Christian trophies or Asmat ethnografica
Fr. Zegwaard and the American Museum of Natural History Asmat Collection,1958-9
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2405232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Erin L Hasinoff (0000-0003-4099-1040, Columbia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 147-174 |
| Publication date | 2006-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Social Archaeology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1469-6053 • E-ISSN: 1741-2951 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1469605306064238 |
| OpenAlex | W1988703530 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 26 |
Missionary collections have been considered to be scarcely more than curious accumulations of Christian trophies, collected trappings of 'savagery' and 'heathenism' and articles displaying a readiness for missionary investment. On the contrary, ethnological collections, in their comprehensiveness, have been thought to provide tangible traces of a disciplinary methodology and scientific objectivity characteristic of the ethnological museum. In this article, I complicate these essentialized categories of things by reconsidering the convergent missionary and anthropology agendas that framed their appropriation and shaped their mutual display. In this vein, I discuss how missionary collecting - as evidenced by Fr. Gerard Zegwaard's MSC Asmat Collection at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), New York - was structured by, and in turn contributed to, the production of post-Second World War anthropology and the popular imagination of the Asmat as living remnants of the 'Stone Age'. This article is further intended to provide the first discussion of Zegwaard's AMNH Asmat collection
Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Epistemology · Historicity (philosophy · Objectivity (philosophy · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeological Research and Protection · History · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Philosophy
Entangled Objects
The Material Culture Reader
The cultural biography of things
The Social Life of Things
The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress
The Traditional Artist in African Societies
An Ethnographer's Tale
Museums and the Future of Collecting
Dr. Brown's Study
The Unstable Object
Response to Richard Eves
Entangled objects
The Scramble for Art in Central Africa
Embodied Spirits
From Dull to Brilliant
Missionary or Collector? The Case of George Brown
George Brown, Pioneer Missionary and Collector
Museums, Voices, Representations
Missionization, Material Culture Collecting, and Nineteenth-Century Representations in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
Headhunting Practices of the Asmat of Netherlands New Guinea
The Role of Museums in American Anthropology
The Place of Anthropology in Universities
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2021 (11) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |