Museums and the Making of "Ourselves": The Role of Objects in National Identity by Flora E.S. KaplanReview by: Mary Jo ArnoldiAfrican Arts, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer, 1995), pp. 19-20+88-89Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3337266 .

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This is yet another reason for undertaking studies of single societies or intraregional comparisons. Herbert is well aware of such concerns, and stresses that the hypotheses she presents in her conclusion are "meant to be a challenge rather than an assertion, a plea for more work to confirm, refute, or modify." She has presented us with the base from which to take up this challenge-and that is the strength of her book.

The appendix on reconstructions of iron smelting in Africa and her extensive bibliogra- phy will be of lasting value. The index includes names of ethnic groups, concepts, and uses (e.g., of chickens in divination), though not of the authors who have contributed to her data- base. With the unfortunate exceptions of the maps-which frankly are awful-and certain figures (two with tiny captions in Portuguese!), the book is well produced and organized. The black and white photographs, many historical, demonstrate the wide variety of furnace types and their attributes. Other photographs illus- trate themes regarding smelting/smithing regalia, hunters and royal symbols, and an- thropomorphic pottery.

In short this is a brave attempt, and a worthy one, to explore the deeper meanings of African metallurgy. It deserves its place on the shelves of all those interested in the arts, material culture, and history of sub- Saharan Africa. O

MUSEUMS AND THE MAKING OF "OURSELVES" The Role of Objects in National Identity Edited by Flora E.S. Kaplan Leicester University Press, London and New York, 1994. North American distributor: St. Martin's Press, New York. 430 pp., 86 blw illustrations, 5 maps, index, bibliography. $69 hardcover.

Reviewed by Mary Jo Arnoldi

Over the past several decades museums have been at the center of academic and public debates about their roles as culture brokers, their past and current practices, and their futures. This intense scrutiny has produced a rich, diverse, and growing literature about the history of museums and their collections, institutional identities, and public roles. Most of this literature has focused on North American and European institutions, but Museums and the Making of "Ourselves," edited by Flora E.S. Kaplan, extends the discussion. The volume's fourteen contributors-museum professionals and academics-present case studies of museums in Brazil, the Caribbean, Greece, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, the Pacific, Portugal, and Saudi Arabia. Kaplan's intro- duction sets the intellectual framework, and the individual authors examine the roles that these museums play in forging national iden- tities, in interpreting history and culture, and in promoting national agendas.

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The essays are loosely organized into three sections: "New Museums, Defining the 'Self' and Nation-States"; "Forging Identity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries"; and "Transforming-Objects, Collections, and 'Nations.' " In the first section the four essays present overviews of national or regional museum systems. Adrienne Kaeppler com-

pares and contrasts Pacific island museums in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; while Flora Kaplan, Margaret Anderson and Andrew Reeves, and Abdullah H. Masry examine museum systems in Nigeria, Austra- lia, and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

Kaeppler limits her discussion to ethno-

graphic or cultural history museums in the Pacific to the exclusion of museums of art or

technology. After giving a brief history of the institution and its collections, she analyzes its

goals and practices in light of changing national political agendas and in relation to the particular island's social history and cul- tural practices.

Kaplan begins her essay on Nigerian museums with a brief history of the museum

system from its inception as the Antiquities Service in the 1940s to its postcolonial organi- zation as the National Commission on Museums and Monuments. She presents an orientation to each museum's collections and a description of its physical facilities. This

history and inventory is a useful resource and underscores the diversity of the museums in the Nigerian system. Only briefly does she mention the different goals and objectives that shaped the agendas of the various direc- tors of the National Commission. While rela-

tively short, the history of Nigerian museums is complex. I was disappointed that Kaplan did not more directly relate the museum phi- losophy and goals of the individual directors to the national cultural and political agendas of the time.

Anderson and Reeves's essay tackles the

history of Australian museums from the nine- teenth century to the present in light of the

ongoing resistance to the creation of a nation- al Australian museum. They analyze shifting regional agendas over time and relate the

growth and orientation of the country's vari- ous museums to specific historical periods. They also discuss the gender and ethnic imbalance in Australian museums through- out much of their history, and the steps being taken today to redress these imbalances.

