We are happy to share the news that the latest issue of Museum Anthropology Review has just been published. Find it online in IUScholarWorks Journals at http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/issue/current.

Thanks go to the issue’s generous contributors: Ann McMullen, Sabine Marschall, Tyler Jo Smith, Pravina Shukla, Maureen Schwarz, Teri Klassen, Rhonda Fair, Alison Petch, Jeffery Veidlinger, Kate Hennessy.

We are very pleased that the next issue of Museum Anthropology Review, volume 2, number 1, has just been published. (Find it here.) Thanks go to everyone who contributed to this issue, especially to the authors of the two peer-reviewed articles that anchor it. These papers are the first articles to appear in the journal. The many materials gathered under the banner of the first volume were rich and diverse, but publishing full fledged peer-reviewed articles is another exciting significant step in MAR’s development. These papers were accepted for publication last year and I am grateful for the author’s patience as we reformatted the content from 2007 for re-publication in volume and issue format within the Open Journal Systems framework as part of IUScholarWorks Journals. While we are quite happy with the journal’s new format, this work, and the technical challenges of getting the journal up and running in OJS, took more time than we would have liked. I think that these fine contributions will prove worth the wait.

Jin Feng’s article explores the form and local religious significance of a beautiful set of temple murals from the village of Dang jia shan in China’s northern Shaanxi provence. The article’s file size is relatively large (33MB), but it features a stunning set of color images. To be able to freely offer Professor Feng’s article, with these wonderful photographs, to any interested reader with internet access speaks directly to the advantages of open access publishing for museum anthropology and all of the fields that border on it.

C. Kurt Dewhurst, Narissa Ramdhani, and Marsha MacDowell’s report on an important bi-national heritage sector enhancement project in South Africa is similarly rich. Given that the paper will be of special interest to museum professionals working in South Africa and in other locales where access to expensive toll access professional journals is particularly limited, open access publication again holds special relevance.

At the time of its release, this issue’s content is being published in PDF format only. We hope to also prepare and publish the content in HTML format soon, but we are still working on developing the right strategy for this purpose within the Open Journal Systems framework.

As always, we hope that visitors to the journal will consider registering as readers. Its free, it offers the chance to get Table of Contents sent via email, and it greatly helps us demonstrate growing support for the journal. Click the “For Readers” link on the right side of the main page for information on registering.

Volume 2, Number 2, to be published later this year, will feature several additional articles along with a large number of reviews in all genres. We look forward to sharing this next issue with the journal’s growing readership.  Thanks to everyone who has contributed to making MAR a success.

Thanks go to everyone who has been so supportive of the Museum Anthropology Review project over the past year. We are especially grateful for the many authors and peer-reviewers who have helped make it happen and to our friends at the Indiana University Libraries who have facilitated the journal’s move to Open Journal Systems as part of IUScholarWorks Journals. If you have missed it, the basic story is that this site, which hosted the journal itself during its first trial year will now be the home to a companion weblog , while the journal itself can now be found in IUScholarWorks Journals, a site hosted by the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries.

I am pleased to report that work on the journal’s next issue is nearly complete and that we anticipate publishing it before the end of April. While we published a rich diversity body of material in Volume 1, including some fine long review essays, Volume 2 will be the first to feature full peer-reviewed research articles.  We have quite a lineup of solid articles in the accepted cue and we are eager to begin sharing these with readers in the next issue.

While readers are urged to consult the new MAR site and, especially, to consider registering as a “reader” (i.e. subscriber) to the journal (its free, see here), I want to stress that none of the content originally published here is going to be moved, at least not for the foreseeable future. The published content on this site gets lots of daily use and that is great.  Also, all of the work originally published here remains archived as part of IUScholarWorks Repository. This later step will insure its longterm preservation and availability.

As I noted in the previous post, Museum Anthropology Review has a new email address of its own. Find us at museumanthropologyreview (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thanks!

As part of the larger reworking of Museum Anthropology Review’s technical infrastructure, especially the move to publishing with the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries using Open Journal Systems, MAR has a new email address separate from that which has been used by Museum Anthropology. In future correspondence related to MAR, please use museumanthropologyreview (at) gmail (dot) com. We will be updating the basic information found on this site to bring it into alignment with the journal’s new home in IUScholarWorks Journals. Please visit the journal in its new home here.

Editorial: Museum Anthropology Review Joins IUScholarWorks at the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries, Switches to Open Journal Systems

Jason Baird Jackson

Museum Anthropology Review has been quiet since the New Year and it is time now to explain why. First I want to thank everyone–authors, visitors, friends of the project–who helped make Museum Anthropology Review’s first year of publication a resounding success. Since last February, many talented colleagues published 64 valuable contributions under the journal’s banner. Over 20,000 visitors consulted the site, which in turn meant that many of the contributions published here became the most highly ranked sources on their topics. This high level of usage, combined with the remarkable quality of the works that we were able to publish, consolidated the support of other stakeholders, including the museums and book publishers whose works were reviewed during the journal’s inaugural year. Thanks again to everyone who lent a hand and proved that an open access journal centered on, but extending beyond the bounds of, museum anthropology was a viable, worthwhile undertaking.

Among the most engaged supporters of the project have been my colleagues in the library at Indiana University Bloomington, where I am a member of the faculty. Almost as soon as we began publishing last February, we started partnering with remarkable, visionary librarians and library staff who saw the value of Museum Anthropology Review both as a venue for scholarly work and as a worthwhile experiment in the changing nature of research communication in the emerging open access era. Our first step together was to establish a system by which contributions to Museum Anthropology Review could be archived, preserved and made available digitally via our campus digital repository. This allowed me to assure authors that, whatever else might happen to the this site or the journal generally, their hard work would remain available into the future. Many readers have already consulted Museum Anthropology Review contributions in the IUScholarWorks Repository, where they were made available in PDF format.

As a community, the IU librarians took a special interest in what we were learning about the (low) costs and (high) benefits of open access publishing. I presented two library seminars on the project and on the wider state of journal publishing in anthropology and folklore. These were among the most exciting discussions that I have experienced in a campus context. Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries Patricia Steele, Executive Associate Dean Carolyn Walters and Associate Dean for Collection Development and Digital Publishing Julie Bobay were wonderfully supportive of the journal and we together began planning for the shift that we are now announcing and implementing on this, the journal’s one year anniversary. (Appreciation is also extended to my faculty and graduate student colleagues for help of all kinds.)

IUScholarWorks began as our DSpace instance on the IU campus. The IUScholarWorks “brand” now refers to an expanded range of services that includes the repository, but that has now been enlarged to include library supported journals being published with Open Journal Systems (OJS), the leading open source software tool for the publication of open access journals. I am proud that Museum Anthropology Review is the first such journal to be published in partnership with the IUB libraries. A great team from the libraries and the IU Digital Library Program has worked with me over the last four months to get ready to launch the journal as part of IUScholarWorks Journals using OJS. Much work remains to be done fine tuning and improving the quality of the site, but I am pleased to invite readers to visit the journal in its new home and to try it out. While WordPress software has been an amazingly easy and cost effective way to publish the journal, the move to OJS will bring many, many benefits to the effort. I will talk about some of these improvements in future editorials.

The content that we published during 2007 has been repackaged and reissued as Volume 1, Number 1 and Volume 1, Number 2. The contributions are available in HTML and PDF format. One advantage of the PDF format is that we have paginated the volume continuously, allowing authors and others to cite contributions in traditional bibliographic formats (In PDF, the volume is 203 pages long!) A large amount of content is in the cue awaiting publication in 2008. We will see Volume 2, Number 1 published as quickly as possible. It will contain several peer-reviewed articles, more of which will follow with Volume 2, Number 2 later in the year.

There is much more to be said, but for now I will close this explanation with an invitation to visit the journal’s new home at http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/index. While there, I hope that you will register as a reader of the journal. Doing so is completely free and allows us to count you among our supporters as well as provides you with the ability to submit contributions for review and possible publication, as well as to request tables of contents forwarded via email.

For the foreseeable future, we will maintain this, the journal’s WordPress site, using it to direct readers to the IUScholarWorks Journals/OJS site and hopefully also using it as a means of extending the work of the journal in new directions. What follows is the official Indiana University press release announcing the publishing partnership with the libraries and the expansion of the IUScholarWorks effort to include IUScholarWorks Journals.

Thanks again for your support and encouragement.

IUB Libraries Publish First Electronic Journal
Showcases faculty partnership

Through a partnership that marks a turning point in scholarly publishing at Indiana University, Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries Patricia Steele announces today the publication of Museum Anthropology Review, the first faculty-generated electronic journal supported by the IU Bloomington Libraries.

Edited by Jason Baird Jackson, associate professor in IU’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Museum Anthropology Review showcases a new model for Bloomington faculty to disseminate their scholarly work.

With this pilot test, the IUB Libraries are poised to support the electronic publication of journals, offering faculty editors a low-cost solution to the administrative and publishing functions of managing them. This expands the scope of IUScholarWorks, a set of services to make the work of IU scholars freely available, maximizing exposure and visibility of publications by making articles accessible to search services such as Google Scholar.

“Libraries nationwide are interested in supporting faculty who can realize the benefits of publishing open-access journals,” Steele says. “At IU, we’re especially pleased to help advance one of the university’s top disciplines. By partnering locally, we are truly helping to disseminate scholarship that will help researchers worldwide.”

Steele says that universities, and particularly libraries, have been squeezed in recent years by a system in which the cost of acquiring journals from commercial publishers has grown increasingly more expensive. Double-digit price increases forced upon library subscribers over the past decade have allowed commercial publishers to steadily grow their profits at the expense of university budgets. The library community contends that one approach to control runaway costs is to minimize the dependence on subscription-based models by publishing and promoting the use of freely available, or open access, journals.

Jackson founded Museum Anthropology Review on the basis of his experiences as editor of an established closed-access journal in his field—the similarly titled and focused Museum Anthropology. Unlike Museum Anthropology Review, this more established journal is published by the American Anthropological Association in a partnership with the for-profit publisher Wiley-Blackwell.

“The costs associated with publishing in the traditional mode are astronomical,” Jackson says. “Publication of a single research article in Museum Anthropology can cost thousands of dollars and, when published, the results will then be available to a small proportion of people worldwide.”

Jackson says that making scholarly work more easily and affordably accessible is especially important in fields like folklore and anthropology that are rooted in the study of local cultures worldwide. “If, for instance, a scholar spends months documenting the work of an elderly woodcarver living in a small American town and then writes about what she learned in a peer-reviewed research article, I have an obligation as her editor to make it as easy as possible for the schoolchildren of that town—or the artists’ grandchildren—to gain access to her writing. Open access repositories and journals, in their varied forms, help make this possible.”

Begun in February 2007 as a pilot project using weblog software, Museum Anthropology Review published 64 contributions from scholars worldwide. The works were consulted more than 20,000 times, Jackson says, and for many of the books that were reviewed in the journal, the assessments published in Museum Anthropology Review are the most highly ranked pages in standard Web searches.

“Everyone involved with the effort has been thrilled with the results, Jackson says, “and I am happy to be continuing the project in a more durable and robust way through our partnership with the IUB Libraries.”

IUScholarWorks is a set of services supported by the IU Libraries and the Digital Library Program, a collaborative effort of the IU Libraries and University Information Technology Services.

For more information, go to scholarworks.iu.edu

# # #

The IU Press Release can be found online, with images and contact information, here.

