James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture”, in 'The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art'.

James Clifford over the last 30 years has been a highly influential and controversial scholar working in field of anthropology. His work challenges the conventions of anthropology by offering new ways to understand interactions and exchanges that shape cultures.

Within his essay “On Collecting Art and Culture”, Clifford critically analyses Western methods of collecting and classifying exotic objects from non-Western cultures throughout history. An interesting point arises when Clifford uses the example of the American Museum of Natural History in regards to its ‘Boas Room’ containing Northwest Coast artifacts.

Clifford stresses the importance of why the Boas room should not be modernized and its display method renewed, as ‘a moment in the history of collecting’ (229) could be potentially lost. He emphasizes that the exhibition not only presents a ‘superb collection’ (229) but essentially captures how the Western culture collected and displayed non-Western artifacts during that era. Highlighting that inherently within the Boas Room collection it contains significant information about Western culture. A duality arises in that through the representation of one culture it can inversely reveal more about the other culture. One cultures representation of another culture’s artifacts also exposes a crucial issue that they have the power to misrepresent the foreign culture.

Charles Frederick Goldie’s portraiture paintings are an example of how the indigenous Maori culture were represented and misrepresented by Western culture. According to the ‘Tai Awatea/Knowledge Net’ website, ‘like many Pakeha in the early twentieth century, Goldie believed the Maori race would either die out or be assimilated’, and as a result he portrayed them in a ‘romanticised style because he believed he was recording a race in jeopardy’(Tai Awatea, par. 3). This preconception of the Maori race was externalized through his subject matter as he repeatedly chose to depict elderly Maori rather than youths, ‘even though at the beginning of the twentieth century the Maori population was increasing’. (Tai Awatea, par. 4) Further emphasised by his title descriptions which allude to Maori extinction such as The Last of the Cannibals and A Noble Relic of a Noble Race. In effect, many hold special significance for Goldie’s works as they are considered irreplaceable images depicting Maori ancestors, yet simultaneously they represent Goldie’s idealized view of their race, which can be seen as ‘documenting colonial attitudes of racism’. (Tai Awatea, par. 10)



References:

James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture”, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 215-251.

Tai Awatea / Knowledge Net, More of Te Papa online. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Retrieved 14 July 2009 http://tpo.tepapa.govt.nz/ViewTopicExhibitDetail.asp?ExhibitID=0x000a3db2&Language=English Paragraphs 1-11.