A recent NY Times article about the “revisioned” dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History reminded me of a moment during my last visit. Waiting outside the coat check on a cold winter day, I was pleasantly surprised to hear two visitors discussing exactly the subject I always think about in this museum: the problem with dioramas of indigenous cultures in natural history museums.
I’ve always found the mannequins and diminutive displays of indigenous peoples to be off-putting, especially in a museum known mostly for taxidermy animals. I’m excited that the museum is actively engaging with their older displays, and I would love to see this spread throughout the museum’s ethnographic displays.
Dioramas and mannequin as tools for ethnographic display have their roots in the great exhibitions during the late 1800s, but they were brought into the museum by anthropologist Franz Boas and – in the AMNH specifically – his student Margaret Mead. These dioramas usually display “traditional” indigenous villages to show different aspects of daily life, like housing, cooking, and craft. They show an ideal vision of a culture far removed from the West, from the point of view of the anthropologist.
Many indigenous people have spoken out against these exhibits that make them appear frozen in amber and lost to an older age. They feel it overwrites and hides their contemporary lived experiences. These displays are especially problematic in natural history museums – mannequins in costume and dioramas of villages alongside stuffed bears. Indigenous peoples are put in a context that makes these groups appear as endangered or extinct as the taxidermy specimens.
Because of Dr. Margaret Mead’s influence, there are many dioramas throughout the museum, but that rainy day I focused my visit on the gallery she designed – the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples. Even as exhibits were added after her tenure at the museum, the gallery focused on her voice, her expertise, and the perspective of anthropologists. I had just finished reading Euphoria, and wanted to connect further with her field experience.
All About Mead
The hallway leading into the main room has cases about Mead’s life, character quirks, her career in the field and her career in the museum. Her walking stick is on display alongside accolades, awards she won, and influential books she published: essentially, objects that tell the visitor “you should trust her perspective, it’s the right one.” There are also some Papua New Guinean shields displayed, but for their aesthetic qualities and because Mead collected them rather than any discussion of ethnographic significance.
The gallery is still laid out as she designed it – a cross-cultural comparison of all Pacific cultures in the first section, while the rest of the gallery is laid out geographically, beginning with Australia and ending with the large Moai (Easter Island head) from Rapa Nui. It’s a good organizational principle, I think, showing the multitude of cultures in an area of the world frequently considered homogeneous.
But.
The objects in the cases are given context through photographs and quotes from ethnographic research and historical documents. The photographer is always named, but not the identity of the indigenous person in the photo. Anthropologists are cited again and again, but the indigenous voice is missing. There are multiple dioramas made by Mead herself showing village life – the small recreation of life in a Samoan village (interesting to the visitor who knows about her very influential Coming of Age in Samoa) is right next to to Moai that draws most visitors (for those visitors interested in A Night at the Museum).
Here is where I think the gallery is caught – it has become a display by ethnographers for ethnographers. The real interest in this the gallery is Mead’s role in it – an embodiment of her influence on anthropological theory and practice. She was a young anthropologist working at the forefront of “cultural relativism” (more on that later), and retaining the story of her life’s work does have merit.
While I knew the history, it was in an abstract way. A fact rather than an understanding. It wasn’t until I read Euphoria by Lily King that I understood why the reputation of one woman is held in such high regard.
The book makes you live the excitement present in Mead’s early work – she and her contemporaries were changing the shape of the anthropological field, and Euphoria is brilliant at capturing that snapshot in time, this generation of young anthropologists breaking away from the schools they came from and towards the exciting and (then) new concept of cultural relativism.
Euphoria
I impulsively picked this book up in an airport because of the beautiful rainbow eucalyptus bark on the cover and the enticing promise of fiction inspired by the life of Margaret Mead – a greatly influential name in anthropology and museum studies.
The book follows three young anthropologists working in the field in Papua New Guinea. From the perspective of Bankson, a British researcher, we meet Nell and her husband Fen. These characters are clearly coded to be Mead/Nell her second husband Reo Fortune/Fen and [spoiler alert] her third husband Gregory Bateson/Bankson.
For anyone who has studied anthropology, it is delightful to see the development of the field through the individual personalities and backgrounds of these main characters. It’s particularly enlightening to read from Bankson’s perspective, as it makes the tensions that led to a huge ideological change in the field.
Bankson is full of despair over his entire profession. He comes from the school of British Structuralism, which considered the field a “hard science” and that the anthropologist was a neutral and impartial researcher. Bankson equates it to “zoology” at points in the book, and he questions whether it was possible to “ever truly understand another culture.”
One particular scene is so important to understanding just how revolutionary Mead and her contemporaries were, and just how important their work was for changing the way we think about other cultures.
The Ruth Benedict character sent her manuscript , a lightly coded version of Patterns of Culture. This book was revolutionary in arguing the idea of cultural relativism – the concept that you cannot apply moral judgement on other cultures when comparing them to your own and that a culture must be understood from within that culture.
Nell, Bankson, and Fortune sit together reading the book without rest – pinging ideas off each other in perfect academic comradery despite the brewing personal problems between them. Their excitement, their fever for this theory – one Mead would use in her future work and popularize – shows the importance of the work being done in these decades of anthropology.
While I knew in the abstract why Mead was so important to both the anthropological and museological fields, the book made me excited about it, made me feel the same short-lived “euphoria” the Nell/Mead character describes as her favorite part of being an anthropologist:
“It’s that moment about two months in, when you think you’ve finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp. It’s a delusion – you’ve only been there eight weeks – and it’s followed by the complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the whole place feels entirely yours. It’s the briefest, purest euphoria.”
The gallery, I think, is like that moment of euphoria – the assumption of perfect understanding. Lacking is the realization that follows this moment, the acknowledgement of the impossibility to fully understand another culture without being from that culture. While there is a small case of a “Changing” and “Living” Pacific, with contemporary artwork addressing (briefly) the effect of colonialism, tourism, and climate change on the lives of Pacific peoples, there isn’t enough done to connect this display with the experience of indigenous peoples – both historical and contemporary.
While her contributes were important, and the small displays of her work, influence, and life in the field are a good context for the history of museums and ethnography, this exhibition is missing the indigenous perspective. There should be quotes from named individuals from the source communities about these objects on display. There should be more about the historical importance of some of these objects and their symbolic importance today.
I hope to visit the AMNH on another rainy day to find new, self-reflexive questions splashed over their old displays. The Hall of Northeast Indians is currently being redesigned, and I’m excited to see the results of the renovation.
Explore Further
Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples
Displaying Native Americans in Natural History Museums
Changing Displays in Ethnographic Museums
Anthro{dendum} – blog about sociocultural anthropology