Updates

Find a news story on the launch in Library Journal Academic Newswire here.
Find a comment by MAR Associate Editor Kimberly Christen on her weblog Long Road here.
Find a mention of the launch on the English edition of Antropologi.info here.
Find coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s The Wired Campus here.
The MAR and IUSW Journals launch is mentioned in an interview with Harvard University Librarian Robert Darnton appearing in Library Journal Academic Newswire here.
The big story on all of this appeared in Inside Higher Education on 2/28/2008 under the title “Abandoning Print, Not Peer Review.” Find it here, followed by day’s worth of vigorous discussion.
Relevant items in Open Access News can be found here and here.

Jason Baird Jackson is an Associate Professor of Folklore at Indiana University. He is the editor of Museum Anthropology Review and (through summer 2009) of Museum Anthropology.

Letter to the Editor: On Tsimshian Treasures—An Addendum

Christopher F. Roth

Since writing my review of Tsimshian Treasures, I have been contacted by Benjamin Carey of Edinburgh, Scotland, great-great-grandson of the collector Rev. Robert J. Dundas and son of the late Simon Carey, who was the Collection’s custodian for half a century. He has shared with me his concerns with the Globe and Mail article by Alexandra Gill cited in my review. Since communicating with him, I have become satisfied that the Globe and Mail mischaracterized the actions and intentions of the Carey family and misrepresented the situation of the availability of the Dundas journals. As Mr. Carey informed me, the family has always been ready to make the many journals and photograph album available to scholars, but this has always been constrained by serious conservation constraints, given the particular fragility of the one volume that describes “A visit to the Indian Settlement of Metlahkatlah (sic).” In fact, Mr. Carey, who knows that I work closely with Tsimshian communities, has offered to make the text available to me and to other scholars, as was the case with the curators of the recent exhibit and to whom Mr. Carey also freely supplied digital images of relevant extracts, which were reproduced in the catalogue. Despite what I wrote in my review and despite the implications in the Globe and Mail article, the Carey family indeed has nothing to hide and would welcome further research. I extend my apologies to Mr. Carey and his family, and to readers, for my failure to check for accuracy on this point and for any misunderstanding or damage this may have caused.

It seems clear to me that, given his openness and goodwill, Mr. Carey’s custodianship of the Dundas archive is good news for Tsimshian studies and for the Tsimshian people. I predict that fruitful dialogue and further contributions to knowledge will emerge from further study of it and of the Dundas Collection.

Chris Roth teaches anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has pursued ethnographic and ethnohistorical research among the Tsimshian in British Columbia since 1995.

Editor’s Note: The preceding addendum was submitted to, and posted by, the editor of Museum Anthropology Review on December 20, 2007. It was published as a comment to the original review of Tsimshian Treasures and later, on December 26, 2007, as a stand alone letter to the editor. These multiple postings were undertaken by the editor so as to maximize opportunities for readers of the journal to find, and benefit from, the addendum. My thanks go to Dr. Roth and Mr. Carey for their support of the journal and for their shared concern for good scholarship.  [2007.2.40]

Planning the Past: Heritage Tourism and Post-Colonial Politics at Port Royal. Anita M. Waters. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006. 136 pp.

Reviewed by Heather A. Horst

Planning the Past is an engaging account of the social history of Port Royal, the famed Jamaican city renowned throughout the Euro-American world as a haven for pirates and economic exchange during the 16th and 17th centuries. Drawing upon theories of social memory, Anita Waters couples an ethnographic approach with historical and archival research to understand the various strategies that Jamaicans and others developed over the past five decades to catapult the “sleepy fishing village” to a major heritage tourism destination.

Waters develops her argument over the course of five chapters that roughly correspond with the various stakeholders who sought to shape, plan and reconstitute Port Royal as “a potential national asset” (p. viii). Applying Michel Rolph-Trouillot’s notion of “silences,” Waters begins by examining a variety of plans for developing Port Royal initiated by the British colonial office in the 1950s. Waters outlines eight plans and proposals submitted by entities, ranging from Jamaica’s Urban Development Commission, the Jamaica National Trust Commission and UNESCO, and the particular narratives of Port Royal that underpin their proposals. For example, whereas a 1967 Urban Development Corporation plan seeks to capitalize upon narratives that “evoked buccaneers, admirals and the pre-earthquake town” (23), the UNESCO plan of 1997 involved the reconstruction of an archaeologically-inspired street alongside a large warehouse in which tourist items of Spanish, Dutch, and English origin could be sold to cruise ship passengers. Waters then ties the proposals to shifts in Jamaica national, political, and popular culture since the 1960s.