Masry's discussion of Saudi Arabia's mu- seum program considers the kingdom's offi- cial efforts to create a national identity by investing in the preservation and interpreta- tion of its cultural heritage. One of the central goals of its current extensive national archae- ological research program, created in 1976, is to identify local Arabian contributions and to integrate them into the larger history of the Near East. Several historical sites are dis- cussed in detail, and Masry concludes with an overview of future research questions.

In the second section, four essays feature museums in Mexico, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Greece. None of these essays provide the reader with detailed descriptions of physical

facilities or collections, as the authors are more focused on the analysis of the museum's role in building national identity.

In his excellent essay on the National Museum of Mexico, Luis Gerardo Morales- Moreno discusses its role as a crucial part of

patriotic culture, from its inception in the nine- teenth century to the present. He skillfully analyzes the museum's early history as a "his-

toriographic canvas" serving to create a com- mon past which was available to all Mexicans and reflecting the prevailing political philoso- phy of the emerging nation state. This notion of the nation survives today in the National Museum of Anthropology, where Indian and Creole objects are interpreted as essential parts of the drama of national patriotism.

Alissandra Cummins divides her chapter into two sections. She begins with an exten- sive overview of the early formative history of museums in the Caribbean, where popular culture was alienated from officialdom. This section is followed by a discussion and analy- sis of the postcolonial "Caribbeanization" of the West Indies, beginning in the 1970s. She discusses how individual governments' agen- das, regional organizations such as the Caribbean Common Market, and members of the Caribbean museum association fostered transformations in museum identities.

Focusing attention on the subnational level, J.P. Dickenson examines the contribu- tions of local and regional museums to the creation of identity in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He first presents an overview of the history of its museums, which current-

ly number about fifty. He then addresses con-

temporary issues concerning the collections

,(consisting mostly of objects from the colonial

period), the low priority given to government support of museum operations and collection

preservation, and controversies surrounding representations in contemporary exhibitions in this region.

Maria Avgouli notes that the founding of the first modern museums in the 1830s coin- cided with the founding and consolidation of the Greek state. Her subsequent analysis of the role of museums focuses on the history of

archaeological, Byzantine, and historical and

ethnographic museums in Greece. Using spe- cific examples Avgouli examines how these different institutions reflect the changing meanings assigned to national identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The final section of the volume includes six case studies. While each of them is inter-

esting in its own right, it is a stretch to find any common theme which unites this section. Kaplan's introduction does little to clarify why these essays were grouped together, and I find this section, but not the individual essays, the least coherent.

Douglas Newton briefly examines the shifts in the orientation of national museums over the past century and a half. He suggests that the emerging national museums in the Pacific are less settings for the exposition of works of other cultures than they are focuses for a nation's own culture. He then examines

Continued on page 88

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something other than sculpture, this was for him enough proof of independent activity. Ravenhill writes of "somatized knowledge" wherein everything a person knows and is becomes encoded at a level beneath conscious- ness. If Poudjougou's sculptural artistry derived from such knowledge, then his cer- tainty about the independent work of his hands is understandable. Somatized knowl- edge may manifest itself bodily in combina- tions over which we appear to have few conscious controls.

It seems that a certain kind of art-knowl- edge may be achieved through the bodily expression of it, as in Poudjougou's case, as in the case where efficacy is the acid test. I won- der whether another kind of art-knowledge may be gained through the bodily experience of it, such as what happens to the affected observer as described by Michael Brennon (in Ravenhill), the sensation being "physical... taken in by the body which always knows more than the mind can grasp."

Taken in by the body, the eyes: I am intrigued and confounded by Grabar's state- ment concerning our need for pleasure through the eyes. Sight is a property of cones, rods, gray matter, and light. Comprehension of what we see is culturally constrained. Like air, water, and food, homo sapiens seeks plea- sure. Is pleasure a primitive, basic, physical need? Is it a cultural construct? More? If, for the sake of argument, the need for pleasure through sight could be shown to be a primi- tive, basic, physical need, I might find data to support the concept of art whose power exists, at least in part, outside of textual or cul- tural addenda.

John Picton's densely packed essay permits me little ingress for dispute. His arguments are tightly constructed. His documentation and philosophical reasoning processes appear flawless. He goes to semiotic decoding as a starting point. I cannot here argue Picton's con- clusions; they are buttressed too securely. I can, however, caution the reader against mistaking a tight argument for a complete argument.

