the matter of exchanges, not wishing to leave regrets for my successors in that respect.”39

Duplicates, Catalogs, and Variables Mason was largely responsible for designating specimens as exchangeable duplicates for the collections under his purview. Direct references and explanations of how he undertook the curatorial work of making these designations is unsurprisingly sparse. Perhaps the most revealing instance is found in a letter from Mason to one of his long-time exchange partners, musical instrument collector Mrs. John Crosby Brown: In [my] position [as acting head curator of anthropology], the musical instruments come immediately under my charge. I have asked Mr. Hawley to go through the entire collection and make out a card catalog, which I am having typewritten so as to show what is really duplicate. Two questions arise in my mind on this point, namely: What is the structure, and what is the method of functioning each piece; and What ethnic and geographic distribution each class of instruments had. Just at this moment, therefore, it would be difficult to initiate any formal exchange.40

198

Exchanging Objects

Mason did not treat requests for the exchange of duplicates lightly. In this letter, he references three of his four classific concepts—place (“ethnic and geographic distribution”), form (“structure”), and function. He excludes, or makes no mention, of material. Though he does not rank these variables, in exchange correspondence he makes common use of the place and function variables to refer to duplicates as exchangeable specimens. Though the USNM did not only organize its collections by place and function, both were well-established disciplinary variables. In the following two instances, Mason refers to duplicate specimens primarily by function and place: “Sometimes there are duplicate specimens of basketry in the museum which we have the right to exchange for new material; but, unfortunately our supply of Pit River and Shasta is very meager and there are no duplicates.”41 In this instance, he uses tribal and geographic names to denote localities from which there are few baskets represented in the collection. In a letter to Boas, he uses the place variable (tribal names) in reference to the exchange of busts: “Dr. Hrdlička reports to me that you are willing to exchange busts of Indians for Osage, Sioux, Creek, and Navaho examples which we have in our museum. We need busts of male Apache, Hopi, Zuni, and Laguna, and should be glad to make the exchange with your Museum.”42 Both the organizing schemes of place (culture areas, tribal names) and function (synoptic series) were present in the USNM, though there does not appear to be one ruling concept. Duplicate specimens are representative. The way in which they are representative is based on their ability to index classific concepts, which, taken in combination, constitute knowledge categories. As I have demonstrated through close attention to his publications, Mason suggested many classificatory variables. But the most persistent of these, and, importantly, the ones that were most consistently inscribed in the catalog, were the following four: form, function, material, and place. The major caveat here is that the first three of these variables were usually recorded together in the catalog field for the “Name” or “Nature of Object” which means terms associated with each variable were not consistently recorded. When designating specimens as duplicates, I suggest that Mason would have intended to preserve the representation of knowledge categories in the ethnological collections as he made decisions about which specimens to exchange. One method for investigating this claim is to look to the catalog. By holding object function constant, we may see the extent to which Mason paid attention to the preservation of the diversity of the place variable in his exchange decisions. Table 6.1 was created using catalog records from the NMNH Department of Anthropology KE EMu electronic catalog database. The research

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

199

Table 6.1. Status of Indigenous North American rattles accessioned and cataloged into the USNM between 1859 and 1910. People

Locality

Kept

Exchanged

Eskimo

Cook’s Strait

1

Eskimo

Agliamut

1

Eskimo

Uganik Island

1

Eskimo

Bristol Bay

1

Eskimo

Lower Yukon River

2

Eskimo

Ugashik River

1

Eskimo

Pastolik, Yukon River Mouth

1

Eskimo

Arctic

1

Eskimo

Ungava Bay

2

Eskimo

NW Territory

1

Eskimo

Anderson River

1

Clallam

Port Townsend

1

Haida

Queen Charlotte Island

6

1

Haida

British Columbia

12

13

Kwakiutl

British Columbia

0

Klikitat

Yakima Reservation

1

Klamath

Oregon

1

Tahltan

British Columbia

1

Bella Bella

British Columbia

6

2

Makah

Neah Bay

3

2

Tsimshian

Neah Bay

1

Tsimshian

Ft. Simpson

1

None

NW Coast

1

None

British Columbia

1

None

Alaska

0

None

Baranof Island

3

Tlingit

Alaska

4

Tlingit

Yakutat Bay

1

Tlingit

Port Mulgrave

1

Tlingit

Tongass Island

1

Tlingit

Chatham Strait

2

Removed

1 1 1

2

1

3 1

3

1 3

2

(continued)

200

Exchanging Objects

Table 6.1. continued People

Locality

Kept

Exchanged

Removed

Tlingit

Chichagof Island, Hoonah

12

4

1

Tlingit

Baranof Island

14

1

5

Tlingit

Auke Village

2

Tlingit

Klawock Village

5

Tlingit

Fort Simpson

0

1

Tlingit

Chilcat

1

1

Tonkawa

Texas

1

Abenaki

Maine

1

Iriquois

Western NY

6

Cherokee

Eastern Cherokee Reservation

2

Seminole

Florida

1

Seminole

Lake Okechobee

1

Chippewa

Leach Lake Reservation

1

Chippewa

Lake Superior

1

Chippewa/ Mississagua

Ontario

2

Menominee

Wisconsin

1

Nez Perce

Lapwai Reservation

1

Mandan

Dakota Territory

2

Shoshone

Wyoming Territory

4

Paiute

Colorado

0

1

Cheyenne

Cheyenne Arapaho Reservation

4

1

Arapaho

Cheyenne Arapaho Reservation

9

Hidatsa

Dakota Territory

1

Ute

Utah

1

Kiowa

Indian Territory

4

Yankton Sioux Yankton Reservation

1

Sioux

Upper Missouri River

2

Sioux

Northern Plains

5

Sioux

Dakota Territory

2

Hupa

Shasta County, California

1

Hupa

Trinity River

1

Hupa

Hoopah Valley

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

201

Table 6.1. continued People

Locality

Kept

Mission

California

3

Pomo

California

1

Tipai-Ipai

California

1

Mohave

Colorado River Reservation

1

Mohave

Southern California

1

Tule

Tule River

1

Navajo

Arizona

2

Cocopa

Arizona

1

Pima

Gila River Reservation

6

Papago

Arizona

2

Apache

N/A

1

Apache

White Mountain

0

Quechan

Arizona

0

Jemez

New Mexico

0

San Juan

New Mexico

3

Isleta

New Mexico

1

Pueblo

New Mexico

6

Zia

New Mexico

22

Santo Domingo

New Mexico

1

Acoma

New Mexico

1

Laguna

New Mexico

1

Zuni

New Mexico

23

Hopi

Oraibi

1

Hopi

Arizona

Hopi

Exchanged

Removed

1

1

1 1 1

1 2

7

9

33

7

11

Walpi

27

22

8

Hopi

Mishongovi

19

2

4

Hopi

Shongopavi

7

2

1

Hopi

Tesuque

1

None

New Mexico

1 79

63

Total

317

2

Note on the Hopi–Tesuque record that Hopi and Tesuque are different Pueblos, so this likely refers to an object made at Hopi but collected at Tesuque.

202

Exchanging Objects

population was limited to Indigenous North American rattles accessioned prior to 1910. I chose to work with rattles for several reasons. From a total population of 459, Mason exchanged 79 rattles. The research population was limited to rattles accessioned between 1859 and 1910 because exchanges began to markedly decline after this date and later selections would not have been made by Mason. The North American rattle collection was part of the main collecting emphasis of the USNM at this time and therefore should reflect major collecting and exchange principles. I used a combination of Department of Anthropology catalog card and electronic database (KE EMu) catalog records to record how many rattles were kept and exchanged on the basis of the “Place” variable. As Greene notes, it was not until 1899 that the “People” field was included in the ledgers. The field for “Locality” often contained either a geographic or ethnic term, or both. The extent to which the ethnic and geographic terms have been added to the KE EMu database by later curators and collections managers is unknown, since collections staff have not implemented or notated these changes in a consistent manner.43 Moreover, both ethnic terms and geographic terms range in specificity, reflecting variations in collecting documentation. Table 6.1 splits these terms into the smallest meaningful units of analysis. Mason may have been more of a lumper in practice, but, even so, the table demonstrates a preference for preserving diversity in the “Place” variable when designating specimens as exchangeable duplicates. Table 6.1 not only contains columns for rattles kept and exchanged, but also a column for “Removed.” This is a limitation of some database systems in that they privilege catalog records for objects physically present in the collection. Objects that cannot be verified to be physically present in the collection have been marked “[Removed]” in the field for catalog number. Removed is a vague term, immediately revealing little about the context of removal, which ranges from known to unknown loss. Objects removed for purposes of exchange may be a known or unknown loss, depending on if the records associated with the exchange are linked to the catalog records. We know from Mason’s own records that these concordances were not systematically recorded. The rattles represented in the “Removed” column may have been exchanged or deaccessioned for other reasons such as physical deterioration or repatriation, or are physically extant in the collection but assigned a temporary catalog number because they no longer bear evidence of their original number (e.g., the tag has fallen off). Indicated in bold in table 6.1, in only four out of ninety-two cases were rattles exchanged without a specimen from the same category being kept. One of these cases gives a very general geographic location (Alaska). Most Alaskan rattles were linked to a more specific locality, which would make

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

203

them representative of observed human diversity and the developing culture area concept. The overall trend shows that Mason’s decisions about which rattles to designate as duplicate and then exchange preserved the diversity of the place variable. In the majority of cases, Mason kept at least one rattle per locality, which perhaps exemplified or typified the locality. While I have no direct evidence that the Jemez, Paiute, and Fort Simpson Tlingit rattles were sent in error, and that this explains why they do not conform to the overall pattern of keeping at least one rattle per locality category, clerical errors and mistakes about which objects should be exchanged were sometimes made.

Observing Duplicates through Lot and Consecutive Cataloging Many contemporary museum collections staff will be familiar with a cataloging format referred to as “lot cataloging.” The National Park Service Museum Handbook’s instructions on lot cataloging for ethnological objects details the conditions necessary for the assignment of multiple objects to one catalog record. The items must be from the same accession, provenience, cultural group, date/period, and have the same object name and artist/maker, if known. Finally, “the objects should be identical or similar.”44 Lot cataloging is not new. It was used by USNM curators in seemingly much the same way, and thus can be used as a method for observing notions of similarity in specimens exchanged as duplicates. In Mason’s handwritten annual report of the ethnology department for 1886, he describes the process of lot cataloging as way of increasing efficiency: “Whenever a collection of special importance is received from the same locality, the objects are first carefully classified so as to bring all things together that are alike or that have the same use. These are then entered as formerly, a separate number being given to each piece that is sufficiently distinct to receive it, but those that are alike or that form a set receive the same number.”45 Though lot cataloging was commonly used, since it is a time-saving method, it was not always used consistently when cataloging similar specimens. Similar specimens that likely could have been cataloged in lots were also cataloged consecutively. This was a similar time-saving measure when entering descriptive data into ledger book fields, as the cataloger could write “ditto” or use ditto marks on each consecutive row. Because lot and consecutive cataloging are based on perceptions of similarity, they are useful to observe how specimens were designated as duplicates. In order to observe the variable of form, I chose to work with one large exchange transaction that would allow for the formal comparison of kept and exchanged objects that had been catalogued consecutively or in

204

Exchanging Objects

lots. Exchanges to the Trocadero museum in Paris occurred from 1884 to 1905. In 1885 the USNM sent 508 objects from its ethnological collections to Paris. I searched the NMNH KE EMu database for the catalog number of objects sent to the Trocadero in this exchange. If the database indicated that there were objects currently in the NMNH collection associated with one of the catalog numbers of objects sent to the Trocadero, this meant the catalog number had multiple objects cataloged under it in the past (i.e., lots). I also performed a search for objects sent to Paris, which reflect consecutive cataloging. In preparation for visiting the Quai Branly Museum, which holds the majority of the Trocadero ethnographic collections, I examined objects associated with thirty-four NMNH catalog records organized in lots, and seventy-five objects associated with ten groups of consecutively cataloged objects. At the Quai Branly Museum, I was able to examine twenty-three objects associated with lot cataloging, and six associated with consecutive cataloging. In both forms of cataloging practice, I observed similarities in object function, place, and material but some variation in ornamentation. I present two object studies per type of practice. Controlling other possible sources of variability is the fact that all sets of objects come from one accession, were collected by the same person, and are from the same locality.

Micmac Baskets The first study is a set of six Micmac baskets collected by George Brown Goode, cataloged consecutively (see figures 6.1–6.6). Three of the six Micmac baskets have two rows of twisted weaving material on the lid, while the remaining three (including the one sent to the Trocadero) do not. The baskets vary in size (see table 6.2), with the smallest sent to the Trocadero. The smaller basket with one fewer design element was designated a duplicate by the USNM and exchanged with the Trocadero. Being cataloged consecutively does not necessarily indicate that objects will be similar in form and design. In this case, there are similarities in material, a similar overall form in a range of sizes, and some similarity in design elements.

Yukon River Delta Spear-Guards The second study of objects cataloged consecutively are three ivory spearguards that were mounted on “bidarkies” or skin boats collected by Ed-

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

205

Figures 6.1–6.6. Micmac baskets cataloged consecutively, collected George Brown Goode. The first five baskets were kept by the USNM, while the last basket was exchanged with the Trocadero. Top left: E30851 (6.1); Middle: E30852 (6.2); Top right: E30853 (6.3); Bottom left: E30854 (6.4); Middle: E30855 (6.5), Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Bottom right: USNM E30856 / 71.1885.78.226 (6.6). Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

Table 6.2. Measurements of Micmac baskets in cm. Catalog Number

Height to Lid

Lid Circumference

Lid Diameter

30851

14

80.5

26

30852

16

74

24

30853

14

58

19

30854

13.5

56

19

30855

12.5

55.5

18

30856

11.5

52

17

ward Nelson in the Alaskan Yukon River Delta (see figures 6.7–6.9). The left and middle specimens have pronounced ridges, while the ridges on the right specimen are less pronounced. Both sides have incised graphic designs, which are distinct from each other. The overall form and size are very similar (see table 6.3), with variation in ornamentation.

206

Exchanging Objects

Figures 6.7–6.9. Yukon River Delta ivory spear-guards catalogued consecutively, collected by Edward Nelson. The left and right guards were kept by the USNM, while the middle guard was exchanged with the Trocadero. Left: E35983 (6.7), Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution; Middle: USNM E35984 / 71.1886.127.24 (6.8), Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY; Right: E35985 (6.9), Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

Table 6.3. Measurements of Yukon River Delta ivory spear-guards in cm. Catalog Number

Length

Height

Thickness

35983

3.5

3.5

.25

35984

3

3.4

.25

35985

3.5

2.25

.25

Tlingit Tablemats The first study of objects from a lot is a set of Tlingit (Baranof Island/ Sitka) tablemats collected by James Swan (see figures 6.10–6.20). The mats are consistent in function, material, and technique of manufacture. The technique of manufacture ensures that the woven designs will follow a general pattern of concentric rings. The woven designs in figures 6.13 and 6.17 are very similar and can be grouped as a set, while the woven designs in figures 6.12 and 6.19 are similar and can also be grouped as a set. There is evidence of dye applied to the weaving material but it has faded over time, making it difficult to assess similarity based on color. The mat sent in exchange to the Trocadero has a weaving design distinct from the other mats in the lot and is slightly more round than oblong. The exchanged mat’s shape is a different proportion compared to the kept mats (see table 6.4 and figure 6.21).

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

207

Figures 6.10–6.20. Tlingit woven tablemats cataloged in a lot, collected by James Swan. The first ten mats were kept by the USNM, while the last mat was exchanged with the Trocadero. Top left: E20727-0 (6.10); Middle: E20727-1 (6.11); Top right: E20727-2 (6.12); Second row left: E20727-3 (6.13); Middle: E20727-4 (6.14); Right: E20727-5 (6.15); Third row left: E20727-6 (6.16); Middle: E20727-7 (6.17); Right: E20727-8 (6.18); Fourth row left: E20727-9 (6.19), Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Fourth row middle: 71.1885.78.330 (6.20), Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Table 6.4. Measurements of Tlingit tablemats in cm. Catalog Number

Length

Height

Catalog Number

Length

Height

20727-0

30

15

20727-6

33.5

21.5

20727-1

27

16

20727-7

25

17

20727-2

25

15

20727-8

26

15.5

20727-3

25

16.5

20727-9

25.5

15

20727-4

23

15.5

71.1885.78.330

26

20.5

20727-5

35.5

21

208

Exchanging Objects

Figure 6.21. Relative sizes of Tlingit tablemats. The diamond indicates the mat that was exchanged. Produced on behalf of the author © Catherine A. Nichols.

Hopi Oblong Frames The second study of objects from a lot consists of two specimens described as oblong frames covered with muslin from Hopi Pueblo, collected in 1880 by James Stevenson (see figures 6.22–6.23). This description reflects the original name entered into the ledger, though later additions to the KE EMu database characterize this object as a headdress. The objects’ shape and size are similar, though there are differences in manufacture. The USNM object has additional sticks to attach ornaments, while it appears the object sent to the Trocadero does not (or ornaments did not survive). The muslin on both pieces has been painted green with red and black lines. The object kept by the USNM has yellow and white dashes on the lines. Overall, this piece has a more intricate decorative field than the exchanged object. Observing exchanged and kept objects from lot and consecutive cataloging demonstrates that there are no observable difference based on type of cataloging practice with respect to formal object similarity. Though the four object studies are based on a small sample of the total population of a particular specimen type or knowledge category, they suggest parameters for how duplicates were designated. When objects are compared in a group, it appears that curators did not require an exact or very similar

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

209

Figures 6.22 and 6.23. Hopi oblong frames cataloged in a lot, collected by James Stevenson. The left frame was kept by the USNM and the right frame was exchanged with the Trocadero. Left: E41942 (6.22), Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution; Right: 71.1885.78.240 (6.23), Photo Credit: © musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Table 6.5. Measurements of Hopi oblong frames in cm. Catalog Number

Length

Height

41942

49

30

71.1885.78.240

53.5

27

design to designate an object as a duplicate, depending on the closeness of the comparison. Thus, the range of variation in the overall form of objects may not be well preserved in the USNM collection. But an emergent designation principle is evident based on these studies: rather than choose an object with a size close to the median of the sample, the curator chose the smallest basket and the least oblong mat. For an object to be designated a duplicate, small details of design or shape do not seem to be required to be represented in the kept objects. It appears that representation of the major motif was the important formal criteria. No native categories that might have been meaningful are accounted for in this schema. For objects that are not intensely decorated, like the objects considered here, it seems that the curator did not prioritize ensuring that design variety was represented in the collection. Decisions regarding the designation of objects as duplicates were most attentive to locality and material, while it was perhaps more challenging to ensure a range of variability in overall form and ornamentation in kept objects.

210

Exchanging Objects

Data Movements The catalog was the primary technology that allowed for the horizontal application of classificatory variables across departments at the USNM. Within subsequent iterations of the catalog—ledgers, index cards, and electronic databases—fields were continually reproduced, albeit with highly conservative changes. Catalog fields also appeared on the forms used to record specimen data during exchange transactions. The “Distribution of Specimens” forms were used interdepartmentally, so their design was required to meet the information transmission needs of all the scientific departments. Though there were some terminological adjustments over time, the standard fields were “Nature of Objects/Name of Object; Locality; Original Donor/Collector; Catalogue Number; No. of Specimens; No. of Species; Remarks (How sent, etc.).” Since these were roughly correspondent to the catalog fields, information could be easily transcribed from catalog to exchange inventory. Curators and their assistants were the least consistent in filling in the locality field—sometimes this information was based on geography, sometimes it used ethnic identity terminology, sometimes it was omitted. If the person filling in the form was unable to include information in its relevant field that he or she deemed important, it could be included in another field that was unused (oftentimes “No. of Species” or “Remarks”). As specimens became duplicates and moved from one institutional location and context to another, catalog data traveled alongside. By considering the movement of one object—a curved knife collected at Point Barrow, Alaska—we can observe how museum record-keeping technologies are used to persistently reinscribe some variables or information while excluding others.46 Data that have been shed or lost as objects move through various museum contexts may be recuperated, but this process demands not only resources of time, but also museum professionals with knowledge of the norms and idiosyncrasies of cataloging and archival systems at different museums. The following transcriptions of catalog records and a distribution form proceed chronologically, and provide a view into the transformation of catalog data over time, where some information persists, some falls away, and some is added or modified. The object is a curved knife from Alaska. The following entry is from the USNM anthropology ledger book, where the knife was initially cataloged, following its collection under the direction of Lieutenant Patrick Henry Ray, where the knife had been assigned a temporary (“original”) number in the field.47

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

211

Department of Anthropology Ledger Book Current No. 89281 Original No. 1076 Name. Knife iron blade Locality. Esquimaux Point Barrow Alaska Measurement. [“same” referencing hand drawn illustration for 89278] Received From— Lt. P. H. Ray, USA When Enter’d 1884 January No. of Specimens. 148 In 1885 Ray’s report of the expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, was published. Ray received orders from the War Department on June 24, 1881, to sail from San Francisco to Point Barrow and establish a permanent observation station until the summer of 1884. Ray was the officer in charge, and was accompanied by other military men, including Sergeants John Murdoch and Middleton Smith, who were listed as naturalists and observers. The expedition’s primary purpose was to make observations of meteorology, tides, and magnetism. Secondarily, “careful attention” was to be given to natural history and ethnological collecting, and collections would be “made as complete as possible.”49 The report includes a narrative chronicle of major events, followed by a “An Ethnographic Sketch of the Natives of Point Barrow.” Authored by Ray, it provided a wealth of ethnographic information, including descriptions of behavior, censuses, anthropometric measurements, and vocabularies. Murdoch prepared the catalog of ethnological specimens, arranging it “according to the plan given in Prof. Otis T. Mason’s ‘Ethnological Directions Relative to the Indian Tribes of the United States.’ ”50 The knife is included in section 6, “Implements of General Use, of War and the Chase, and of Special Crafts,” subsection “for general use.”51 Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow Curved Knife (sar-ı˘ -xrón, mı˘ ’d-lı˘ ñ).—Thirty specimens. Short curved steel or stone blade in bone or ivory handle—long, for working on wood (mı˘ ’dlı˘ ñ); short, for working on ivory, &c. Collector’s numbers 1076 Museum numbers 8928152 Comparing the report to the USNM catalog entry, the most obvious omission is the exclusion of the Indigenous name for the object. Contex-

212

Exchanging Objects

tual information about its relative size and use is also missing, as is any reference to the descriptive ethnographic narrative contained in the report. The move from the field collection to the catalog represents a significant shedding of information. Smithsonian Institution US National Museum “Distribution of Specimens” Form Nature of Objects. Ivory Carver’s Knife Locality. Pt. Barrow Original Donor. P. H. Ray Catalogue Number. 8928153 In 1887, as part of a large exchange, the knife was sent to Harvard’s Peabody Museum. The information listed on the distribution form is the most punctuated. However, visual inspection of the knife reveals several words and number sets: the USNM catalog number, the Peabody catalog number, Ray’s field collection number, Ray’s name and military affiliation, the date “1883,” and the term “Ooglaamie.” This word is included in Ray’s report, and refers to a dredging station or location near Point Barrow. Its addition offers specific location information, most likely referencing the place of collection. The distribution paperwork provides no reference to Ray’s report and the contextual, ethnographic information it contained. Department of Anthropology Catalog Card Cat. No. 89271-83 Name Knife, iron blade. (13) People Esquimaux. Locality Point Barrow, Alaska. Collector Lt. P. H. Ray, USA. Remarks Nos. 89273 and 89281 Peabody 5–87. No. 89273 Musee Guimet Nos. 89278, –75—Illus. in BAE 9th AR, Figs. 113, 116, pp. 158–9.54 Following the movement of the knife out of the USNM, a card catalog system was instituted around 1898, and included two new fields for anthropology: “People” and the storage location. As Greene notes, the cards provided more space and flexibility for recording, but “information relating to cultural origins did not increase.” Rather, the “additional space was used primarily for physical descriptions of the object, with occasional

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

213

notes on where an item appeared in publication or to whom it may have been exchanged.”55 In this case, the card (one index card encompassing 13 catalog records) referenced John Murdoch’s publication in the ninth annual BAE report, “Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition” (1892). Murdoch’s illustrated report provides extensive contextual information about groups of objects, following the original arrangement in the Ray report. The section on crooked knives spans five pages.56 It reproduces the basic descriptive information from the catalog in the Ray report, and offers additional description of use contexts. As was standard for the time, it offers descriptions of types and type (illustrated) specimens. It is unlikely that the USNM informed the Peabody of the relationship between the knife sent in 1887 and Murdoch’s report published in 1892. However, BAE publications were routinely sent to the Peabody Museum Library.57 The creation of the catalog cards followed the exchange, and there are no indications about when information was added. The knife was no longer in the custody of the USNM and there was no mechanism to associate it with this contextual data. National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology KE EMu Report Catalog number E89281-0 [Removed] Index term Knife Object name Knife, Iron Blade Culture Eskimo Locality United States; Alaska; Point Barrow Collector Lt. P.H. Ray; John Murdoch; Middleton Smith Accession Number/ Date 013712 / 1883-Nov-23 Donor Lt. P. H. Ray Remarks Ledger, Catalogue Card and SI Archive Distribution documents say sent to Peabody Museum, Harvard, Mass. 1887.58 The NMNH KE EMu report, run in 2011, includes additional information about the knife, specifically the names of Murdoch and Middleton Smith. It excludes some information from the catalog card, particularly the reference to Murdoch’s report. When museum staff share catalog data, recipients may be unaware that additional data exists in earlier catalog technology formats. The NMNH has made efforts to address these omissions by digitizing the ledger books and catalog cards and associating these

214

Exchanging Objects

images with object records on their public, online collections database. However, this database returns results only for object records that correlate with objects currently in the collection. Exchanged object records do not appear. Peabody Museum Online Catalog Peabody Number 88-51-10/50353 Display Title Curved bone tool with single groove and perforation. Descriptions: Inventory Description Knife, perforated bone handle, drill indents 1 side, metal blade, worn Object Description Curved bone tool with single groove and perforation. Classification Knife Department Ethnographic Date 1800–88 Culture/Period Navugmiut Geography/Provenience North America / United States / Alaska Geo-Locale Point Barrow Materials Bone, Metal Dimensions Overall: 14.9 x 2.6 x .9cm Quantity 2 Provenance: Donor Smithsonian Institution (1888) Collector Lt. P.H. Ray (1883)59 The Peabody’s online catalog includes information from the “Distribution of Specimens” form, and information inscribed on the object (or similar objects). The majority of information in this record is a material description of the object itself. The record introduces new data terms, specifically “Navugmiut” which approximates the historic term “Eskimo” and is preferred by some Indigenous people and scholars. Missing from this record is any reference to the historic publications of Ray and Murdoch, which provide extensive contextual information. Access to archival records and object data is critical to tracing the movements of duplicate specimens, which is made increasingly difficult by filtering techniques used when making collections data more widely accessible. Though the catalog purports to offer a description of an object, the records are partial. Tracing changes in catalog records for a single object over time and across museums illustrates the prioritization and persistence of some

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

215

variables or fields, while others may be subject to terminological change and inference. This is important at both a micro and macro level, especially as digital tools are developed for the manipulation and analysis of large collection data sets. The omissions, especially if they are in catch-all fields like “Remarks,” provide little impetus for curatorial staff to further investigate the itineraries of museum objects in circulation. In this chapter I have addressed the relationship between the catalog, disciplinary classification schemas, and museum practices as a means of understanding how particular specimens were designated as duplicates and exchanged. The standardization that the catalog offers is necessary to the creation of types as disciplinary knowledge categories, but cataloging remains limited in its ability to impose exacting order on the endless diversity of material culture and the natural world. The question of how curators selected specimens as duplicates to exchange cannot be answered simply. It was an intersection of their intellectual approaches and scientific norms, but was also shaped by resource pressures, experience, and desired outcomes. Duplicates’ relationship with notions of similarity is precipitated on their representativeness, but what defines these specimens is their mobility.

Connecting to Contemporary Museum Concerns It is through the catalog, coupled with organizational requirements for exchange, that Mason enacted disciplinary theory. This resulted in the designation of specimens as duplicates, meaning their mobility and representativeness were their salient and relevant features. The catalog is at once the technology that binds the disparate pieces of information and things together in the space of the museum, and the technology that allows for objects to move out of the museum. It is what makes the museum not a repository of known things, but a dynamic archive of knowledge. Every day museum professionals make decisions that shape their collection, their museum, and the museum field. Our decisions reflect our intellectual approaches—our academic and professional training. But they also reflect our worldviews and values. All of this plays into the politics of representation, which has been so thoroughly explored by scholars in the context of exhibitionary practice. But it is these everyday, tacit decisions about practices as tedious and mundane as cataloging that privilege and reify particular perspectives all the way down to the very bones of the institution—the catalog. The catalog is permanent, essential, and definitive in ways that exhibits are not, perhaps making collections managers the

216

Exchanging Objects

most powerful representational agents in the whole museum institutional complex.

Notes 1. Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 2–3. 2. Ibid., 3. 3. Oxford English Dictionary Online, n. “catalogue,” accessed 3 June 2020, http://www.oed.com. 4. Susan Rowley, “The Reciprocal Research Network: The Development Process,” Museum Anthropology Review 7, no. 1–2 (2013): 22–43. 5. Hannah Turner, “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (2015): 658–76. 6. Greene, “Material Connections,” 149. 7. Ibid., 150. 8. Ibid., 150. 9. Susan Leigh Star and Martha Lampland, “Reckoning with Standards,” in Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life, eds. Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 10. 10. For a development of this argument at the Field Museum, see Catherine A. Nichols, “From Pots to Pan Pipes: Specimen Exchanges between the Field Museum’s Paul S. Martin and Harold Gladwin of Gila Pueblo Archaeological Foundation,” Museum & Society 17, no.1 (2019): 98–116. 11. See Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 83–144, for detailed assessment of the theoretical orientations of USNM and BAE anthropologists, and how their brand of anthropology shifted through the 1880s and 1890s. 12. See chapter 1 in Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society (New York: H. Holt, 1877). 13. Gustav Klemm quoted in Otis T. Mason, “The Leipsic ‘Museum of Ethnology,’ ” in SIAR for 1873 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1874), 395. 14. Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 88–89. 15. Ibid., 91. 16. Otis T. Mason, “The Educational Aspect of the United States National Museum,” Notes supplementary to the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 4 (1890), 509. 17. Hinsley, Savages and Scientists, 98. The term Eskimo was used by Mason and his contemporaries, which is why I use it throughout this chapter. Many contemporary Indigenous Alaskans prefer to be known by the names they use in their own languages such as Inuit and Yupik.

Catalogs, Classification, and Contingency

217

18. Otis T. Mason, “Resemblances in Arts Widely Separated,” The American Naturalist 20, no. 3 (1886): 251. 19. SIA, Record Unit 158, USNM, “Department of Ethnology: Annual Report 1895–1896,” SIA_000158_B04_F01, http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris _arc_216750. 20. Greene, “Material Connections,” 150. 21. Emphasis in original. Mason, “Resemblances,” 248. 22. Report of the Curator of the Department of Ethnology, Nov 27/86. SIA, Record Unit 158, USNM, “Department of Ethnology: Annual Report 1885– 1886,” SIA_000158_B03_F06, http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc _216750. 23. Mason, “Resemblances,” 248–49. 24. Ibid., 250. 25. Ibid., 250. 26. Ibid., 251. 27. Franz Boas, “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart,” Science 9, no. 224 (1887): 485–86. 28. John Buettner-Janusch, “Boas and Mason: Particularism and Generalization,” American Anthropologist 59, no. 2 (1957): 319. 29. Boas, “Occurrence of Similar Inventions,” 485. 30. Ibid., 486. 31. Ibid. 32. Boas to Goode, 3 November 1887, Accession File 19597, RU 305, SIA. 33. Accession File 1898–50, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History. 34. Otis T. Mason, “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart,” Science 9, no. 226 (1887): 534. 35. Buettner-Janusch, “Boas and Mason,” 319. 36. Franz Boas, “Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification,” Science 9, no. 228 (1887): 588. 37. Mason, “Educational Aspect,” 515. 38. Ibid., 516. 39. Mason to Emmons, 21 January 1907, Box 3, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 40. Mason to Mrs. John Crosby Brown, 17 March 1904, Box 1, Series 1, USNMDoA, NAA. 41. Mason to Mrs. Mary S. McNeil, 4 October 1905, Box 1, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 42. Mason to Boas, 5 January 1905, Box 1, Series 1, USNM-DoA, NAA. 43. See Susanne Belovari, “Professional Minutia and Their Consequences: Provenance, Context, Original Identification, and Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois,” Archival Science 13 (2013): 143–93, for a discussion of how archivists have changed record management systems and archives over time, affecting original identification. 44. National Park Service, Museum Handbook, part II, section I:3 (2000), accessed 10 July 2019, https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/handbook.html.

218

Exchanging Objects

45. SIA, Record Unit 158, SIA_000158_B03_F06. 46. Turner, “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation,” 668. 47. On Mason’s supervision of cataloging specimens, see Turner, “Information Infrastructures,” 159. 48. Volume 19, page 80, Anthropology Records Room, Museum Support Center, SI. 49. Patrick Henry Ray, Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, in Response to the Resolution of the House of Representatives of December 11, 1884 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1885), 8. 50. Ibid., 61. 51. Ibid., 66. 52. Ibid., 67. 53. Distribution to F. W. Putnam, Peabody Museum, 4 June 1887, Folder D5175, RU 186, SIA. 54. Catalog card for numbers 89271–83, Anthropology Records Room, Museum Support Center, SI. These catalog cards were a later set, typed from the original, hand-written cards, which were discarded. 55. Greene, “Material Connections,” 155. 56. John Murdoch, “Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,” in Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, ed. J. W. Powell (Washington, DC: GPO, 1892), 157–161. 57. Harvard University’s Tozzer Library, formerly the Peabody Museum Library, had two copies of the referenced BAE report. One volume was withdrawn in 1994, while the other was transferred from Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1937. Catalog records do not indicate when the withdrawn volume was received, but the eighth annual BAE report was received September 30, 1893. By 1906 the library contained the largest collection of anthropological publications in North America; see David L. Browman, “The Peabody Museum, Frederic W. Putnam, and the Rise of US Anthropology, 1866–1903,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 2 (2002): 508–19. It is a near-certainty that the library received a copy of this volume in the 1890s. 58. Report run 1 November 2011 by author at Museum Support Center, SI. 59. Peabody Museum Collections Online, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, accessed 8 July 2019, https://pmem.unix.fas.harvard.edu:8443/ peabody/view/objects/asitem/search$0040/0/title-desc?t:state:flow=24f79 cbf-7c54-4407-9229-53d1593574a2&t:state:flow1=725710b8-a688-42758ab1-325135390ab7.

Conclusion Museum Pasts and Futures The conclusion of World War II and the founding of the United Nations ushered in a new phase of global connection, one marked by the decline of imperial powers and postcolonial independence movements. The term “globalization” may be used to characterize these contemporary political, economic, and social relationships, but the movement of objects, people, capital, and ideas across global terrains has deep historical roots— often temporally located in the fifteenth century with the integration of well-developed regional networks of trade and empire in the Americas with those of the Old World, hastened by the Columbian encounter.1 Anthropological collecting by museums is a particular interventional form into these global flows, one that directs objects created by humans not into museums where their material pathways halt, but—as specimen exchange emphasizes—through museums, where scientific classifications are layered into objects’ significatory potentialities. With the decline of major ethnographic field collecting efforts in the last half of the twentieth century, the terms of circulations for museum objects have shifted, from regular incidents of duplicate specimen exchange where museums relinquished their claims of ownership to objects, to loans—either temporary or permanent, and especially for traveling blockbuster exhibits, where museums maintain their claims on ownership and use-in-context, though not constant physical custody.2 The focus of this book has been on specimen exchange at the Smithsonian Institution in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Though the idea of the museum and its associated practices and materials have always been present in some form or another at the Smithsonian, I have closely reviewed the annual reports, as well as part of the Institution’s historiography, in an effort to document the lesser known facets and dimensions of collections-based work as a means of extending and complementing extant histories and understandings. My interest in specimen exchange centers on how it can be used to theorize the museum institution, which

220

Exchanging Objects

requires not only attention to its putative purpose, but also a close look at its practice, including the tenor of negotiations, the extent and character of the exchange network, and the role of specimen exchange at both the disciplinary and organizational levels. My interest in duplicates comes from the notion that intellectual fragmentations and compartmentalizing of the museum’s collection are a means to understand the valuation of museum objects, and how those valuations intersect and shape not only disciplinary and curatorial practice, but how they shape our fundamental understandings of what museums are, and what museums could be. By advancing the idea of the museum as a dynamic archive, I seek to address assumptions about the foundations of museums and their collections as a means of contributing to the collective conversations about their futures.

Circulations: Objects and Digital Objects There has been an increasing interest among geographers, anthropologists, and historians to attend to the facts of how museum collections circulate, but also how an interpretive approach focused on mobilities is positioned to shift understandings of the history and future uses of museum collections.3 This perspective, manifest in the Mobile Museum project led by Felix Driver and Mark Nesbitt, is rooted in the conceptualization of the museum as an institution that has and continues to circulate collections. It is a perspective essential to developing new practices of collections management, particularly those that foreground Indigenous community engagements. Interest in museum and collection mobilities has been bolstered by somewhat recent and certainly growing initiatives to digitize museum collections. In this context, the focus is on the digitization of catalog data and the creation of digital images of objects in museum collections, sometimes referred to as digital surrogates.4 These more-recent efforts, which are reliant on digitizing technologies (electronic databases, digital cameras, scanners, and servers) and internet connectivity, can be understood as the most recent iteration of the postwar shift that lead to the establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), two international organizations that have sought to legitimate and elevate claims by postcolonial nations regarding the ownership and control of their cultural property. As Rodney Harrison notes, in the postcolonial era the development of cultural heritage lists and registers, which reflect “virtual collection of places and practices in situ,” parallel previous accumulative processes carried out by museums under imperial governance forms.5 Har-

Museum Pasts and Futures

221

rison suggests that both museum collections and heritage lists emerge from perceptions of and motivations that seek to address risk. For museum collections, the risks that motivated the intense flows of objects into museums emerged from perceptions of cultural decline and salvage. Both museum collections and heritage lists are cultural assemblages of nominal objects and practices, and both can be viewed as a means of claiming ownership or control. Indigenous peoples have resisted the application of Western intellectual property models to their intangible and tangible heritage, since these models tend to commodify practices and objects.6 The model of the accumulative museum works well when we consider that museums are repositories that preserve the material evidence of cultural diversity and history. But the reality that museums have, in the past, largely been dynamic archives calls into question the nature of the relationship between nominal lists of objects and the objects themselves. With moves toward digitization, museums are increasingly circulating catalog data and digital images, alongside restricted circulations of objects (via loans). In the past, museums had more freely circulated objects without maintaining claims to their title via exchange and distribution. So it is not that museums have shifted from accumulation to circulation, but that what museums have more freely circulated has changed, largely from objects to digital data. It is the circulation of these digitized catalog records and digital images that have contributed to the development of heritage registers, the basic information needed to make repatriation claims, as well as new engagements with digital surrogates.7 There are increasing numbers of Indigenous people becoming aware and interested of the specific spatial and institutional locations of their cultural heritage, and they are actively working with museum professionals to curate and re-enervate those objects.8 With this knowledge, coupled with postcolonial power configurations, Indigenous communities are able to more effectively work toward, in some cases, circulations of objects that hinge on their movement out of museums.

Control and Decisions The idea that more Indigenous people would gain knowledge about the location of their cultural property and heritage was, in the early days preceding repatriation legislation in the United States, deemed a risk or threat to museum collections.9 That the museum professionals and disciplinary practitioners would no longer control objects or retain authority over them was a pervasive undercurrent that has contributed to perceptions of mu-

222

Exchanging Objects

seums as accumulative institutions.10 After three decades since the passage of repatriation legislation in the United States, the tenor of professional discourses regarding repatriation largely emphasize how it has not resulted in a deafening exodus of objects out of museums, and how it has brought internal and external stakeholders into conversation.11 Even persistent enactments of object movement out of museums, like repatriation, have not shifted perceptions of museums as accumulative institutions. But these more-recent moves have opened up opportunities to think about when and why museums keep things, and when and why they do not. This book has been about when and why museums have kept things, and when and why they have not. The change in tense is important—consideration of this from a historical vantage point elides the contemporary politics of representation and heritage claims. Within a context of specimen exchange, museums circulated objects and catalog data quite freely, though, as I have shown in chapter 6, the catalog data that traveled with the specimens themselves was relatively minimal, providing information about object function, location, and collector. The reasons for specimen exchange were many: to create social relationships between curators, collectors, and scholars—to constitute a field or community of scientific practice. Specimen exchange served to provide the inputs necessary for the growth of museum institutions outside of the metropoles, and to legitimize anthropology as a scientific discipline to lay publics. Still, museums were exchanging their anthropological duplicates in an era of intensive field collecting. For as many objects that left anthropological collections as duplicates, more objects poured in. Large-scale collecting has declined for many reasons. One of these may be that former and potential sites of collection reject the notion that material evidence of cultural change should be kept outside of local spaces of reckoning history and identity. No more salvage. Another may be responsive to concerns that stem from the production of othering representations.12 Following this decline, and with growing pressure for anthropological museums to return objects, the museum has opted to prioritize the return or circulation of digital information about objects or digital surrogates. Rather than argue that museums are prioritizing digital repatriation in lieu of repatriation (where it is wanted) because it prolongs keeping (or is a practice born of practicality), I would suggest that many of the same objectives that inform the circulation of digital collections data are similar to those that informed specimen exchange. As a means of advocating for the transformation of museums into more postcolonial, globally engaged institutions through long-term loans, Alexander Bauer argues that we must shift our “understanding [of ] objects as things to be

Museum Pasts and Futures

223

owned and coming from a specific origin to recognizing their relational role as mediating and engendering new socialities at the intersection of the local and global.”13 Ambitious projects that seek to provide digital collections information from multiple museum repositories to source communities acknowledge that these movements are a means of creating relationships, contributing to generative cultural production, and legitimizing political and identity claims, especially within the dynamics of settler colonial nations. In her discussion of the process of creating the Reciprocal Research Network, Susan Rowley notes that museums that contributed catalog data and object images struggled with “letting go of control over data” because the character of these messy digital catalog records would reflect badly on the museum.14 If we can see both digital repatriation and specimen exchange as being motivated by the potential for the achievement of similar outcomes (community and legitimacy), then perhaps the only thing that is stopping the freer circulation of objects and contextual information (catalog data) is the perception of the accumulative character of museums, especially since these perceptions are powerfully mediated by requirements of authenticity. Museums are only as accumulative as we want to believe them to be.

Political Meddling More recently, a significant threat to the accumulative nature of museum collections has been politicians. Repatriation in the United States has advanced via legislative avenues, over the strong initial objections of some museum professionals and anthropologists. French president Emmanuel Macron’s commissioning of a 2018 report concerning the restitution of African objects in French museums immediately raises questions of political machinations. Was this the work of a savvy politician looking to assuage the liberal guilt borne of colonialism, as well as mollify cultural nationalists chafing under the shifting racial diversity of a French populace beset by global immigration flows? The text of the report itself contains assumptions about the accumulative character of museums, made visible through what restitution or return of objects would mean. It’s still true that even today pretty much everywhere in Europe—and France is no exception—the mere word “restitution” elicits a defensive reflex and a gesture of retreat. François Mitterrand provided a great public demonstration of this sort of reflex in 1994, when, in order to thank Helmut Kohl for the restitution of 27 French paintings stolen by the Nazis during the war, he declared: “I hope that this evening, the custodians of our countries, those responsible for our grand museums,

224

Exchanging Objects

experience a bit of anxiety. Will this become generalized? I don’t think it’s much of a risk on my part, thinking that this example will remain very singular and the contagion will be squashed out rather quickly.” Restitutions and contagions; political prudence and museum dread: we are part of a generation that has only known restitutions by way of painful struggles. No one in France has forgotten the resistance in 2010 by the museum custodians of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, when Nicolas Sarkozy initiated the return of more than 300 precious manuscripts as part of commercial contract negotiations with South Korea, originating from a punitive expedition by the French army in 1866. No one in Italy will forget the half-century’s worth of negotiations that it took to finally return the Axum obelisk to Ethiopia initially seized by Mussolini’s troops in 1937. And no one in Berlin would like to see the largest fossil of a dinosaur skeleton in the world finally returned to its place of origin in Tanzania (under the protectorate of the Reich): the Brachiosaurus Brancai, one of the idols of the Berlin museum, brought to Germany between 1909 and 1912.15

Defense, anxiety, and dread are all sentiments that invoke opposition to objects leaving the museum. This is not the only example, though it is one that has received extensive press coverage. Certainly, the past three decades have shown that the contents of museums are subject to political prerogatives, just as they were at the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. For museums that rely wholly or partially on public funding for their operations, the decisions of politicians can shape the contents of museum collections, just as they have shaped the content of exhibitions.16 It is difficult to see this as anything but political meddling, where politicians are acting out of their own self-interest and partisan constituencies, compromising the ability of museums to serve all publics. Political dealings raise ethical questions, even if everything is above board. I suspect museums (like other needy organizations) are loath to publicly reveal the gritty details of the nature of the relationships with politicians where resources are concerned, as a means of maintaining their social perception as trustworthy institutions. This has been the case with wealthy donors, whose money museums have turned away following public exposés.17 In chapter 3 I discussed how Smithsonian administrators used exchanges with educational establishments to curry favor with powerful politicians. Specimen exchange files contain correspondence that insinuates that generous transmissions of specimens would result in manifold returns of valuable congressional action and support. Evidence of quid pro quo arrangements are scarce, but political patronage was a quiet reality and institutional strategy. Perhaps the most demonstrative example of political patronage between the Smithsonian and the federal government was the relationship with the US senator from Iowa, William B. Allison. Allison’s correspondence with the Smithsonian is extensive. Though other Iowa

Museum Pasts and Futures

225

politicians provided endorsements on behalf of their constituents for duplicate specimens, Allison provided more than anyone. He was one of the most powerful senators during his twenty-seven-year tenure (1872–1908), during which time he served as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee for all but two years. In 1899 Allison requested that Smithsonian secretary Samuel Langley consider the purchase of a collection of spiders. Langley complimented Allison on the suggestion, stating it would be a “valuable acquisition.” He went on to press, I will say, however, that in view of the fact that the item for Preservation and Increase of Collections in the Sundry Civil bill for 1900, as reported in the House, is less by $15,000 than my estimate, I should think the interests of the Museum promoted far more if I could enlist your aid to get that item increased. The Museum would like to have the spiders, but it can get along without them, whereas the need of a larger amount for the general maintenance of the collections is very pressing. If the Museum could get the increase of $15,000, it would be possible to provide for the purchase of the spiders.”18

This request for a substantial increase in the annual appropriation occurred within the regular correspondence between Allison and the secretary. The requirement of congressional endorsements was a way of ensuring duplicates went to qualified establishments, but they were also a way to create relationships with politicians that had a far greater effect on the Smithsonian’s ability to operate. Another example underscores this point. Upon the delivery of plans for a new museum building to the House of Representatives that would require a $1.5 million appropriation for construction, no line item was included in the House bill. Secretary Langley wrote to Senator Allison, “I feel it my duty to bring the subject to your attention and to respectfully request that it be given consideration by the Senate Committee on Appropriations to the end that, if such action be deemed fitting, an authorization for the construction of the building may be added to the Sundry Civil Bill for 1904.”19 Construction began in 1905. Allison had lent his support to Langley. Smithsonian administrators knew full well that circulating objects out of the USNM’s collections could be an effective and efficient means of garnering the support of powerful politicians, especially those that could deliver critical operational resources. What we can glean from this example within the broad consideration of the character of museums and how organizational actions inform perceptions of that character is this: accumulation is not an end in itself, it is a condition of further action. While

226

Exchanging Objects

we may never be able to acquit ourselves of the perception of museums as accumulative archives (even while acknowledging their dynamism), the possibilities that museum collections hold in trust are not limited to exhibits, education, and research. If the archival nature of museums is definitive, at least museums can aspire to be “participatory archives” that seek to advance human rights and take seriously historically disenfranchised community prerogatives.20 Deaccessioning (and collecting) should proceed with that in mind. A museum’s collections can be the heart of creating relationships and social connections, and I think this view of museums— unearthed from the past—can inform their futures.

Museum Futures It is a museum of record, in which are preserved the material foundations of an enormous amount of scientific knowledge—the types of numerous past investigations. This is especially the case with those materials that have served as a foundation for the reports upon the resources of the United States. It is a museum of research, which aims to make its contents serve in the highest degree as a stimulus to inquiry and a foundation for scientific investigation. Research is necessary in order to identify and group the objects in the most philosophical and instructive relations, and its officers are therefore selected for their ability as investigators, as well as for their trustworthiness as custodians. It is an educational museum, through its policy of illustrating by specimens every kind of natural object and every manifestation of human thought and activity, of displaying descriptive labels adapted to the popular mind, and of distributing its publications and its named series of duplicates. (George Brown Goode)21

In 1881 George Brown Goode published the “US National Museum Circular no. 1,” where he first articulated the three interlocking functions of the museum—record, research, and education.22 The exchange of duplicate specimens intersects with each of these functions. The museum of record and research provides the intellectual underpinnings and organizational structures that demarcate the division of specimens and their use for knowledge production, while the museum of education emphasizes that the effective use of collections is not wholly predicated on their retention. While museum professionals will recognize the persistence of these museum functions into contemporary contexts of practice and institutional definition, there is an opportunity to evaluate professional norms and ways of practicing museum work in light of these principles. While I am not calling for a reinstatement of nineteenth-century specimen exchange practice, it is worth imagining how these functions may find expression in contemporary museums. With these histories in mind, what could it

Museum Pasts and Futures

227

mean, as museums look to the future, to innovate new recording, research, and educational functions? I am particularly interested in how museums will approach their collections as they revise their missions and articulate their aspirations. When fiscal pressures reach a tipping point, the relationship between the museum’s institutional viability and its possession of collections are exposed, evidenced most recently by the resolutions passed by the Association of Art Museum Directors in the midst of a global pandemic that would temporarily prohibit censure or sanction of any museum that used restricted funds or proceeds from a collections sale to keep the museum in the black.23 This call for flexibility in the use of funds can be extended to how museums might imagine more flexible approaches to collections. This latest policy shift emerges from within a much broader and longer institutional conversation about the archival nature of museums: Are museums places for people rather than storehouses for things?24 Do museums exist for the benefit of their collections, or of their communities? Are they really public forums, not temples of object-oriented reverence?25 The fact that these debates tend to center on the role of collections reflects a pervasive assumption that collections are what makes museums culturally legible. Would a museum of digital surrogates be recognized as a museum? How might museum professionals decenter persistent desires for authenticity, for the real thing? Perhaps these are desires born from culturally constituted perceptions and expectations of the museum as definitively accumulative in character. Graeme Were has demonstrated how Nalik communities in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, have valued experiences with digitized heritage objects held in museums through discourses of authenticity characterized not by loss, but by completeness and integrity, which create an “experience of the past.”26 Motivated by calls to “strengthen community life,” museums and scholars sought to meet the community’s preference for access to three-dimensional scanned digital heritage objects, not the physical objects themselves.27 Preservation, in the sense of actions that seek to impede change, reflects cultural values, as well as the power to act on these values while suppressing other value configurations. While anthropologists may feel a sense of ambivalence about cultural preservation, in the sense of maintaining traditional practices, one need only look to the well-spring of collections management policies that seek to intervene in the physical deterioration of objects to see that the values of preservation look very different in collections storage.28 In cases where heritage preservation is understood differently by museum conservators and Indigenous communities, how might these divergent understandings be applied more broadly in the museum?29

228

Exchanging Objects

How might these questions and concerns shape practices of critical collections management? In thinking about these questions, I want to recount an experience I had in The Field Museum as I wandered into a traveling exhibit, “The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great.” I had doffed my researcher hat for the day, following hours spent poring over exchange records. Meandering through this exhibit offered a chance to unwind. As I walked, I noticed small print notations near some of the spot-lit and prominent objects in the exhibit, specifically the gold death masks. To wit, these masks were replicas.30 The admission of replica did not bother me at all. The masks were beautiful, illustrative, and here before me, while the originals were most likely in Greece. Casts of dinosaur bones have long been engaged in this kind of awe-inspiring affective work. As a museum visitor, I had enjoyed the experience—the ready access and relative emptiness of the gallery, and the physical closeness the displays afforded. Visitors do not get to touch anyway; those kinds of material engagements are reserved for museum staff. As nations—those political entities recognized on a world political stage, as well as Indigenous peoples who have long-asserted and practiced their sovereignty—exert and strengthen control of the global circulations of their patrimony, the museum will not be deprived of its purported possessions, but rather be granted opportunities to create new terms, experiences, and relationships that seek to reflect its mission and aspirations. To invoke a sense of discovery and awe, to offer immersive experiences, and to foster dialogues that are polyvocal and inclusive, museums may look to their collections. While objects hold relational and narrative potential, these affordances are not predicated on a museum’s ability to keep things.

Notes 1. Manfred Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). 2. Noni Stacey, “Art on the Move: Curators Reveal the Art World’s Secret MerryGo-Round,” The Guardian, 12 August 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2009/aug/12/art-move-curators. 3. Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt, Caroline Cornish, “Introduction: Mobilising and Re-Mobilising Collections,” in Driver, Nesbitt, and Cornish, Mobile Museums (2021). 4. Lindsay MacDonald, ed. Digital Heritage: Applying Digital Imaging to Cultural Heritage (London: Elsevier, 2006). 5. Harrison, “Assembling and Governing Cultures,” 91.

Museum Pasts and Futures

229

6. Robert K. Paterson and Dennis S. Karjala, “Looking Beyond Intellectual Property in Resolving Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Peoples,” Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 11, no. 2 (2003): 633–70. 7. Wayne Ngata, Hera Ngata-Gibson, and Amiria Salmond, “Te Ataakura: Digital Taonga and Cultural Innovation,” Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 3 (2012): 229–44. 8. See Paul Basu, “Object Diasporas, Resourcing Communities: Sierra Leonean Collections in the Global Museumscape,” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2011): 28–42. 9. McKeown, In the Smaller Scope of Conscience. 10. Jane Buikstra, “Reburial: How We All Lose, An Archaeologist’s Opinion,” Council for Museum Anthropology Newsletter (April 1983): 2–5. See also Stephen Nash and Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, “Editorial: NAGPRA After Two Decades,” Museum Anthropology 33, no. 2 (2010): 99–104. 11. Graham and Murphy, “NAGPRA at 20.” 12. JoAllyn Archambault, “American Indians and American Museums,” Zeitschrift Für Ethnologie 118, no. 1 (1993): 10. 13. Alexander Bauer, “The Kula of Long-Term Loans: Cultural Object Itineraries and the Promise of the Postcolonial ‘Universal’ Museum,” in Joyce and Gillespie, Things in Motion, 148. 14. Rowley, “The Reciprocal Research Network,” 31. 15. Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics” November 2018, 16–17, accessed 15 October 2019, https://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_en.pdf. 16. Thomas F. Gieryn, “Balancing Acts: Science, Enola Gay and History Wars at the Smithsonian,” in The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture, ed. Sharon Macdonald (London: Routledge, 1998), discusses how congressional inquiries into exhibit intepretation led to the firing of the museum director. 17. Elizabeth Harris, “The Met Will Turn Down Sackler Money Amid Fury Over the Opioid Crisis,” New York Times, 15 May 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2019/05/15/arts/design/met-museum-sackler-opioids.html. 18. Langley to Allison, 25 February 1899, Volume 2.11-438, RU 34, SIA. 19. Langley to Allison, 11 February 1903, Volume 2.15-391, RU 34, SIA. 20. Anne Gilliland and Sue McKemmish, “The Role Of Participatory Archives in Furthering Human Rights, Reconciliation and Recovery,” Atlanti: Review for Modern Archival Theory and Practice 24 (2014): 78–88. 21. George Brown Goode, quoted in Richard Rathbun, “Report upon the Condition and Progress of the US National Museum during the year ending June 30, 1902,” in SIAR for 1902 Report of the USNM (Washington, DC: GPO, 1904), 7. 22. See Kohlstedt, “George Brown Goode,” 12. 23. “AAMD Board of Trustees Approves Resolution to Provide Additional Financial Flexibility to Art Museum During Pandemic Crisis,” 15 April 2020,

230

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Exchanging Objects

accessed 6 June 2020, https://aamd.org/for-the-media/press-release/aamdboard-of-trustees-approves-resolution-to-provide-additional. Stephen Weil, “From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum,” Daedalus 128, no. 3 (1999): 229–58. Duncan Cameron, “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum,” Curator: The Museum Journal 14 (1971): 11–24. Graeme Were, “Digital Heritage in a Melanesian Context: Authenticity, Integrity and Ancestrality from the Other Side of the Digital Divide,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 2 (2015): 154. Were, “Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks,” 140. Peter Welsh, “Repatriation and Cultural Preservation: Potent Objects, Potent Pasts,” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 25, no. 3/4 (1992): 838–39. Clavir, “Heritage Preservation.” “Mask of Agamemnon: Modern Replica of Ancient Death Mask,” accessed 14 October 2019, https://www.fieldmuseum.org/discover/on-exhibit/greeks/ #agamemnon. Ironically, the webpage notes that this is a “one-of-a-kind replica,” but the explanation offered on the website was not known to me when I was an exhibit visitor.

