texts

Exhibiting cultures (Minkisi, a case study in signification)

Dissertation for BA(Hons) Degree 2002 in Fine Art (Sculpture)

Wimbledon School of Art

 

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the part played by the ethnographic collection in the generation of racialist stereotypes of the African. It recognises the persistence of these ideas and challenges the current multi-cultural stance of ethnographic museums. The discussion considers the possible future of such collections and advocates that they adopt a radical self-reflexiveness. The discussion of the ethnographic museum is interwoven with an examination of the signification, through time, of a group of Congolese artefacts called nkisi nkondi.

 

Exhibiting cultures (Minkisi, a case study in signification)

Part I: The original social meanings of minkisi, their interpretation as icons of savage Africa, and the machinery for the creation of the African other

Section I:

Minkisi in their original social context

Section II:

The background to the reception of Minkisi in England

Section III:

The exhibition of Mavungu at the Pitt Rivers Museum and the interpretation of nkisi nkondi

Section IV:

The propagation of racialist attitudes towards the African

Section V:

The culpability of anthropology/ethnography

Part II: The future of the ethnology museum

Section I:

Issues relating to the current paradigms of transcultural exhibition

Section II:

Solutions and possible futures

Appendices

 

A

Maps (not included in this version)

B

Minkisi, the religious cosmology of the Congo and interactions with christianity and their display

C

A Brief History of the Belgium Congo

D

Racialist Theory

E

Exhibition of Fetishes at the Pitt Rivers Museum (1902)

F

The Stanley and African Exhibition, at the Victoria Gallery, 1890

G

Accounts of minkisi and fetishism, 1897-1908

H

Applied uses of anthropology

 

 

 

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