The Symosium

Collecting practices in the nineteenth century not only reflect the development of archaeological and anthropological sciences, but are a mirror of the political and diplomatic relationships between Latin America and Europe. At a time of the consolidation of the nation-states, indigenous material culture held a particularly relevant place in the construction of representations of identity and ideas about ‘otherness’ on both sides of the Atlantic.

This symposium brought together scholars working on archival and object records to reconstruct the dialogic processes that helped to shape academic practices as well as museum collections as we known them today. This symposium intended to foster a discussion that starts from the history of particular collections and challenges the one-sided notion that materials were collected in Latin America and knowledge was only produced in Europe. Instead, the questions asked were:

– What are the hitherto unseen agencies of Latin American collectors and collections in the making of archaeological and anthropological sciences in museum settings?

– How is current research changing the grand narratives about the history of collecting?

International Guests

The symposium had the participation of two international guests from Ecuador and Brazil. Dr. Mariana Francozo opened the symposium by introducing the challenges and potentials for museum collection research in Latin American and Caribbean materials, highlighting recent work within the ERC-Synergy Project NEXUS1492. Maria Patricia Ordoñez presented the partial results of her research into the collecting of Andean mummies by western European museums in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Malena Bedoya (PUC Ecuador) talked about Pre-Columbian gold collections – the Tesoro Quimbaya – in the 1892 World Exhibit in Madrid. Erik Petschelies (Unicamp, Brazil) presented his new findings on the archival and object collection of Amazonian indigenous cultures at the Museu Goeldi in Brazil and the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum.

Finally, Prof. Pieter ter Keurs (RMO, Leiden) discussed the historical, sociological and cultural dimensions of collecting in the 19th century from an European perspective. There followed a lively debate on issues such as the agency of indigenous peoples in the formation of collections, national narratives vs. local narratives, authenticity, linguistic aspects of collecting, and the relationship between artists and collectors, among others.

The full program is accessible here.