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TA name: Julie Shackelford; Word count: 1908 words

What are the differences between a museum and a cultural centre?

According to Stocking (1985), a museum is an institution devoted to collecting, preserving, interpreting and exhibiting material objects. This definition will serve as a starting point for the argument of this essay, for it outlines the main processes involved in the activity of museums. So there is more going on beyond the exhibition space and artifacts visible to the public. Indeed, museums are part of international socio-political networks, they are subject to cultural and technological variation and their roles range from developing national identities (Anderson 1991cited in Geismar and Tilley 2003) to providing a forum for multi-cultural experience and expression (Karp and Lavine 1991 cited in Geismar and Tilley 2003). Cultural centres, the larger institutions which consist of more than just museums, distinguish themselves from museums in what the activities held there and the dialectic of material objects and social agents is concerned. One interesting way of understanding the wider roles of these institutions within their socio-political contexts is by contrasting museums and cultural centres. I draw on the interactions between history, artifacts, people and their activities at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England and at Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Pitt Rivers Museum, containing the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford, was founded in 1884, when General Augustus Pitt Rivers donated his collection to the university. This collection is today only 7% of the total number of artifacts in the museum. He had begun collecting ethnographic objects around 1851 while serving as a

young military officer, intrigued by the observation that weapons had undergone gradual (continuous) developments over time. This led him to organize his objects, collected from port cities from abroad or from London shops, in two ways: the first and the more important one was based on the form, showing technological development, and the other one, on function or use. He coined the metaphor of the tree of civilizations within a Darwinian and ethnological framework, on top of which lay the Europeans, insisting at the same time that the progress of civilizations cannot be traced as easily as the one of their technologies, as certain ideas never made it to the world of material forms (Chapman 1985). Even so, his collection illustrated a well-supported picture of the course of human cultural evolution. Moreover, he emphasized a typological principle of organizing the artefacts in the museum, which, though gradually combined with the geographical one (Chapman 1985), or replaced in anthropology by the functionalist approach which dismissed artefacts as simply the outcome of social processes (Pearce 1989:4), is still at the core of the museums exhibition nowadays. The website of Pitt Rivers Museum states that, in comparison to most ethnographic and archaeological museums, the objects displayed there (musical instruments, weapons, masks, textiles, jewellery, magic objects and tools from the Pacific islands, Japan, America and Africa, donated by both early anthropologists and archaeologists, and staff and students nowadays) are arranged so as to show how some problems have been solved at different times by different peoples.. Therefore, Pitt Rivers Museum has not radically departed from the very principles that laid its foundation. Later on, I will analyse the kinds of activities held there and their meaning to the social role of the institution. For now, I shall turn to a brief history and description of the basic principles of organization of artefacts at Vanuatu Cultural Centre, which is comprised of the National

Museum, Cultural Centre, National Library and Archive. Deeply rooted into the context of Anglo-French colonialism prior to Vanuatu Independence in 1980, it was primarily oriented towards displaying birds and shells collected by expatriates, had no role in the contemporary development and its activity did not expand beyond the building of the National Museum. It was not until the arrival of foreign researchers in 1970 that the Cultural Centre got involved in stirring Melanesians interest in a self-determined regeneration of traditional culture. It revolved around kastom, meaning in Pidgin English indigenous custom or tradition and encompassing ideas of national identity and culture building in a post-colonial Vanuatu (Bolton 2003 cited in Geismar and Tilley 2003). Geismar and Tilley (2003) provide a description of the gallery. To the left and the right of the rectangular room one can see cases filled with objects related to the national history (such as coral and shells) or used in traditions and ceremonies such as pig killing; in the centre lie several canoes; on the walls, reproductions of historical paintings; to the end of the gallery, a small reconstruction of a Malakulan mans house, as it would look in a ritual space in a village in North-Central Vanuatu. These objects come from various islands, predominantly from the NorthCentral region, namely Malakula, Pentecost, Ambae and Ambrym. There is a clear preference for a national perspective or even a Pacific identity over a local one the objects emphasize generic function rather than locality, as shown in a display of boomerangs. The label does mention the place of origin, but offers more details about the relationships between people who used the stick, how it was used and how the VCC was formed and for objects which are not subject to change over time. The Vanuatu Cultural Centre does not regard artifacts as central and focuses instead on other projects and activities. Within the Oral Traditions Project, processes of objectification of