I find myself both overwhelmed and seduced: overwhelmed by Picton's virtuosic command of theoretical literature, seduced (if not entirely convinced) by the Rubik's Cube- like logical scientism of his text. Gridlocked. (John, are you laughing?) Alice through the looking glass, indeed.

I am somewhat perplexed as how best to respond to Hans Witte. While reading his essay, I kept looking through my own, won- dering, Did I say that? If I understand Witte correctly, his essay focuses on my prop- ositions concerning aesthetics-in Witte's words, "a theory on the beautiful and the ugly." As far as I can tell, my only reference to aesthetics is in regard to a quote from Barbara Hernnstein Smith, who suggests that some responses to stimuli seem to be species-wide, and thus these responses transcend cultural parameters. This is a simple statement that is arguably demonstrable. Agreement with Hernnstein-Smith does not mean nothing is culturally specific; conversely, it does not mean everything is equally transcendent. It

does suggest that some things-for example what, for the purposes of my essay, I call art- possess combinations of natural, cultur- al, temporal, and individual attributes on continua, as Picton suggests, that are not bound in stasis.

If "the independence of art...surely must have its limits," I wonder if any of us gen- uinely have access to knowledge of those lim- its and the ability to define them. And while some viewers might find it indispensable to know (the limits of) the artist's intent, intent-- assuming even that the artist fully knows what it is-may be less important to others.

I concur that the beholder is "limited by the sensibilities of his period and culture," but I'm not sure I would say this is true as well about an art object. The sculptor Poudjougou said that a powerful object does not require an audience to validate its power. In this regard I think there may indeed be something timeless about an art object-the object itself-even if responses to it differ according to local sensi- bilities. Thirty-five years ago Gombrich wrote of "the beholder's share." During the 1980s academics spent a great deal of energy explor- ing codes, signifiers, and signifieds. Where does art happen?

Witte suggests that I have constructed a "neutral, postcultural domain of aesthetic understanding." I don't even know what that

means, exactly. I do know that we do not "leave [our own] culture behind"-indeed we cannot-nor do we "become the other," yet somehow we manage to know something of what the other knows. Where does art hap- pen? I would not want to circumscribe the possibilities.

No matter how each of us has chosen to argue, we might agree that the experience of art may be irreducible. As John Picton points out, we perhaps differ in our methodologies and language use, but as scholars, thinkers, and writers, we may all be attempting the same thing: the translation into words of our experience of the essentially untranslatable.

CORRECTION In the article by Babatunde Lawal, "A Ya Gb6, A Ya T6: New Perspectives on Edan Ogboni" (Winter 1995), the label for the pho- tograph on page 39 (Fig. 4) was inaccurate: the male figure on the right is not holding a stylized edan, but is making the customary Ogboni gesture, with left fist over right; the rod under the fist acts as a support. In addi- tion, the correct title of the author's forth- coming book, mentioned on page 99, is The G&~ldd Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture (University of Washing- ton Press, Seattle).

b o o k s Continued from page 20

issues related to the interpretation of culture within the museum settings through a case study of the complex negotiations surround- ing the making of the "Te Maori" exhibition, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1984.

Magdalena Braz Teixeira examines the his- tory of collections now housed in the national museums in Portugal with special attention to collections made between the twelfth and six- teenth centuries. She describes inventories of objects and the values associated with certain classes of objects. Her essay also pays particular attention to the role medieval women played in collecting. Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries the two major collectors were the royal family and the Church. Later the pool of collectors expanded to include lesser nobles, scholars, and a variety of other individuals who acquired objects through their participation in voyages of discovery outside Portugal.

Magen Broshi focuses on the central role that archaeology and archaeological museums played in the decades surrounding the found- ing of the state of Israel in 1948. He gives a brief history of archaeological research in the area at the time. Noting that the majority of Israel's current museums are wholly or partly archae- ological, he persuasively argues that archaeol- ogy played a central role in forging an Israeli identity for European immigrants. Broshi inter- prets the state's intense investment and interest in archaeology as one means of validating the immigrants' sense of kinship with and owner-

ship of the land, while simultaneously serving to ease their feelings of strangeness.

