Journal Papers by Chris Wingfield
Museum Worlds, 2019
In February 2016, students at Jesus College, Cambridge voted unanimously to repatriate to Nigeria... more In February 2016, students at Jesus College, Cambridge voted unanimously to repatriate to Nigeria a bronze cockerel looted during the violent British expedition into Benin City in 1897. The college, however, decided to temporarily relocate Okukor to the University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This article outlines the discussions that occurred during this process, exploring how the Museum was positioned as a safe space in which uncomfortable colonial legacies, including institutionalized racism and cultural patrimony rights, could be debated. We explore how a stated commitment to postcolonial dialogue ultimately worked to circumvent a call for postcolonial action. Drawing on Ann Stoler’s and Elizabeth Edwards’s discussions of colonial aphasia, this article argues that anthropology museums risk enabling such circumvention despite confronting their own institutional colonial legacies.
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2018
The stimulus for this article arises from a comparison between missionary collecting in two of th... more The stimulus for this article arises from a comparison between missionary collecting in two of the earliest mission fields established by the London Missionary Society (LMS): the Pacific (1797), and southern Africa (1799). As the location to which a large number of Polynesian ‘idols’ were sent following conversion to Christianity, the LMS museum (1814–1910) has gained an important place in Pacific historiography, but the same cannot be said for southern Africa. This article explores the significance of the LMS museum as a site of deposition for material that originated in missionary encounters and exchanges in southern Africa during the first third of the 19th century. It highlights the museum’s potential to provide a source of material evidence that complements not only the texts associated with the documentary archive, but also the material remains associated with the former mission site, the usual foci for historical and archaeological engagements. Particular attention is given to material associated with John Campbell (1766–1840) and Robert Moffat (1795–1883), who travelled extensively in the region and subsequently published accounts of their journeys. Re-situating particular museum artefacts within the specific circumstances of these missionary encounters enables them to stand, not as exemplars of African cultural practices prior to European contact, but rather as forms of evidence that chart historical transformations in material culture across the southern African contact zone.
World Archaeology, 2018
A number of recent publications, including a recent special issue of World Archaeology, have enga... more A number of recent publications, including a recent special issue of World Archaeology, have engaged with museum collections as assemblages that can be studied in their own right. This paper attempts to refigure 'collection' and 'assemblage' as action nouns, in order to explore the role these processes can have in generating understandings of the past, especially within museum settings. While nineteenth-century projects involving collecting and assemblage contributed fundamental disciplinary frameworks to archaeology, museums have increasingly been regarded as institutions exclusively focused on the archival storage of excavated material, and the display of archaeological knowledge generated through fieldwork. This paper makes the case that a creative and reflective reengagement with collection, as a process of assemblage and reassemblage, including in forms made possible by electronic media, has the potential to refresh museum archaeology for the twentyfirst century, realigning it with other archaeological practices.
The museum at the London Missionary Society headquarters has been studied largely by those with a... more The museum at the London Missionary Society headquarters has been studied largely by those with an interest in early Polynesian missionary encounters, and has become famous as a repository for pre-Christian religious 'idols' given up by converts to Christianity. However, the museum also contained material from Africa, China, India, Madagascar and the Americas. This paper demonstrates some of the ways in which collections from different areas of the world reflected particular histories of local missionary activity, but also came to influence missionary collecting practices in other regions of the globe. Rather than attempting to characterize missionary collecting as a single practice, this paper pays attention to the collections of a single missionary museum: it aims to suggest some of the ways in which motivations for collecting and the significance of collections for the London Missionary Society shifted over the course of the long nineteenth century.
This article is a much-expanded version of a short report given by Wingfield at ‘Brave New Worlds... more This article is a much-expanded version of a short report given by Wingfield at ‘Brave New Worlds: Transforming Museum Ethnography through Technology’, the annual conference of the Museum Ethnographers Group, held at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery in association with the University of Brighton, 15–16 April 2013.
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading are seemingly ve... more The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading are seemingly very different institutions. In setting out to link the origins of these two museums, this article situates itself amid the tangled web of connections that existed between folklore, anthropology, and museums in Britain between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. By following a range of human and institutional connections this paper suggests that the different orientation of these two museums and their collections can be related to the ideological shifts that accompanied Britain’s movement from an expansionist imperial power in 1860 to an actively decolonizing nation in 1960. In particular, the article relates the two museums to the decline of a discourse of civilization and the rise of folk museums and a salvage paradigm, which accompanied the development of an English national consciousness during the mid-twentieth century.