Appendix Smithsonian Institution/USNM Table of Distributed Specimens (1854–1880)

1864

Radiates

936

551 727

Reptiles

3162 1470 1623

4255 2356 3921 1894

Birds

404 624

Species

58

5

825

18

Specimens

58

5

1035

22

Species

0

Specimens August 1861– Dec 1863

Crustaceans

1854 to July 1861

Fishes

Prior to 1854

Mammals

Osteology

These data were gathered from the annual reports of the Smithsonian Institution. In the table, the division labeled “Osteology” was called “Skulls” in the annual report for 1861, and changed to “Osteology” in the annual report for 1865, and changed subsequently to “Skulls and Skeletons” in the annual report for 1868. The table division labeled “Eggs of Birds” was changed to “Nests and Eggs of Birds” in the annual report for 1874. The table division “Mollusks” was changed to “Shells” in the annual report for 1865. The table division “Inverts.” was called “Invertebrates, Insects, Etc.” in the annual report for 1863, changed to “Other Invertebrates” in the annual report for 1865, and changed to “Marine Invertebrates generally” in the annual report for 1866, and changed to “Marine Invertebrates” in the annual report for 1868. The table division “Plants” was changed to “Plants and Packages of Seeds” in the annual report for 1868.

Species

63

172

1787

Specimens

63

216

Species

0

18

20

0

0

2494

18

168 1490

51

28

0

0

0

77

0

(continued)

1867

1869

1871 1872 1873

1875 & 1876 1877

1880

Fishes

Crustaceans

Radiates

74

750

0

0

33 1038

Mammals

233

1

126

1200

0

0

Species

40

24

582

10

1

0

0

Specimens

40

31

756

18

1

0

0

1

14 1358

21

30

0

0

1

14 2293

Species

106

50

0

0

Species

24

44

571

37

0

0

0

Specimens

58

79

861

107

0

0

0

Species

25

33 2943

2

10

10

0

430

39 3556

8

10

10

0

Species

60

31 2200

40

1

55

32

Specimens

78

76 3564

40

1

124

51

Species

111

25

410

100

42

0

0

Specimens

156

40

477

100

100

0

0

Species

19

22 1129

0

40

0

0

Specimens

37

68 1667

0

87

0

0

Species

45

75

511

134

200

0

0

250

1100

790

250

350

0

0

40

1091

299

16

54

0

0

Specimens

116

1789

322

42

67

0

0

Species

102

12

937

14

213

0

0

Specimens

394

13 1219

20

407

0

0

5

18 1778

130

3156

9

10

194

18 2440

Species

Species Species Specimens

1879

0

21

Specimens 1878

622

1

Specimens 1874

0

Species

Specimens 1870

69

0

Specimens 1868

665 2708

Specimens Specimens 1866

Reptiles

1865

Birds

Appendix

Osteology

232

206

3423

14

15

4

8

123

221

5

0

0

60

12

148

352

6

0

0

Species

46

0

223

210

298

10

0

Specimens

46

0

304

318

325

25

0

2

2

185

24

4460

0

0

21

3

199

33

4663

0

0

Species Specimens

1537

1985

330

3558

Species

11244

312

628

747

211

Specimens

44492

382

1235

2238

354

600

1072

431

0

860

2100

3798

1641

0

4600

Species

114

Specimens

307

Species Specimens

Aug. 1861– Dec 1863 1864

Species Specimens

1865 1866

Species

5780

200

893

10000

2224

250

Specimens

11086

550

2421

12975

5319

600

Species

49200

38

96

3058

0

25

Specimens 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872

102551

92

217

5328

0

25

Species

4352

0

188

300

390

372

Specimens

7652

0

722

400

1370

480

Species

1206

0

264

300

40

400

Specimens

2606

0

526

515

75

595

Species

5421

0

230

0

557

762

Specimens

5455

0

1084

0

982

1120

Species

3087

0

2074

1845

0

750

Specimens

5230

0

4683

1845

0

800

Species

2534

0

151

3000

151

1000

Specimens

3000

0

304

4000

151

1400

Species Specimens

1873

Species Specimens

1874 1875 & 1876

Plants

216

Eggs of Birds

Minerals and Rocks

1854 to July 1861

Inverts.

588

Shells Prior to 1854

233

Fossils

Smithsonian Institution/USNM Table of Distributed Specimens (–)

905

6

21

1867

3

683

1035

8

22

4642

6

728

20

0

49

3000

0

140

100

0

50

10000

0

450

Species

5152

0

496

5000

13

3414

Specimens

8000

0

1100

10000

13

5100

Species

172

0

256

80

0

216

Specimens

222

0

258

150

0

572 (continued)

1879

Inverts.

Eggs of Birds

Plants

Fossils

Minerals and Rocks

48

211

987

236

21

Specimens

929

65

618

1114

314

44

Species

377

0

267

506

30

1

Specimens

904

0

604

1015

50

1

Species

154

15

328

499

0

901

Specimens

481

15

1161

877

0

4538

Species

20

7351

162

54

26

244

Specimens

45

8194

403

169

26

330

Ethnology

1880

210

Prior to 1854

Diatomaceous Earth

1878

Species

Insects

1877

Appendix

Shells

234

Species Specimens

1854 to July 1861

Species Specimens

August 1861– Dec 1863

Species Specimens

1864 1865 1866

Species

58

Specimens

58

Species

0

Specimens

0

Species Specimens

1867 1868

92 92

Species

898

1190

Specimens

898

1937

Species

59

230

15

Specimens

59

650

555 (continued)

1869 1870

Species

1872 1873 1874 1875 & 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880

Diatomaceous Earth

0

112

11

Specimens

47

259

11

Species

36

100

2

Specimens 1871

Insects

Ethnology

Smithsonian Institution/USNM Table of Distributed Specimens (–)

36

100

2

Species

152

204

1

Specimens

152

204

55

Species

381

412

29

Specimens

397

1144

29

Species

210

500

25

Specimens

230

2000

150

64

900

175

Specimens

Species

100

2000

200

Species

115

433

150

Specimens

412

1066

150

Species

169

128

20

Specimens

200

140

20

Species

1389

99

446

Specimens

3623

241

446

Species

226

230

300

Specimens

226

350

300

35

151

2

289

240

82

Species Specimens

235

Bibliography General Adler, Antony. “From the Pacific to the Patent Office: The US Exploring Expedition and the Origins of America’s First National Museum.” Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 1 (2011): 49–74. Alexander, Edward P. Museum Masters: Their Museums and Their Influence. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1995. An Act to Establish the “Smithsonian Institution,” for the Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge among Men, US Statues at Large, 29th Congress, 1st Session (1846). Anderson, Gail. “Introduction: Reinventing the Museum.” In Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, edited by Gail Anderson, 1–8. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2004. Anderson, Jane. “Options for the Future Protection of GRTKTCES: The Traditional Knowledge License and Labels Initiative.” Journal of the World Intellectual Property Organization 4, no 1 (2012): 73–82. Anderson, Thomas J. “Aepyornis as Moa: Giant Birds and Global Connections in NineteenthCentury Science.” British Journal for the History of Science 46, no. 4 (2013): 675–93. Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 3–63. ———, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Archambault, JoAllyn. “American Indians and American Museums.” Zeitschrift Für Ethnologie 118, no. 1 (1993): 7–22. Barnard, Alan. History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Barringer, Tim. “The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project.” In Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, edited by T. J. Barringer and Tom Flynn, 11–27. London: Routledge, 1998. Barrow, Mark V. A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology After Audubon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Basu, Paul. “Object Diasporas, Resourcing Communities: Sierra Leonean Collections in the Global Museumscape.” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2011): 28–42. Batkin, Jonathan. “Tourism Is Overrated: Pueblo Pottery and the Early Curio Trade, 1880– 1910.” In Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, edited by Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner, 282–300. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Bibliography

237

Bauer, Alexander A. “New Ways of Thinking about Cultural Property: A Critical Appraisal of the Antiquities Trade Debates.” Fordham International Law Journal 31 (2008): 690–724. ———. “The Kula of Long-Term Loans: Cultural Object Itineraries and the Promise of the Postcolonial ‘Universal’ Museum.” In Joyce and Gillespie, Things in Motion, 147–60. Bell, Joshua A. “A Bundle of Relations: Collections, Collecting, and Communities.” Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (2017): 241–59. Belovari, Susanne. “Professional Minutia and Their Consequences: Provenance, Context, Original Identification, and Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois.” Archival Science 13 (2013): 143–93. Bennett, Tony. “Civic Laboratories: Museums, Cultural Objecthood and the Governance of the Social.” Cultural Studies 19, no. 5 (2005): 521–47. ———. Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museum, Colonialism. London: Routledge, 2004. ———. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge, 1995. Bjerregaard, Lena. “ ‘Doubletten’: Puzzles That Could Maybe Some Day Be Reconstructed.” Baessler—Archiv 49 (2001): 187–92. Boas, Franz. “Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification.” Science 9, no. 228 (1887): 588–89. ———. “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart.” Science 9, no. 224 (1887): 485–86. Boehmer, George. “History of the Smithsonian System of Exchanges.” In Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1881, 703–810. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1883. Bohaker, Heidi, Alan Ojiig Corbiere, and Ruth B. Phillips. “Wampum Unites Us: Digital Access, Interdisciplinarity and Indigenous Knowledge—Situating the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing Database.” In Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges, edited by Raymond A. Silverman, 44–66. New York: Routledge, 2015. Browman, David L. “The Peabody Museum, Frederic W. Putnam, and the Rise of US Anthropology, 1866–1903.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 2 (2002): 508–19. Bruce, Robert V. The Launching of Modern American Science 1846–1876. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Bruchac, Margaret M. “Broken Chains of Custody: Possessing, Dispossessing, and Repossessing Lost Wampum Belts.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 162, no. 1 (March 2018): 56–105. Buettner-Janusch, John. “Boas and Mason: Particularism and Generalization.” American Anthropologist 59, no. 2 (1957): 318–24. Buikstra, Jane. “Reburial: How We All Lose: An Archaeologist’s Opinion.” Council for Museum Anthropology Newsletter (April 1983): 2–5. Byala, Sara. A Place That Matters Yet: John Gubbins’s MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Byrne, Sarah, Anne Clarke, Rodney Harrison, and Robin Torrence, eds. Unpacking the Collection: Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum. New York: SpringerVerlag, 2011. Cameron, Duncan. “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum.” Curator: The Museum Journal 14 (1971): 11–24. Cameron, Fiona. “Object-Oriented Democracies: Conceptualising Museum Collections in Networks.” Museum Management and Curatorship 23, no. 3 (2008): 229–43.

238

Bibliography

Clark, William, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, eds. The Sciences in Enlightened Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Clavir, Miriam. “Heritage Preservation: Museum Conservation and First Nations Perspectives.” Ethnologies 24, no. 2 (2002): 33–45. Cole, Douglas. Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995. Colwell, Chip. Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Concordia, Cesare, Stegan Gradman, and Sjoerd Siebinga. “Not Just Another Portal, Not Just Another Digital Library: A Portrait of Europeana as an Application Program Interface.” IFLA Journal 36, no. 1 (2010): 61–69. Conn, Steven. Do Museums Still Need Objects? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Cook, Alexandra. “Botanical Exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland.” History of European Ideas 33 (2007): 142–56. Coombes, Annie E., and Ruth B. Phillips, eds. Museum Transformations: Decolonization and Democratization. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2020. Corder, Gwen. “The Deaccessioning and Disposal Practices of Small Museums in Kentucky and Indiana.” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 8, no. 2 (2012): 151–68. Cornish, Caroline, and Felix Driver. “ ‘Specimens Distributed’: The Circulation of Objects from Kew’s Museum of Economic Botany 1847–1914.” Journal of the History of Collections 32, no. 2 (2020): 327–40. Daston, Lorraine. “Type Specimens and Scientific Memory.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (2004): 153–82. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2010. Deitz, Bettina. “Making Natural History: Doing the Enlightenment.” Central European History 43 (2010): 25–46. Driver, Felix, and Sonia Ashmore. “The Mobile Museum: Collecting and Circulating Indian Textiles in Victorian Britain.” Victorian Studies 52 no. 3 (2010): 353–85. Driver, Felix, Mark Nesbitt, and Caroline Cornish. “Introduction: Mobilising and ReMobilising Collections.” In Driver, Nesbitt, and Cornish, Mobile Museums. ———, eds. Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation. London: UCL Press, 2021. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/141630. Dupree, Hunter. “The National Pattern of American Learned Societies, 1769–1863.” In Oleson and Brown, The Pursuit of Knowledge, 21–32. Ebitz, David. “Connoisseurship as Practice.” Artibus et Historiae 9, no. 18 (1988): 207–12. Fajans, Jane, ed. Exchanging Products, Producing Exchange. Sydney: University of Sydney, 1993. Feest, Christian. “European Collecting of American Indian Artifacts.” Journal of the History of Collections 5, no. 1 (1993): 1–11. ———. “The Ethnographic Collection of Johann Natterer and the Other Austrian Naturalists in Brazil: A Documentary History.” Archiv Weltmuseum Wien 63–64 (2013–14): 60–95. Fitzhugh, William. “Origins of Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution and Beyond.” Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 44 (2002): 179–200. Foster, Robert. “Commodity Forensics: The Secret Life of the P.G.T. Black Collection.” Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 42 (2015): 103–12.

