ABOUT THIS BOOK

An argument for the importance of circulation in the study of museum collections, both past and present.

How did the process of the circulation re-examine, inform, and unsettle common assumptions about the way museum collections have evolved over time and space? Mobile Museums presents an argument for the importance of circulation in the study of museum collections, both past and present. It brings together a diverse array of international scholars and curators from a variety of disciplines to consider the mobility of collections, especially in the context of Indigenous community engagement. By foregrounding the question of circulation, the book represents a paradigm shift in the understanding of the history and future uses of museum collections. Taking on a global perspective and addressing a variety of types of collection, including the botanical, ethnographic, economic, and archaeological, the book helps us to understand why the mobility of museum collections was a fundamental aspect of their history—and why it continues to matter today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Felix Driver is professor of human geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Geography Militant, and Hidden Histories of Exploration. Mark Nesbitt is honorary associate professor at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. He is also visiting professor at Royal Holloway, and a senior research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Caroline Cornish is Senior Research Officer (Plant Humanities) at Royal Holloway, University of London and Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

REVIEWS

This book advances a paradigm shift in studies of museums and collections. A distinguished group of contributors reveal that collections are not dead assemblages. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by vigorous international traffic in ethnography and natural history specimens that tell us much about colonialism, travel and the history of knowledge – and have implications for the remobilisation of museums in the future.’ – Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge

The first major work to examine the implications and consequences of the migration of materials from one scientific or cultural milieu to another, it highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of collections and offers insights into their potential for future re-mobilisation.' – Arthur MacGregor

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: mobilising and re-mobilising collections Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt and Caroline Cornish
1. Plant artefacts then and now: reconnecting biocultural collections in Amazonia Luciana Martins
2. Re-mobilising colonial collections in decolonial times: exploring the latent possibilities of N. W. Thomas’ West African collections Paul Basu
3. Circuits of accumulation and loss: intersecting natural histories of the 1928 USDA New Guinea Sugarcane Expedition’s collections Joshua A. Bell
4. Kew’s mobile museum: economic botany in circulation Caroline Cornish, Felix Driver and Mark Nesbitt
5. Illustrating anthropological knowledge: texts, images and duplicate specimens at the Smithsonian Institution and Pitt Rivers Museum Catherine A. Nichols
6. Expeditionary collections: Haslar Hospital Museum and the circulation of public knowledge, 1815-1855 Daniel Simpson
7. Mobile botany: education, horticulture and commerce in New York botanical gardens, 1890s-1930s Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
8. Plants on the move: Kew Gardens and the London schoolroom Laura Newman
9. Circulations of paradise (or, how to use a specimen to best personal advantage) Jude Philp
10. Circulation as negotiation and loss: Egyptian antiquities from British excavations, 1880–present Alice Stevenson
11. Colonising memory: Indigenous heritage and community engagement Claudia Augustat
12. The flow of things: mobilising museum collections of nineteenth-century Fijian liku (fibre skirts) and veiqia (female tattooing) Karen Jacobs
Afterword: What goes around, comes around: mobility's modernity
Martha Fleming
Index