This article retraces the process by which a feathered rope, discovered in the roof of a house in... more This article retraces the process by which a feathered rope, discovered in the roof of a house in Somerset, came to be displayed as a ‘Witch’s Ladder’ in a glass case showing ‘Magic and Witchcraft’ at the Pitt Rivers Museum. This ‘retracing’ has revealed a set of alternative associations that the feathered rope has had: with other museum objects and written documents, as well as with a range of people. Although presented in the museum as a ‘matter of fact’, its original function is revealed to have been a ‘matter of concern’, enabling this ‘object’ to emerge from its glass case as a ‘thing’ (Latour). Retracing its network and the historical process by which it became a museum object has meant engaging with the scientific ambitions of E.B.Tylor and his notions of independent corroborating evidence, as well as with the more ‘folkloric’ practices of literary folklore.
Book Chapters by Chris Wingfield
Planet for our Future, 2023
Since early in the millennium, geologists have grappled with how best to describe a world in whic... more Since early in the millennium, geologists have grappled with how best to describe a world in which human actions have outstripped rivers, the ocean and volcanoes as the principal agents in the global movement and formation of soils. Just as earlier geological epochs have been associated with distinctive fossil types, it has been suggested that human-made things – and perhaps plastic in particular – may become the ‘technofossils’ by which Anthropocene deposits will be recognised. The discussion is largely a technical one between geologists, but when human-made artefacts become objects of study, an inevitable overlap emerges with the concerns of archaeologists, anthropologists, but also artists. This paper makes the case for the work of artists and works of art as an alternative, but parallel form of developing knowledge to that of science and history,
The pasts and presence of art in South Africa, 2020
In the wake of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns in South African universities, and... more In the wake of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns in South African universities, and as calls to decolonize institutions and particularly curricula con-
tinue to be heard around the world, questions of how we can come to know precolonial forms of knowledge are becoming increasingly urgent (see Hamilton 2017).
As the colonial increasingly becomes the ‘other’ against which contemporary constructions of the ‘self’ are contrasted and defined, the precolonial acquires the allure of a romantic lost past with the potential to inspire both the present and the future.
Arguably, however, at least in scholarly contexts, this makes it all the more important to question how we can know the precolonial past, and what potentials and affordances are offered by various forms of evidence. How can we enable our understandings and
imaginings of the precolonial to escape the structures and modes of thought that developed in the service of colonial and apartheid political projects, while at
the same time ensuring that we proceed on a sound evidential basis, rather that falling into flights of fantasy of the kind that are an inherent danger in so many romantically inspired attempts to recover lost pasts?
Published in 'Religion in Museums: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives' (2017) edited by Gr... more Published in 'Religion in Museums: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives' (2017) edited by Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, S. Brent Plate. Bloomsbury, pp. 231-238.
Short article exploring the history of the stuffed giraffe that stood at the centre of the London... more Short article exploring the history of the stuffed giraffe that stood at the centre of the London Missionary Society museum in London. Published in 'Trophies, Relics and Curios?' edited by Wingfield and Jacobs (2015) Sidestone Press, Leiden.
Short article exploring a ship's bell from the S.S. John Williams (1894-1930), preserved at the h... more Short article exploring a ship's bell from the S.S. John Williams (1894-1930), preserved at the headquarters of the London Missionary Society, and now at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Published in 'Trophies, Relics and Curios?' edited by Wingfield and Jacobs (2015) Sidestone Press, Leiden.
Chris Wingfield's interview with the artist Atta Kwami explores his own family’s engagement with ... more Chris Wingfield's interview with the artist Atta Kwami explores his own family’s engagement with the opportunities offered by (German) missionaries to the Volta region of Ghana, culminating in the artistic practice of his mother Grace Kwami. Emerging
from the interview as something of a curio, at least according to our definition, is Atta Kwami’s artist book, Grace Kwami Sculpture, a tribute to his mother’s life and work. The book form, which captures the importance for Protestant missionaries of the written word, nevertheless takes the shape of a spider, associated with the figure of Kweku Ananse in Ghana, denoting ingenuity and skill.
Exploring the LMS collection through the temporal and spatial dimensions that have been shaped ar... more Exploring the LMS collection through the temporal and spatial dimensions that have been shaped around its artifacts, many of which were collected by LMS missionaries in the early nineteenth century and continue to survive in the present, has made it possible to consider processes of assemblage and disassemblage that have taken place over the course of the last two centuries. It has also made it possible to consider whether the presence of objects from the LMS collection has had an impact on the island of Britain. Despite institutional technologies that appear to confine and limit the movement of physical objects to within the controlled and purified spaces of museums, some objects from the LMS collection have circulated much more widely.