Bibliography

239

———. “Notes for a Networked Biography: The P. G. T. Black Collection of Oceanic Things.” Museum Anthropology 35, no. 2 (2012): 149–69. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22–27. ———. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994 [1970]. Fowler, Don D. A Laboratory for Anthropology: Science and Romanticism in the American Southwest, 1846–1930. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. Fowler, Don D., and Nancy J. Parezo. “Nomenclature Wars: Ethnologists and Anthropologists Seeking to Be Scientists, 1840–1910.” Journal of Anthropological Research 74, no. 3 (2018): 388–411. Franz, Marisa Karyl. “A Gathering of Names: On the Categories and Collections of Siberian Shamanic Materials in Late Imperial Russian Museums, 1880–1910.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2019. Frizzell, Donald L. “Terminology of Types.” American Midland Naturalist 14, no. 6 (1933): 637–68. Gibbs, George. “Instructions for Research Relative to the Ethnology and Philology of America.” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 160 (1863): 1–51. Gieryn, Thomas F. “Balancing Acts: Science, Enola Gay and History Wars at the Smithsonian.” In The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture, edited by Sharon Macdonald, 197–225. London: Routledge, 1998. Gill, Brian. “The Cheeseman-Giglioli Correspondence, and Museum Exchanges between Auckland and Florence, 1877–1904.” Archives of Natural History 37, no. 1 (2010): 131–49. Gilliland, Anne, and Sue McKemmish. “The Role of Participatory Archives in Furthering Human Rights, Reconciliation and Recovery.” Atlanti: Review for Modern Archival Theory and Practice 24 (2014): 78–88. Goldstein, Daniel. “ ‘Yours for Science’: The Smithsonian Institution’s Correspondents and the Shape of Scientific Community in Nineteenth-Century America.” Isis 85, no. 4 (1994): 573–99. Goode, George Brown. “The Genesis of the United States National Museum.” In Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1897 Report of the US National Museum Part II, 83–192. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901. ———, ed. The Smithsonian Institution 1846–1896: A History of its First Half Century. Washington, DC: Devinne, 1897. Gosden, Chris, and Frances Larson, with Alison Petch. Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1884–1945. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007. Graeber, David. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Graham, Martha, and Nell Murphy. “NAGPRA at 20: Museum Collections and Reconnections.” Museum Anthropology 33, no. 2 (2010): 105–24. Greene, Candace. “Material Connections: ‘The Smithsonian Effect’ in Anthropological Cataloguing.” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 147–62. Greetham, David. “ ‘Who’s In, Who’s Out’: The Cultural Poetics of Archival Exclusion.” Studies in Literary Imagination 32, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 1–27. Gregory, Christopher. Gifts and Commodities, 2nd ed. Chicago: HAU Books, 2015.

240

Bibliography

Gwinn, Nancy. “The Origins and Development of International Publication Exchange in Nineteenth-Century America.” PhD diss., George Washington University, 1996. Handler, Richard. “An Anthropological Definition of the Museum and its Purpose.” Museum Anthropology 17, no. 1 (1993): 33–36. Harrison, Rodney. “Assembling and Governing Cultures ‘At Risk’: Centers of Collection and Calculation, from the Museum to World Heritage.” In Harrison, Byrne, and Clark, Reassembling the Collection, 89–114. Harrison, Rodney, Sarah Byrne, and Anne Clarke, eds. Reassembling the Collection: Ethnographic Museum and Indigenous Agency. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2013. Henson, Pamela. “ ‘A Nursery of Living Thoughts’: G. Brown Goode’s Vision for a National Museum in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States.” In Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America, edited by Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman, 165–87. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. ———. “A National Science and A National Museum.” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 55, Suppl. I, no. 3 (2004): 34–57. ———. “Spencer Baird’s Dream: A US National Museum.” In Cultures and Institutions of Natural History: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science, edited by Michael T. Ghiselin and Alan E. Leviton, 101–26. San Francisco: California Academy of Science, 2000. Hinsley, Curtis. “Collecting Cultures and Cultures of Collecting: The Lure of the American Southwest, 1880–1915.” Museum Anthropology 16, no. 1 (1992): 12–20. ———. Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology 1846–1910. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981. Hinsley, Curtis, and David Wilcox, eds. Coming of Age in Chicago: The 1893 World’s Fair and the Coalescence of American Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. London: Routledge, 1992. Hopwood, Nick, Simon Schaffer, and Jim Secord. “Seriality and Scientific Objects in the Nineteenth Century.” History of Science 48, no. 3–4 (2010): 251–85. Hough, Walter. “Fire as an Agent in Human Culture.” In Bulletin - United States National Museum no. 139 (1926): i–xiv, 1–270. Hutchinson, Elizabeth. The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890–1915. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Impey, Oliver, and Arthur McGregor, eds. The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1985. Isaac, Gwyneira. “Anthropology and its Embodiments: 19th Century Museum Ethnography and the Re-Enactment of Indigenous Knowledges.” Etnofoor 22, no. 1 (2010): 11–29. Ita, J. M. “Frobenius in West African History.” Journal of African History 13, no. 4 (1972): 673–88. Jacknis, Ira. “Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology.” In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, edited by George W. Stocking, 75–111. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Bibliography

241

Jacobs, Karen. This Is Not a Grass Skirt: On Fibre Skirts (Liku) and Female Tattooing (Veiqia) in Nineteenth Century Fiji. Leiden, Netherlands: Sidestone Press, 2019. Jardine, Nicholas, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary, eds. Cultures of Natural History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Johnson, Kirk, Ken Carpenter, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Bridget Coughlin, Paula Cushing, John Demboski, David Grinspoon, Kathie Gully, Kris Haglund, Steve Holen, Frank Krell, Steven Lee, Marta Lindsay, Ian Miller, Paul Morgan, Stephen Nash, René Payne, Richard Stucky, Greg Wilson, and KaChun Yu. Long-Term Collections & Research Plan 2008–2012, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Technical Report 2008-1. https://science.dmns.org/media/364742/tr2008-1.pdf. Jones, Trevor. “Tier Your Collections: A Practical Tool for Making Clear Decisions in Collections Management.” In Jones, Tisdale, and Wood, Active Collections, 103–9. Jones, Trevor, Rainey Tisdale, and Elizabeth Wood, eds. Active Collections. New York: Routledge, 2018. ———. “Introduction.” In Jones, Tisdale, and Wood, Active Collections, 1–6. Joyce, Rosemary A., and Susan D. Gillespie, eds. Things in Motion: Object Itineraries in Anthropological Practice. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2015. ———. “Making Things Out of Objects That Move.” In Joyce and Gillespie, Things in Motion, 3–20. Knapman, Gareth. “Exchanges and the Historical Construction of Collections.” In Inspiring Action: Museums and Social Change, 58–75. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc, 2009. Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Kohlstedt, Sally. “George Brown Goode, 1851–1896.” In The Origins of Natural Science in America: Essays of George Brown Goode, edited by Sally Kohlstedt, 1–21. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. ———. “International Exchange in the Natural History Enterprise: Museums in Australia and the United States.” In International Science and National Scientific Identity: Australia between Britain and America, edited by R. W. Home and Sally G. Kohlstedt, 121–50. Dordecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. ———. “Otis T. Mason’s Tour of Europe: Observation, Exchange, and Standardization in Public Museums, 1889.” Museum History Journal 1, no. 2 (2008): 181–207. Kohlstedt, Sally G., and Paul Brinkman. “Framing Nature: The Formative Years of Natural History Museum Development in the United States.” In Museums and Other Institutions of Natural History: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Alan E. Leviton and Michele L. Aldrich, 7–33. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 2004. Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 65–94. Krmpotich, Cara. “Teaching Collections Management Anthropologically.” Museum Anthropology 38, no. 2 (2015): 112–22. ———. “Unsettling Museum Catalogues.” In Indigenous Collections Symposium, Ontario Museum Association 23–24 March 2017, 39–54. https://members.museumsontario .ca/sites/default/files/2018_04_OMASymposiumProceedings_Eng.pdf. Krmpotich, Cara, and Laura Peers. This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum Practice. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014. Krmpotich, Cara, and Alexander Somerville. “Affective Presence: The Metonymical Catalogue.” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 178–91.

242

Bibliography

Kuba, Richard. “Portraits of Distant Worlds: Frobenius’ Pictorial Archive and its Legacy.” In Global Photographies: Memory, History, Archives, edited by Sissy Helff and Stefanie Michels, 109–31. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2018. Larson, Frances, Alison Petch, and David Zeitlyn. “Social Networks and the Creation of the Pitt Rivers Museum.” Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 3 (2007): 211–39. Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Lonetree, Amy. Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums. Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. MacDonald, Lindsay, ed. Digital Heritage: Applying Digital Imaging to Cultural Heritage. London: Elsevier, 2006. MacGregor, Arthur. “Exhibiting Evolutionism: Darwinism and Pseudo-Darwinism in Museum Practice after 1859.” Journal of the History of Collections 21, no. 1 (2009): 77–94. Malaro, Marie. “Deaccessioning: The American Perspective.” Museum Management and Curatorship 10 (1991): 273–79. ———. A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1998. Manoff, Marlene. “Theories of the Archive from Across Disciplines.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 4, no. 1 (2004): 9–25. Margaris, Amy V., and Linda T. Grimm. “Collecting for a College Museum: Exchange Practices and the Life History of a 19th-Century Artic Collection.” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 2 (2011): 109–27. Marsh, Diana E. Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of the Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. Mason, Otis T. “The Educational Aspect of the United States National Museum.” Notes Supplementary to the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 4 (1890): 505–19. ———. Ethnological Directions Relative to The Indian Tribes of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1875. ———. Indian Basketry: Studies in a Textile Art Without Machinery. London: William Heinemann, 1905. ———. “The Leipsic ‘Museum of Ethnology.’ ” In Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1873, 390–410.Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1874. ———. “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart.” Science 9, no. 226 (1887): 534–35. ———. “Primitive Travel and Transportation.” In Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year 1894 Part II Report of the United States National Museum, 237–593. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896. ———. “Resemblances in Arts Widely Separated.” The American Naturalist 20, no. 3 (1886): 246–51. Matherne, Neal, and Hannah Quaintance. “Meaningful Donations and Shared Governance: Growing the Philippine Heritage Collection through Co-Curation at the Field Museum.” Museum Anthropology 42, no. 1 (2019): 14–27. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000 [1950].

Bibliography

243

McClellan, Andrew. “P. T. Barnum, Jumbo the Elephant, and the Barnum Museum of Natural History at Tufts University.” Journal of the History of Collections 24, no. 1 (2012): 45–62. McKeown, Timothy. In the Smaller Scope of Conscience: The Struggle for National Repatriation Legislation, 1986–1990. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012. McTavish, Lianne. Defining the Modern Museum: A Case Study in the Challenges of Exchange. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Meltzer, David. “When Destiny Takes a Turn for the Worse: William Henry Holmes and, Incidentally, Franz Boas in Chicago, 1892–97.” In Histories of Anthropology Annual, vol. 6, edited by Regna Darnell and Frederich Gleach, 171–224. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. ———. The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of America’s Ice Age Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Merriman, Nick. “Museum Collections and Sustainability.” Cultural Trends 17, no. 1 (2008): 3–21. Miller, Steven. “Deaccessioning: Sales or Transfers?” Museum Management and Curatorship 10 (1991): 245–53. ———. Deaccessioning Today. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. Morgan, Lewis Henry. Ancient Society. New York: H. Holt, 1877. Murdoch, John. “Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition.” In Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, edited by J. W. Powell, 1–441. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892. Nash, Stephen, and Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh. “Editorial: NAGPRA After Two Decades.” Museum Anthropology 33, no. 2 (2010): 99–104. National Park Service. Museum Handbook, Part II, section I:3. (2000). Accessed 10 July 2019. https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/handbook.html. Newman, Laura, and Felix Driver. “Kew Gardens and the Emergence of the School Museum in Britain, 1880–1930.” The Historical Journal 63, no. 5 (2020): 1204–30. Ngata, Wayne, Hera Ngata-Gibson, and Amiria Salmond. “Te Ataakura: Digital Taonga and Cultural Innovation.” Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 3 (2012): 229–44. Nichols, Catherine A. “A Century of Circulation: The Return of the Smithsonian Institution’s Duplicate Anthropological Specimens.” Museum Anthropology 37, no. 2 (2014): 144–59. ———. “Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates at the Smithsonian Institution.” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 1 (2016): 130–46. ———. “From Pots to Pan Pipes: Specimen Exchanges between the Field Museum’s Paul S. Martin and Harold Gladwin of Gila Pueblo Archaeological Foundation.” Museum & Society 17, no.1 (2019): 98–116. ———. “Illustrating Anthropological Knowledge: Texts, Images & Duplicate Specimens at the Smithsonian Institution and the Pitt Rivers Museum.” In Driver, Nesbitt, and Cornish, 121–148, Mobile Museums. ———. “Lost in Museums: The Ethical Dimensions of Historical Practices of Anthropological Specimen Exchange.” Curator: The Museum Journal 57, no. 2 (2014): 225–36. ———. “Museum Networks: The Exchange of the Smithsonian Institution’s Duplicate Anthropology Collections.” PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2014. ———. “Shared Values, Gifted Objects: The Smithsonian Institution’s Anthropological Duplicates.” Collaborative Anthropologies 7, no. 2 (2015): 32–71.

244

Bibliography

———. “The Smithsonian Institution’s ‘Greatest Treasures’: Valuing Museum Objects in the Specimen Exchange Industry.” Museum Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2018): 13–29. Nichols, Catherine A., and Christopher Lowman. “A Common Thread: Recognizing the Contributions of the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology to Graduate Training with Anthropological Museum Collections.” Museum Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2018): 5–12. Nichols, Catherine A., and Nancy J. Parezo. “Social and Material Connections: Otis T. Mason’s European Grand Tour and Collections Exchanges.” History and Anthropology 28, no. 1 (2017): 58–83. Oehser, Paul H. The Smithsonian Institution. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. ———. Sons of Science: The Story of the Smithsonian Institution and Its Leaders. New York: Henry Schuman, 1949. Ogilvie, Brian W. The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. Oleson, Alexandra. “Introduction: To Build a New Intellectual Order.” In Oleson and Brown, The Pursuit of Knowledge, xv–xxv. Oleson, Alexandra, and Sanborn C. Brown, eds. The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976. Oppenheim, Robert. An Asian Frontier: American Anthropology and Korea, 1882–1945. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Parezo, Nancy J. “The Formation of Ethnographic Collections: The Smithsonian Institution in the American Southwest.” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 10 (1987): 1–47. Parezo, Nancy J., and Don D. Fowler. Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Paterson, Robert K., and Dennis S. Karjala. “Looking Beyond Intellectual Property in Resolving Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Peoples.” Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 11, no. 2 (2003): 633–70. Peers, Laura, and Alison Brown, eds. Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader. London: Routledge, 2003. Penaloza Patzak, C. Brooke. “An Emissary from Berlin: Franz Boas and the Smithsonian Institution, 1887–1888.” Museum Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2018): 30–45. ———. “Guiding the Diffusion of Knowledge: The Mobilization of People and Things in the Development of US Anthropology, 1883–1933.” PhD diss., University of Vienna, 2018. Penny, H. Glenn. Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Philp, Jude. “Hedley Takes a Holiday: Collections from Kanak People in the Australian Museum.” In Byrne et al., Unpacking the Collection, 268–88. Pietsch, Tamson. “Between the Nation and the World: J. T. Wilson and Scientific Networks in the Early Twentieth Century.” In Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 1800–1970, edited by Brett M. Bennett and Joseph M. Hodge, 140–60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Rathbun, Richard. “List of Marine Invertebrates from the New England Coast, Distributed by the United States National Museum.” In Proceedings of the United States National Museum, vol. 4, 1881, 304–07. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882.