local traditions through museum technologies such as tape or video recording help preserve and bring to peoples attention unwritten activities such as dancing, singing or talking while reinforcing social bonds within communities, where local people do voluntary fieldwork on their own islands. Undoubtedly, the incorporation of the immaterial into the material is crucial in creating a sense of national identity (Geismar and Tilley 2003). This particular aspect of museum practice at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre shows that the Centre focuses on the people. More specifically, its main role is to build and preserve a self-determined culture that does not distinguish between economy, culture and government and that tries to preserve kastom despite and as an alternative to the changes it has been undergoing since 1990 with respect to, for instance, how Western ideas of earning money or of environment preservation clash with local ones (Geismar 2012). In her study on contemporary art in Vanuatu, under the auspices of Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Geismar (2003) showed that the Oral Traditions Project inspired a new generation of Vanuatu artists. Contemporary art objects emphasize a mixture of kastom and new technologies. Moses Jobo uses traditional techniques to create barkcloth and at the same time forms innovative images translated into acrylic paint. He made a large work depicting a gecko, which symbolizes kastom magic and intertribal warfare. His work points out how the National Museum combine tradition and contemporary techniques. By contrast, Pitt Rivers Museum creates images of cultures rather than reconstructing a local and national sense of identity. It establishes through active learning about cultures an educative and leisure platform suitable for all ages, its primary functions thus being to entertain rather than to reinforce social bonds. The text from a leaflet for 5-year-olds provided in the Education section found on the official website of the Museum says: Imagine you are travelling

on me What do you see? How does it feel? What do you hear? How does it smell?, right above a drawing of the Ship of The Establishment in England, drawing on the childrens senses to enhance their imagination and knowledge. Furthermore, among the family activities proposed in the same section is the making of a neck ornament from northeast India through instructions, along with several pieces of information about the utility of the necklace in India and how it reflects social relationships within the Naga and other communities. These interactive, hands-on ways of learning are different from those at Vanuatu Cultural Centre mentioned above in that they do not involve an entire community or revolve around a local ideal of nationality resurrection. Although they address a wide public, they tend to divide it into groups based on areas of interest, age or kinship. Along with the permanent exhibitions, a complete image of museums such as Pitt Rivers Museum is one of a place facilitating selfeducation (Merriman 1989). Moreover: if at Vanuatu Cultural Centre borders between specialist and non-specialist knowledge fade as both local people and foreign anthropologists do fieldwork, at Pitt Rivers Museum all activities are facilitated by research-active academics. On the one hand, objects are constitutive of social relationships and practices, on the other hand they refer to a certain culture or social group (Miller 1987). A further challenge to be found at Vanuatu Cultural Centre is that of the uniqueness of the artifacts. The Archive of the National Museum is a bank for intellectual property where people who store photographs, films or objects concerning local traditions, mythology or cultural, political or personal events can multiply them to keep a copy to themselves. The storing ensures the survival of kastom over generations and is materialized form of the relationships between islands and a single nation and between people and their traditions. The Archive is open mostly to local people (Geismar and Tilley2003). So, once again, it is not objects per se that

convey meaning, but the people who commit to preserving and transmitting the culture by interacting with both means of objectification and other members of the community. It could be argued that the fundamental differences mentioned above concern two particular examples of institutions and may not hold true if one were to contrast other institutions. While it is true that the two case studies focus on a museum and a cultural centre with very specific orientations, I believe that the examples epitomize a wider trend in the two distinct traditions. One must not necessarily analyse them in terms of a Western versus nonWestern dichotomy and state that the Western tradition is all about objects, while the nonWestern one is all about people. Both are important in both museums and cultural centres. Moreover, cultural centres are more recent than museums, outlining the need for spaces more dedicated to people and to a social use, but there is no escaping from objects. And there need not be. Instead, the great differences stem from how the relationships between people and objects are built and from how politically involved a certain type of institution is. Therefore, the contrasts lie in the How? and not in the What? . I have argued that museums are not only exhibition spaces, but also part of socio-political networks and that several intriguing aspects of cultural variation may arise by contrasting them with their younger kin, cultural centres. The latter are larger institutions that encompass museums, libraries and archives involved in the social relationships within a given community. In spite of the fact that both types of institutions exhibit artifacts and organize social activities, they tend to focus more on the former or on the latter according to both local circumstances and local peoples needs or interests. I have analysed the history, material culture and the social use of the space at Pitt Rivers Museum, an ethnographic and archaeological museum engaged in entertaining and educating, and Vanuatu Cultural Centre, part of building a national identity,

showing how the differences between the two lead to a different use of the space, to a different sense of cultural identity, involvement in the society or, to put it more simply, to a different object-people dialectic.

References:
ANDERSON, B. 1991. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. CHAPMAN, W. R. 1985. Arranging Ethnology: A. H. L. F. Pitt Rivers and the Typological Tradition in Objects and Others. Essays on Museums and Material Culture in History of Anthropology. Vol. 3. The University of Wisconsin Press. GEISMAR, H. 2003. Museum Collecting in Representing Pacific Art. GEISMAR, H. 06.12. 2012 Material Culture Lecture at University College London. GEISMAR, H. and C. TILLEY 2003. Negotiating Materiality: International and Local Museum Practices at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. Research Library.

KARP, I. and S. LAVINE 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington: Smithsonian Press. MERRIMAN, N. 1989. The Social Basis of Museum and Heritage Visiting in Museum Studies in Material Culture. Leicester University Press(a division of Pinter Publishers) London and New York. MILLER, D. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell. PITT RIVERS MUSEUM OFFICIAL WEBSITE. www.prm.ox.ac.uk STOCKING JR., G. W. 1985. Objects and Others. Essays on Museums and Material Culture in History of Anthropology. Vol. 3. The University of Wisconsin Press.

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