Ekpo Eyo's essay, on the repatriation of objects of cultural patrimony, presents a brief overview of the exodus of such objects from Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali. He then addresses acquisition programs of museums and the ethics of acquisition. In his final section on cultural property and restitution, he suggests four ways for museum directors to tackle the imbalance between the developed and devel- oping nations and to control the flow of cul- tural property from the latter to the former.

George H.J. Abrams details the 1988 case of the repatriation of wampum from the Museum of the American Indian to the Six Nations Confederacy. He briefly outlines the history of the Iroquois Confederacy and the profound changes it underwent throughout the nine- teenth century. It was during this period of intense internal turmoil that the wampum belts came to be redefined as personal proper- ty rather than objects to be held in trust within the nation. It was also during this period that many belts were sold to museums and private collectors. In the second half of the essay, Abrams outlines the major arguments for and against the repatriation of Indian objects and documents the complex negotiations between the MAI and the Canadian Iroquois for the return of eleven wampum belts.

Howard D. Winters examines distortions in the anthropological record regarding the interpretation of early subsistence economies and analyzes at length the nature of these biases. However, it is only in his short conclu-

88 african arts * summer 1995

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sion that he addresses how these reinterpreta- tions might reshape museum presentations of early subsistence economies. He is not at all optimistic that such a complex situation can be exhibited effectively in the museum set- ting. While I found a few of the other essays somewhat peripheral to the discussion of the role of museums in creating national identity, Winters's essay seemed wholly out of place in this volume.

In her introduction Kaplan states that each of the contributors was asked to briefly address the formative history of a museum or group of museums in a particular geographical region, country, or province within a country; discuss the primary collections; and describe the phys- ical facilities. Authors were then directed to examine specific national policies toward museums and to analyze the role that muse- ums play in forging "national" agendas and identities. The essays are uneven, with some being primarily descriptive, others much more analytical. None meets all of Kaplan's goals, although to be fair to the contributors, to do so would necessitate a series of monographs. Despite its flaws, the book's strength lies in the multiple approaches which the authors bring to their case studies. For those interested in museums I would recommend a thorough reading. As Americans are becoming increas- ingly embroiled in debates about culture, the publication of this volume is timely. Collec- tively, the essays raise important and interre- lated issues concerning the relationships and responses of museums to shifting national cul- tural agendas. DE

TANZANIA Meisterwerke Afrikanischer Skulptur/Sanaa za Mabingwa wa Kiafrika Edited by Jens Jahns Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and the Stdd- tische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1994. Text in German and Swahili. 528 pp., 522 b/w photos, 6 maps, bibliography. DM 48 hardcover.

Reviewed by Diane Pelrine

This book is the catalogue of an exhibition held last year at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (reviewed by Kerstin Volker in the Winter 1995 issue of African Arts), and the Staidtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus/Kunstbau, Munich. Eight authors contributed eleven essays, presented first in German and then in Swahili, which generally follow geographic or thematic approaches. Most are accompanied by related photo sections that include identifi- cation captions. Additional photos, maps, and charts are interspersed with the German text; Swahili readers will no doubt wish that the same had been done in those sections, which are long blocks of text in an otherwise lavish- ly illustrated book.

Though the illustrations are in black and white only, all are of high quality, and the

scarcity of published examples of Tanzanian sculpture makes them significant. Many objects appear full-page, and details and alternate views, particularly of larger pieces, are frequent.

The first three essays present an overview of the topic. First, Maria Kecskesi dispels some of the stereotypes concerning East African and Tanzanian art, while in the next two essays, Marc Felix presents a brief history of Tanzania and a classification of its traditional sculpture. His first essay, aptly titled "Wo kamen sie alle her?" ("From Where Did They All Come?"), is an overview of the peopling of the Tanzanian mainland and its contacts with the outside world. The author notes East Africa's position as the cradle of humankind and continues with the migrations of Cushitic and Bantu- speaking peoples from elsewhere on the conti- nent and the building of Portuguese forts along the coast. Felix rightly notes that much of this history is still speculative and tentative; for this reason in particular, it is surprising that he cites no sources in this essay.

In the second essay, Felix identifies eight Tanzanian style regions, discusses types and appearances of objects generally produced in each, and lists major sculpture-making peo- ples and the objects for which they are known, with references to other pertinent essays in the volume. These style regions are basically geographic, consisting of the area around Lake Victoria in the northwest, western Tanzania along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, the "world of the Nyamwezi" in the middle, south-central Tanzania east and north of Lake Malawai, northeast Tanzania along the Kenyan border, the east-central coast and hinterland, the southeast north of the Mozambique border, and the north-cen- tral border and interior. Though some may quibble with his divisions (separating the Zigua and the Ngulu into two different regions, for example), this is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to look at style relation- ships throughout the country and is a very useful overview. Many photos, primarily of objects that do not relate directly to the essays that follow, are included in the German text.

Enrico Castelli discusses the sculpture of central eastern Tanzania, which is best known for works by the Zaramo, Kwere, and Luguru. He refers primarily to Zaramo objects, but emphasizes the cultural unity of the peoples in this area. Therefore he does not distinguish individual ethnic practices, styles, or contexts for the art, though he does briefly discuss girls' initiation and grave figures, posts, staffs, and musical instruments. He maintains that the sculpture from this area is united in the domi- nance of the depiction of the female body and in the use of repeated bands in geometric pat- terns to decorate objects, particularly on older pieces. These patterns, he suggests, once func- tioned for lineages in a way comparable to writing or heraldic emblems; however, he cites no specific references to support this assertion.

In the next essay, Georges Meurant writes about clay and wood sculpture of northeastern Tanzania, which includes the Pare, Shambaa, and Zigua. Noting that both human and animal figures are made and that wood and clay fig-

ures sometimes appear in the same ritual con- texts, he categorizes and briefly discusses the sculpture according to those contexts. Perhaps the most well-known use of clay figures is as teaching aids for boys' and girls' initiations, not only in this area, but in other parts of East Africa as well, as was so carefully documented in Hans Cory's 1956 African Figurines: Their Ceremonial Use in Puberty Rites in Tanganyika. However, Meurant also points out that both wood and clay sculptures also function in rites connected with atonement, fertility, agriculture, witchcraft, and healing. In addition, some fig- ures are said to represent ancestors.

Meurant continues with a second essay titled "Sculptural Art of the Nyamwezi" ("Die Bildhauerkunst der Nyamwezi"). His title should be taken as referring to a broad area rather than the single specific central Tanzanian group, however, for this section also includes extended references to the Sukuma, Kerewe, Bena, and Karagwe. As with the previous essay, Meurant notes similarities across Tanzania in styles, types of objects, and contexts.

Expanding her research on high-backed stools that was first presented at the 1989 African Studies Association annual meeting, Nancy Ingram Nooter examines in the next essay the tradition within Tanzania. These stools-the casual observer would more like- ly call them chairs-most often have three- dimensional heads or figures carved on the tops of the backs. Around two dozen are known. They have been attributed to a variety of groups, including the Nyamwezi, Gogo, Kaguru, Luguru, Doe, Kwere, and Zaramo. In an interesting analysis that includes both con- textual and historical information, Nooter concludes that a caravan route, near which the stools were first discovered by outsiders, probably served as the point along which this distinctive form spread.

Allen Roberts offers a comparative per- spective, looking at "aesthetic points of con- tact" between the peoples of western Tanzania and those of southeastern Zaire. He suggests that the complex trade networks in this area have played a crucial role in the dissemination of ideas and forms and deserve closer study.

Charles Meur presents detailed descriptive and stylistic analyses of wooden mask forms attributed to nearly twenty peoples across the country. While little is known about the masks' original contexts, Meur's work can perhaps be used, along with whatever collection informa- tion does exist, to propose some theories about the development of the tradition.

Though the title of Gisleher Blesse's essay, "Der Siidosten Tanzanias-Die Kunst der Makonde and der Benachbarten V61ker" (Southeastern Tanzania: Art of the Makonde and Neighboring Peoples), suggests that it deals with a region, discussion of peoples other than the Makonde is limited to three short paragraphs. This is the only essay in the volume that addresses at length the contexts in which a type of object-in this case, Makonde masks-appears. Blesse also incor- porates information about the area from earlier sources, several field photos, and a dis- cussion of mask types to present a good

african arts * summer 1995 89

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