Bibliography

245

Rathbun, Richard. “Report upon the Condition and Progress of the US National Museum during the Year Ending June 30, 1902.” In Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1902 Report of the United States National Museum, 3–17. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. Rau, Charles. “The Archaeological Collection of the United States National Museum, in Charge of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.” Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. 22, art. IV, no. 287 (1876): 1–104. Ray, Patrick Henry. Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, in Response to the Resolution of the House of Representatives of December 11, 1884. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885. Rivinus, E. F., and E. M. Youssef. Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Rothenberg, Marc. “Introduction.” In The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, January 1847– December 1849: The Smithsonian Years, edited by Marc Rothenberg, xiii–xl. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. ———. “Introduction.” In The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 8, January 1850–December 1853: The Smithsonian Years, edited by Marc Rothenberg, xiii–xxxviii. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. ———. “Introduction.” In The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 9, January 1854–December 1857: The Smithsonian Years, edited by Marc Rothenberg, xiii–xli. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. ———. “Introduction.” In The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 10, January 1858–December 1865, The Smithsonian Years, edited by Marc Rothenberg, xv–xlvii. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2004. ———. “Introduction.” In The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, January 1866–May 1878: The Smithsonian Years, edited by Marc Rothenberg, xv-lviii. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007. ———, ed. The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 11, January 1866–May 1878: The Smithsonian Years. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007. Rowley, Susan. “The Reciprocal Research Network: The Development Process.” Museum Anthropology Review 7, no. 1–2 (2013): 22–43. Rydell, Robert. All the World’s A Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1972. Sarr, Felwine, and Bénédicte Savoy. “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics.” November 2018. Schlanger, Nathan. “Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology.” History of Science 48, no. 3–4 (2010): 343–69. Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2 (2002): 1–19. Shales, Ezra. Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2010. Shannon, Jennifer. Our Lives: Collaboration, Native Voice, and the Making of the National Museum of the American Indian. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2014. Sheets-Pyenson, Susan. Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century. Kingston, ON, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.

246

Bibliography

———. “Civilizing by Nature’s Example: The Development of Colonial Museums of Natural History, 1850–1900.” In Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, edited by Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg, 351–77. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987. ———. “How to ‘Grow’ a Natural History Museum: The Building of Colonial Collections, 1850–1900.” Archives of Natural History 15, no. 2 (1988): 121–47. Sinclair, Bruce. “Americans Abroad: Science and Cultural Nationalism in the Early Nineteenth Century.” In The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives, edited by Nathan Reingold, 35–54. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979. Slaughter, Mary. Universal Languages and Scientific Taxonomy in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Slotten, Hugh. “The Dilemmas of Science in the United States: Alexander Dallas Bache and the US Coast Survey.” Isis 84 (1993): 26–49. Smith, Diane. Yellowstone and the Smithsonian: Centers of Wildlife Conservation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017. Smithsonian Institution. “Duplicate Shells Collected by the United States Exploring Expedition, under Capt. C. Wilkes, USN.” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Washington, DC: The Institution, 1865. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.37915. Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 387–420. Star, Susan Leigh, and Martha Lampland. “Reckoning with Standards.” In Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life, edited by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star, 3–34. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Steger, Manfred. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Stemerding, Dirk. Plants, Animals, and Formulae: Natural History in Light of Latour’s “Science in Action” and Foucault’s “The Order of Things.” Enschede, Netherlands: University of Twente, 1991. Stevenson, Alice. Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums. London: UCL Press, 2019, JSTOR Open Access Books. Stevenson, James. “Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1879.” In Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1880–1881, 307–422. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1883. Storer, David. A History of the Fishes of Massachusetts. Cambridge, MA: Welch & Bigelow, 1867. Strang, Cameron. Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500–1850. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Svanberg, Fredrik. “The World as Collected; Or, Museum Collections as Situated Materialities.” In The International Handbooks of Museum Studies: Museum Theory, edited by Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message, 389–415. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Sylvain, Renée. “Leo Frobenius: From Kulturkreis to Kulturmorphologie.” Anthropos 91 (1996): 483–94.

Bibliography

247

Thomas, Jennifer. “Compiling “God’s Great Book [of ] Universal Nature”: The Royal Society’s Collecting Strategies.” Journal of the History of Collections 23 (2011): 1–13. Thompson, Raymond H., and Nancy J. Parezo. “A Historical Survey of Material Culture Studies in Anthropology.” In Perspectives on Anthropological Collections from the American Southwest, edited by Anne Lane Hedlund and Margaret W. Conkey, 33–65. Tempe: Arizona State University, 1989. Tomajko, Kelly. “Collection Preservation Facilities: One Approach to Sustainable Design, Construction, and Operations.” In Collections Care and Stewardship: Innovative Approaches for Museums, edited by Juliee Decker, 19–26. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. Trigger, Bruce. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. True, Frederick. “The United States National Museum.” In Goode, The Smithsonian Institution 1846–1896, 303–66. Tsing, Anna. “Sorting Out Commodities: How Capitalist Value Is Made Through Gifts.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3, no. 1 (2013): 21–43. Turner, Hannah. Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020. ———. “The Computerization of Material Culture Catalogues: Objects and Infrastructure in the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology.” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 163–77. ———. “Critical Histories of Museum Catalogues.” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 2 (2016): 102–10. ———. “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (2015): 658–76. ———. “Information Infrastructures in the Museum: Documenting, Digitizing, and Practising Ethnographic Objects in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2015. US House, Committee on Manufactures. The Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Fiftieth Congress 1888–’89. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889. Varner, Elizabeth. “Deaccessioning in Museums: Evaluating Legal, Ethical and Practical Dilemmas.” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 9, no. 2 (2013): 209–21. Ville, Simon. “Researching the Natural History Trade of the Nineteenth Century.” Museum History Journal 13, no. 1 (2020): 8–19. Walsh, Jane McLaren. “Collections as Currency.” Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 44 (2002): 201–10. Washburn, Wilcomb E. “Joseph Henry’s Conception of the Purpose of the Smithsonian Institution.” In A Cabinet of Curiosities: Five Episodes in the Evolution of American Museums, edited by Whitfield J. Bell Jr., 106–66. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1967. Weil, Stephen. “From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum.” Daedalus 128, no. 3 (1999): 229–58. Weiner, Annette. Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

248

Bibliography

Welsch, Robert L., and Kevin Mooiman. “The Ongoing Social Life of Museum Collections: Reflections on Objects Exchange with Chicago’s Field Museum in 1939.” Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 42 (2015): 113–23. Welsh, Peter. “Repatriation and Cultural Preservation: Potent Objects, Potent Pasts.” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 25, no. 3/4 (1992): 387–465. Were, Graeme. “Digital Heritage in a Melanesian Context: Authenticity, Integrity and Ancestrality from the Other Side of the Digital Divide.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 2 (2015): 153–65. ———. “Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks, and Source Communities: Understanding Digital Objects in a Melanesian Society.” Museum Anthropology 37, no. 2 (2014): 133–43. Wilcox, David. “Going National: American Anthropology Successfully Redefines Itself as an Accepted Academic Domain.” In Hinsley and Wilcox, Coming of Age in Chicago, 413–54. Wilk, Richard, and Lisa Cliggett. Economies and Cultures: Foundation of Economic Anthropology. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2007. Wingfield, Chris. “ ‘Scarcely more than a Christian trophy case’? The Global Collections of the London Missionary Society Museum (1814–1910).” Journal of the History of Collections 29, no. 1 (2017): 109–28. Witteveen, Joeri. “Suppressing Synonymy with a Homonym: The Emergence of the Nomenclature Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History.” Journal of the History of Biology 49, no. 1 (2016): 135–89. Yochelson, Ellis. “More than 150 Years of Administrative Ups and Down for Natural History in Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum, National Museum of Natural History.” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 55, Supplement. I, no. 6 (2004): 113–76.

Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution and US National Museum Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to the Senate and House of Representatives, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution During the Year 1850. Washington, DC, 1851. Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to the Senate and House of Representatives, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution During the Year 1851. Washington, DC: A. Boyd Hamilton, 1852. Seventh Annual Report of The Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to the Senate and House of Representatives, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution During the Year 1852. Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, Printer, 1853. Eighth Annual Report of The Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution Up to January 1, 1854 [for 1853]. Washington, DC: Beverley Tucker, Senate Printer, 1854. Ninth Annual Report of The Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution Up to January 1, 1855 [for 1854]. Washington, DC: Beverley Tucker, Senate Printer, 1855.

Bibliography

249

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1855. Washington, DC: A.P.O. Nicholson, 1856. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1856. Washington, DC: A.O.P. Nicholson, Printer, 1857. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1857. Washington, DC: William A. Harris, 1858. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858. Washington, DC: James B. Steedman, 1859. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1859. Washington, DC: Thomas H. Ford, 1860. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1860. Washington, DC: George H. Bowman, 1861. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1861. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1862. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1862. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1863. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1864. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1864. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1865. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1866. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1866. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1867. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1868. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1869. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1870. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1871. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1871. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1873. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1872. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1873. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1873. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1874. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1874. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1875. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1875. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1876. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1876. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1877. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1878.

250

Bibliography

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1878. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1879. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1880. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1881. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1884 Part II: Report of the United States National Museum. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1886 Part II: Report of the United States National Museum. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1896 Report of the United States National Museum. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1898. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1902. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1903 Report of the United States National Museum. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905.

Archival Collections Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 95, Smithsonian Institution, Photograph Collection, 1850s–. Record Unit 112, Smithsonian Institution, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the United States National Museum, Correspondence and Memoranda. Record Unit 113, Smithsonian Institution, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the United States National Museum, Correspondence and Memoranda. Record Unit 114, Smithsonian Institution, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the United States National Museum, Specimen Records. Record Unit 115, Smithsonian Institution, Assistant Secretary in Charge of the United States National Museum, Specimen Records. Record Unit 116, Smithsonian Institution Assistant Secretary in Charge of the United States National Museum, Correspondence and Memoranda, 1881–1904. Record Unit 120, United States National Museum, Office of the Registrar, Specimen Records. Record Unit 158, United States National Museum, Curators’ Annual Reports. Record Unit 186, United States National Museum. Office of the Registrar, Specimen Distribution Records. Record Unit 192, United States National Museum, Permanent Administrative Files. Record Unit 305, United States National Museum Office of the Registrar, Accession Records, 1834–1958 (accretions to 1976). Record Unit 7002, Spencer Fullerton Baird Papers. Record Unit 7003, Langley, Samuel P, 1834–1906, Samuel P. Langley Papers. Record Unit 7086, Otis Tufton Mason Papers.

Bibliography

National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Herbert William Krieger Papers. Frank Maryl Setzler Papers. USNM-Department of Anthropology Records.

Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Anthropology Card Catalog, Records Room, Museum Support Center. Anthropology Ledger Books, Records Room, Museum Support Center.

Autry National Center, Braun Research Library Frederick Webb Hodge Collection, MS.7.

American Museum of Natural History Accession Files 1898–50, Department of Anthropology.

251

Index Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia), 40, 45, 52 Active Collections project, 13 Agassiz, Louis, 40, 48 Alcock, Dr., 48 Aldrich, Charles, 104 Allison, William B., 224–25 Ambrosetti, Juan, 138 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 28 American Alliance of Museums (AAM), 22n55 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 29 American Museum of Natural History. See Boas, Franz American Philosophical Society, 30, 64 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by Ephraim George Squire and Edwin Hamilton Davis, 76, 112 anthropology: natural history roots of, 164–67, 187–91; professionalization of, 152 Army Medical Museum, 65–66, 90n61, 92n103 Association of Art Museum Directors, 227 Bache, Alexander Dallas, 29, 30, 33 Bacon, Francis, 165 Baird, Spencer: and anthropology, desire for, 61n81; career of, 34, 79, 84; and cataloging, 64, 65, 72–73; and Centennial International Exposition, 79; collections, cost of, 36; and collections at SI, 30; collections growth, desire for, 47–48; as collector, 37–38; death of, 110, 140; and ethnology, 73–79, 86–87; field work, support of, 70; funding priorities of, 96; and Henry’s legacy at SI, 84–85; legacy of, 153; national museum, development of, 28; natural history museum, desire for, 73–75; network of collectors, 96; and science as cumulative, 45, 54–55; and specimen exchange, 34–35, 39, 71, 75, 103, 104, 110, 139–40; and type specimen, tagging of, 173; and USNM, vision for, 43–44; and USNM relationship with SI, 85 Balfour, Henry, 104 Basketwork of the North American Aborigines, by Otis Mason, 115 Bastian, Adolf, 194–95

Bentinck, Margaret Cavendish Harley, 94 Binney, W. G., 48 Bishop Museum (Honolulu), 143–45 Blackmore Museum, 75–76 Boas, Franz, 191, 192–97, 198 Bossange, Gustavo, 62n102 Boston Society of Natural History, 29 “Bows, Arrows and Quivers of North America,” by Otis Mason, 151 “Brazilian Bow,” by Hermann Meyer, 151 Brigham, William, 143–45 British Museum, 53, 67, 106–7, 143 Brower, J. W., 179 Brown, Mary Elizabeth, 104, 197 Brown University, 75 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, 122 Bureau of [American] Ethnology (BAE), 18n1, 30, 85. See also Powell, John Wesley Busk, Mr., 48 Canterbury Museum, 139–40 Carl, Wohlgemuth, 121–22 Carnegie Museum (Fairfield, IA), 180 Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh), 145–47 Carpenter, Philip P., 48 Centennial International Exhibition, 28, 71–73, 79–84 Cesalpino, Andrea, 165–66 Chicago World’s Fair, 152 Christy, Thomas, 75 Civil War, 70 collections management: accession records, 15–16, 130n35; cataloging, consecutive and lot, 73, 203–4; catalogs, 8, 187–89, 215–16; critical collections histories, 18; critical collections management, 18, 187; deaccessioning, 11–14, 17, 70, 88, 93, 153, 202, 226; policies, 227. See also specimen exchange College of Science at the Imperial University, 147 Concepcion, Chile, museum, 118–19 Contributions to Knowledge, Smithsonian Institution publication series, 76, 82, 112 Corcoran, William, 65 Corcoran Gallery of Art, 65, 92n103 Cushing, Frank Hamilton, 82, 120, 180

