Objects, knowledge, and museums: reflections on the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme

Abstract

• This chapter addresses some of the politics of knowledge that revolve around ethnographic collections in public museums today. In an increasingly politicised environment, museums with ethnographic collections are often now expected to undertake various kinds of moral work on behalf of wider society. Work such as reparation and restitution for past wrongs, especially wrongs committed in the colonial era, are often now associated with the objects that museums hold. This chapter considers the relationship of those objects to knowledge – in the past and in the present – and how knowledge is managed around them. The specific entry point for my discussion is the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) at the British Museum. Supported by the Arcadia Fund (a private charitable foundation) EMKP has been established to enable the documentation of knowledge around material objects, and to make it available through an open access digital repository. EMKP provides a context in which to discuss some of the complex interconnections between objects, knowledge and the kinds of moral action now being required of museums. I discuss these issues in relationship to ethnographic insights from the small island state of Vanuatu, where knowledge has been highly valued and controlled, so that not only secrecy but also ignorance is important. Museum collected objects are now sometimes subject to a politics that controls of knowledge – keeping it secret as well as making it available. To understand the politics around collected objects now requires a deeper understanding of such issues.