Deriving from research conducted as part of The Other Within research project at the Pitt Rivers ... more Deriving from research conducted as part of The Other Within research project at the Pitt Rivers Museum, this chapter is intended less as a theoretical argument about materiality, agency and identity and more as a methodological contribution. Its intention is to examine and critique, as well as develop the potential of museum databases as a source of information on the relationships that lie behind museum collections. While 'making the museum central' and unpacking the collection 'along the grain' have been advocated, this does not necessarily mean that databases should be taken at face value. They are tools of museum professionals, and the way in which they present information tends to direct attention in particular directions - in the case of the Pitt Rivers Museum to the place of their ultimate origin, and to techniques of manufacture and use. However alongside this information there remain traces of the donors, loaners, dealers and swappers who have been involved in the wider netwrok out of which the Museum has taken shape. These traces can provide a means to explore and evaluate the complex and diffuse operations of agency in relation to the assembling of the collections.
Uploads
Journal Papers by Chris Wingfield
Book Chapters by Chris Wingfield
tinue to be heard around the world, questions of how we can come to know precolonial forms of knowledge are becoming increasingly urgent (see Hamilton 2017).
As the colonial increasingly becomes the ‘other’ against which contemporary constructions of the ‘self’ are contrasted and defined, the precolonial acquires the allure of a romantic lost past with the potential to inspire both the present and the future.
Arguably, however, at least in scholarly contexts, this makes it all the more important to question how we can know the precolonial past, and what potentials and affordances are offered by various forms of evidence. How can we enable our understandings and
imaginings of the precolonial to escape the structures and modes of thought that developed in the service of colonial and apartheid political projects, while at
the same time ensuring that we proceed on a sound evidential basis, rather that falling into flights of fantasy of the kind that are an inherent danger in so many romantically inspired attempts to recover lost pasts?
from the interview as something of a curio, at least according to our definition, is Atta Kwami’s artist book, Grace Kwami Sculpture, a tribute to his mother’s life and work. The book form, which captures the importance for Protestant missionaries of the written word, nevertheless takes the shape of a spider, associated with the figure of Kweku Ananse in Ghana, denoting ingenuity and skill.
tinue to be heard around the world, questions of how we can come to know precolonial forms of knowledge are becoming increasingly urgent (see Hamilton 2017).
As the colonial increasingly becomes the ‘other’ against which contemporary constructions of the ‘self’ are contrasted and defined, the precolonial acquires the allure of a romantic lost past with the potential to inspire both the present and the future.
Arguably, however, at least in scholarly contexts, this makes it all the more important to question how we can know the precolonial past, and what potentials and affordances are offered by various forms of evidence. How can we enable our understandings and
imaginings of the precolonial to escape the structures and modes of thought that developed in the service of colonial and apartheid political projects, while at
the same time ensuring that we proceed on a sound evidential basis, rather that falling into flights of fantasy of the kind that are an inherent danger in so many romantically inspired attempts to recover lost pasts?
from the interview as something of a curio, at least according to our definition, is Atta Kwami’s artist book, Grace Kwami Sculpture, a tribute to his mother’s life and work. The book form, which captures the importance for Protestant missionaries of the written word, nevertheless takes the shape of a spider, associated with the figure of Kweku Ananse in Ghana, denoting ingenuity and skill.
What light can this approach shed on the region’s far longer history of artistic practices? Can we use any resulting insights to explore art’s role in the very long history of human life in the land now called South Africa? Can we find a common way of talking about ‘art’ that makes sense across South Africa’s long span of human history, whether considering engraved ochre, painted rock shelters or contemporary performance art?
This collection of essays has its origins in a conference with the same title, arranged to
mark the opening of the British Museum’s major temporary exhibition South Africa: the art of
a nation in October 2016. The volume represents an important step in developing a framework for engaging with South Africa’s artistic traditions that begins to transcend nineteenth-century frameworks associated with colonial power.
2014. New York: Cambridge University Press Hbk. 232 pp. 85 B/w illus.
ISBN: 978-1-107-04070-0.
By exploring a range of artefacts, photographs and archival documents that have survived, or emerged from, these transformations, this volume sheds an oblique light on the histories of British Missionaries in Africa and the Pacific, and the ways in which their work is remembered in different parts of the world today.