Reintegrating Material Culture
Natural history museums often house “ethnographic” collections as part of their collections. This is a legacy of colonial assumptions about non-Western cultures and it raises questions and problems for curators today. In this case study, we ask how to reinterpret, redisplay, and catalogue these collections? What alternative perspectives on the natural world might these collections offer?
The Redpath Museum holds about 200 examples of Sri Lankan
material culture relating to medicine and healing while the Blacker Wood and the Osler Library hold 145 olas (palm leaf manuscripts). All were made between the 16th and 19th centuries and collected in the 1920s and 30s. The Redpath also holds 88 Sri Lankan minerals collected in the 19th century. The medical and zoological texts contain a wealth of information about plants and animals and the cultural belongings and minerals reflect the environment in their materials. Working with Sri Lankan experts, the olas will be conserved, digitized, and catalogued. An exhibition at McGill will investigate the colonial contexts of these collections and the alternative perspectives they provide on the natural world.
Hidden Hands in Colonial Natural Histories 