Index Dall, William Healy, 122–23 Davis, Edwin Hamilton: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (with Ephraim George Squire), 76, 112 deaccessioning. See under collections management Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 11–12 Dorsey, George, 123–24 Driver, Felix, 6, 220 duplicate specimen: designation of, 45–46, 163–64, 168–69, 178–83, 188–89; and knowledge production and dissemination, role in, 169; Mason versus Boas on classification, 192–97; mobility of, 168–69; as representative, 198, 203–9. See also specimen exchange Emmons, George, 179–81 “Eskimo Sinew-Backed Bow,” by John Murdoch, 151 “Ethnological Directions Relative to Indian Tribes of the United States,” by Otis Mason, 80–81 “Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,” by John Murdoch, 213 Evans, Victor, 76 Evansville (IL) museum, 116–18 Exploring Expedition. See US Exploring Expedition fairs and expositions, 28, 71–73, 79–84, 115, 147, 152; curators and scientists, meeting of, 147 Faraday, Michael, 29 Field Museum/Field Columbian Museum, 123–24, 228 Flugel, Felix, 62n102 Foreman, Edward, 31, 65, 82 Fraipoint, Chas., 142 Frobenius, Leo, 149–53 Geare, Randolph, 107–9 Giglioli, Enrico, 104 Glen Island Museum of Natural History, 177–78 Golden Gate Park Museum, 145 Goode, George Brown: on collections and their relationship with museum, 171–73, 226; and exhibitions, organizing of, 82, 85; Micmac baskets, 204; and museum professionalization, 16, 106; and specimen exchange, 109, 139–40 Granier, Emile, 110 Grant, Frank H. McK., 124–26 Greene, Candace, 187–88, 192 Haast, Julius, 139–40 Hamy, E. T., 104, 141 Hawley, E. H., 122–23, 197 Hayden, Frederick, 79 Hemenway, James A., 116–18

253 Henry, Joseph: on anthropology as empirical science, 112; and Baird, hiring of, 34–35; career of, 33; on collections, size and cost of, 30, 41, 47, 54–55, 65–66, 83–84; death of, 84; disposition of, 33; ethnology, interest in, 66; Europe, travel to, 29–30, 68; and field collecting for SI, 36; knowledge production and dissemination, preference for, 33–37; legacy of at SI, 84–85; meteorological program, 43; museums, views on, 68–70; as physicist, 45; SI, vision for, 27, 30, 45; and SI funding, concerns about, 42; and specimen exchange, 45, 46–48, 71; and USNM, desire to separate from SI, 42–43, 64, 66 Herrera, Luis de, 107 Holcomb, E. G., 110–11 Holland, W. J., 145–47 Holm, Gustav Frederik, 120 Holmes, William Henry: on specimen exchange, economic valuation of, 123; and specimen exchange with institutions and individuals, 108, 113–15, 145–47, 149–53, 178; and stone implement manufacture, expertise on, 137–38 holotypes, 46. See also type specimens Hornaday, William, 143 Hough, Walter, 146–47, 154, 180 Howard, Leland, 118–19 Hrdlička, Aleš, 108, 142–43, 198 Hutton, Frederick, 140 Illinois State Museum (Springfield, IL), 180 Indian Basketry, by Otis Mason, 145 Indian Service, 80 Indigenous peoples: and control of cultural property, 220–24, 228 International Council of Museums (ICOM), 220 International Exchange Service (IES), 34 Irkutsk museum, 108–9 Jewett, Charles, 33, 36 Kennicott, Robert, 70, 76 Kew Museum of Economic Botany, 95 Klemm, Gustav, 148, 189 Krieger, Herbert W., 154 Kyoto Girls’ Higher Normal School, 147 Langley, Samuel, 2, 113–14, 116, 225 Lea, Isaac, 48 Legacion de Uruguay, 107 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 115, 147 Lovett, Edward, 104 MacFarlane, Roderick, 76 Macron, Emmanuel, 223–24 Mason, Charles, 43 Mason, Otis Tufton: and basketry, interest in, 115–16, 142, 145; Basketwork of the North American Aborigines, 115; and Bishop

254 Museum exchange, 143–45; Boas, debate with, 191–97; “Bows, Arrows and Quivers of North America,” 151; career of, 79–80, 115, 148; and Centennial International Exposition, 80–81; on classification and spatial arrangements, 173–74; on collections, scope of, 174–76; collections and classification, 197–203; and collections management, 170, 173–74, 203; and culture history at SI, 189–91; and duplicates, designation of, 197–203; and Europe, travel to, 106–7, 120, 140–41; and Frobenius, 149–53; health of, 142; Indian Basketry, 145; and museum studies, 148–49; and natural history method, 191; The Origins of Invention, 149; “Resemblances in Arts Widely Separated,” 192; and specimen exchange, 71, 103, 104, 110, 120–24, 140–42, 148–53, 176 Matthews, Washington, 190 McCormick, L. M., 177–78 McGinnis, W. H., 111 Meacham, Mrs. D. B., 112 Memoirs of the Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi Volume I Quivira, by J. W. Brower, 179 Merrill, George, 117, 119 Meyer, A. B., 195 Meyer, Hermann: “Brazilian Bow,” 151 Mobile Museum project, 220 Mooney, James, 123 Moorehead, Warren, 178 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 189 Muller, Fred, 62n102 Müller, Sophus, 120–21 Murdoch, John, 211; “Eskimo Sinew-Backed Bow,” 151; “Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,” 213 Museum Handbook, by National Park Service, 203 Museum of Comparative Zoology, 40, 52 Museum of Ethnology (Leipzig), 148, 189 museums: catalogs, 215–16; and colonialism, 3, 105–8, 143–44, 187–88, 220–24, 228; and digitization, 220–23; as dynamic archives, 6–7, 12–14, 157, 215, 220–21; education collections, 127; as holder of objects, challenge to notion of, 55–56, 219–28; and interpretation, 135–36; large-scale collection in decline, 222; lot catalog numbers, 72–73; and object mobility, 183; organizational structures of, 10–11; and politicians, 223–26; and preservation, 227; and public, service to, 126–27; role of, 5–7, 10–11, 69–70, 166–67; and social relationships, 156–57; typology of, 68–69 Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, by Charles Wilkes, 74 National Ethnographic Museum (Leiden), 140–42

Index National Institute for the Promotion of Science, 31–32, 61n81 National Mall, 65 National Museum at Montevideo, 107 National Museum of Natural History. See United States National Museum National Park Service: Museum Handbook, 203 Natural History Museum (Brussels), 142–43 Nelson, Edward, 204–5 Nesbitt, Mark, 220 Niblack, Alfred, 190 “The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart,” by Franz Boas, 193 “The Origin of African Civilizations,” by Leo Frobenius, 150 The Origins of Invention, by Otis Mason, 149 Palmer, Edward, 65 Pan-American Exposition, 115 Patent Office and collections, 32, 41, 74 Peabody Museum (Harvard), 75, 104, 212–15 Perkins, James B., 113–16 Pfeiffer, L., 137 Pinson Mounds State Park (TN), 2–3 Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford, England), 104, 180 Poinsett, Joel, 31 Powell, John Wesley, 2, 79, 80, 96, 192 “Programme of Organization,” 33–34 Putnam, Frederic, 104 Quai Branly museum (Paris, France), 204–9 Rafn, C. C., 76 Rathbun, Richard, 116–18 Ratzel, Friedrich, 150 Rau, Charles, 79, 81–82, 145 Ray, Patrick Henry, 210–15 Reciprocal Research Network, 223 Reed, Edwyn, 118–19 repatriation, 223–24, 228; legislation regarding, 3, 222 “Resemblances in Arts Widely Separated,” by Otis Mason, 192 Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, 113–16 Ross, Bernard, 76 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 94 Royal Anthropological Museum (Dresden), 195 Royal Ethnographic Museum (Copenhagen), 76, 119–21 Royal Museum of Ethnology (Berlin), 99, 194–95 Royal Museum of Portugal, 75 Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), 180 Royal Zoological Museum (Florence), 104 Rutot, Aimé, 142–43 St. Louis World’s Fair, 115, 147 Sapporo Agricultural College, 107–8

Index Sapporo Museum, 107–8 Schmeltz, Johann, 141–42 School of Aizu, 147 Schuchert, Charles, 124–25 Secretary’s Reserve, 96 series. See under United States National Museum (USNM) Serrurier, Lindor, 140–41 Setzler, Frank, 154 Signal Service, 92n103 Smith, Middleton, 211 Smithson, James, 27 Smithsonian Institution: administration and curators, tensions between, 109; and Allison, 224–25; and art gallery, 41, 65; and botanical collections, transfer of, 65; and Centennial Exposition, 71; collections of, 41, 44–45, 49–52, 66, 76, 97; curator duties, 44, 48–52, 53, 109; duplicates, storage of, 71; establishment of by Congress, 32; Europe, relationship with, 53–54, 62n102; funding, 33, 35, 36–37, 48–52, 60n77, 64–66, 83, 225; mission of, 27–28, 38, 85; and national museum, 31–32, 82–83; Natural History Collections, 43; Natural History Department, 37; prestige of, 45; publications of, 33–34; and specimen exchange, 30, 37, 40–41, 46–47, 49–54, 66, 70–71, 83, 85–86; value of, monetary, 42. See also Henry, Joseph; United States National Museum (USNM) Smithsonian Institution, Castle: building of, 33, 58n21; collections and exhibits, 41–42, 43, 83–84; fire in, 35, 63, 64, 66–67; office location, 36, 66 Smithsonian Institution, publications of: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 76; Frobenius, “The Origin of African Civilizations,” 150; Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 76, 82, 112 Smithsonian Library, 33, 36, 64 South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition, 115 specimen exchange: definition of, 7–9; for collections growth and curating, 31, 33, 54, 87–88, 135; and educational goals of museum, 95, 96; in eighteenth century, 94; and exchange equivalence, 97–100; “gifts,” comparison, 102–3; and intellectual work, possessiveness over, 149–53; kind-of-thing, 8–9, 163–64; and knowledge production and dissemination, 47–48, 98–100, 101–2; and mobility of specimen, 48; and multiple exchanges, 69–70; as outdated practice, 16– 17; prevalence of, 93, 95, 194; purchasing collections, comparison, 95–96; purposes of, 9, 222; and reciprocity, 93, 107–8; rules of, 46–47; scholarship on, 9–10, 97–100; and social relations, 98–102, 138–39; specimen value, determination of, 47–48. See also under United States National Museum (USNM)

255 specimen exchange industry, 9 Squire, Ephraim George: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (with Edwin Hamilton Davis), 76, 112 Städtiches [Municipal] Museum (Weimar), 137 Stanley, John Mix, 41 State Historical Society of Iowa (Des Moines, IA), 180 Steenstrup, Dr., 48 Stevenson, James, 2, 145, 180, 208 Stevenson, Matilda Coxe, 2, 173–74 Stewart, John, 113–16 Storer, D. H., 40 Sturgis, Appleton, 178–79 Swan, James, 76, 206 Swedish Academy of Sciences, 40 taxonomy, 44, 47–48, 155–56, 164–67, 168 Thompson, W. J., 144 Tokyo Higher Technical College, 147 Tokyo Normal School, 147 Toronto museum, 170 Towne, Jaime, 2 transmission: term, author use of defined, 102–3 Trocadero Museum (Paris, France), 104, 170, 204–9 True, Frederick, 54, 116–17, 140, 146–47 type specimens, 38–39, 46–47, 167–69 unilinear evolution, 189, 192 United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 220 United States National Museum (USNM): American Indian ethnology, 80, 82; anthropology and subject matter interests, of personnel, 82; on anthropology as empirical science, 111–12; cataloging, 70, 203–9; catalogs, digitization of, 213–15; catalogs, fields for, changing, 210–15; and Civil War, 64; creation of, 43, 57n5; curators, as busy, 70, 115, 121–22; curators’ reports, 170; displays, 44, 61n82, 61n84, 64, 79; and duplicates, 65, 74–79, 156, 177–83; ethnology and anthropology, and natural history methodologies, 79–81, 86–87; expansion of after fire in Castle, 66–67; facilities, 84, 85, 100, 139 (see also Smithsonian Institution, Castle); at fairs and expositions, 147; funding for, 65, 85, 96, 100; and interdepartmental relations, 122–23, 124–25; National Museum of Natural History, change to, 2; as permanent collection, 43–44; prestige of, 30; scientific units, organization of, 90n53; “type specimen” as tied to scientific publications, 154–55; visitors, numbers of, 67 —collections: birds, 71; Centennial Exposition, 71–72; collections management, 67–68, 172; “Eskimo” material, 191; Exploring Expedition (see US Exploring

256 Expedition); fish, 72; geographic coverage, 110, 148–49; human skeletal, exclusion of, 65–66, 90n61, 92n103; North American rattles, 198–203; pottery, 90n66; series, 43–44, 49, 67, 74–75, 113–17, 174; series, duplicate, 49, 172, 226; series, reserve, 49, 171–72, 177; series, study, 68, 173; shells, 72–73; size of collections, 70, 71, 72–73, 78 —specimen exchange: and cataloging, relationship between, 77–79; and exchange equivalence, 73, 108–9, 116–18, 122–26, 137, 141, 145, 146–47, 177–81; and museum management, 86; and politicians’ involvement, 113–18; and prestige, 105, 107, 118–22, 143–45, 179; and social relationships, 100–102, 105, 106, 109–11, 118–22, 142–45, 180; anthropology specimens, shortage of, 118–22; collections management, 71, 210–15; decline in, 153– 56, 222; delays in reciprocation, 113–16, 139–45; disciplinary versus organizational, 172–73; for collections growth and curating, 105–6, 126, 137–38; numbers of exchanges, 72, 75–79, 103–5, 109, 110; of type specimen, by accident, 173; role of, 226;

Index specimen exchange as knowledge production and dissemination, 96–97, 126, 137, 148–53; transfer as replacement, 153–56 University of Buenos Aires Ethnographic Museum, 138 Upham, E. P., 125, 140 US Exploring Expedition, 28, 31–32, 39, 42–45, 65; duplicates from, 72, 74, 76, 178 Varden, John, 61n81 Victoria and Albert Museum, 106 von Haller, Albrecht, 94 Walcott, Charles, 152 Warren, George K., 76 Washington City Museum, 61n81 Wesley, William, 62n102 Wheatstone, Charles, 29 Wheeler and Hayden Surveys, 76 Whittle, W. A., 116–18 Wilcomb, C. P., 145 Wilkes, Charles: Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 74 Wilson, Thomas, 110–11, 112, 113, 124–26, 150, 178