The provocative chapter, “Tourists Love Pirates,” explores Port Royal’s legacy in the popular imagination. Utilizing Richard Price’s concept of “the postcarding of the past” wherein historical dynamics are subsumed under vivid imagery and playfulness, Waters questions why pirates continue to dominate the relationship foreigners continue to develop with Port Royal and, in turn, the necessity of harnessing these images for the tourist gaze. Waters begins by comparing the meaning of pirates in American and European popular and literary culture with Afro-Jamaican interpretations of pirates. While the differing interpretations of pirates by Europeans, Americans, and Jamaicans is not especially surprising, Waters analysis of academic attention to pirates also implicates European and American academics. As she demonstrates, the historical literature on pirates, penned primarily by white European males, percolates with romanticized images, in some instances associating the outlaw lifestyle of the pirates with the rebellion of the Afro-Jamaican peasantry. Waters cogently demonstrates that the salience of pirates lies much less in the affinity for resistance than its’ role as a symbol of “the extraordinary liberties enjoyed by Europeans in the colonies” (p. 55), a role that is shared today in the sea, sun, and sex imagery of the Caribbean as tourist destination.

In contrast to depictions in academic and transnational popular culture, Jamaicans emphasize the Port Royal’s glory as a major British naval base in the 19th and early 20th centuries, long after the destruction of the pirate-run town on June 7, 1692. The Jamaican nation’s shifting attitudes in racial consciousness and increasing embrace of Afro-Jamaican cultural forms inspired many of Jamaica’s political and business leaders to devise plans to incorporate Afro-Jamaican culture into their proposals. As Waters observes, “Like other silences in history, however, the silences of Africans and of Jamaicans of African descent…have been drowned out by the clear place that Port Royal has in the narratives of Englishmen in the New World” (p. 76). In particular, Waters focuses upon the incarnations of the Port Royal Development Company Ltd. plan (initiated in 1993) that proposed that contemporary Afro-Jamaican culture be integrated into the living museum through the incorporation of the food court, an African market next to the naval hospital, a restaurant and a living history room. While not replacing the significance of Port Royal as a naval port, the voices and experiences of Africans becomes apparent for the first time in these plans.

Chapter five focuses upon the estimated 1200 residents who inhabit Port Royal and their interpretation of history and the heritage tourism plans over the past decades. A relatively cohesive community geographically dispersed between two residential areas, Waters describes the narratives surrounding community survival of hurricanes as well as what is often not recognized as the continued British occupation of Port Royal up to independence in 1962. In addition, Waters outlines the development of the controversial Brotherhood of Port Royal, a citizens’ organization that has established itself as an important voice in the community. Waters’ depiction of residents’ interests, skepticism and frustration with the various failed proposals tied to development emerged as a fascinating treatise on local politics but could have gone further in discussing the dynamics of kinship and relatedness. However, in recognizing that the center of the book is Port Royal and not the community (indeed Waters reveals that the community often has very little say in these contested negotiations), more details about this relatively isolated and misunderstood community might have offset the balance of the book.

This anthropological angst aside, there is much about Waters’ timely book to embrace. For readers with an interest in popular culture, Waters provides an enjoyable, if not incisive, commentary on Keith Richards, whom Johnny Depp confesses to have channeled for his depiction of Jack Sparrow in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series. Scholars of Jamaican politics and history will prize Waters’ knowledge and appreciation of Jamaican political culture, including excerpts from an interview with former Prime Minister Edward Seaga. Waters’ careful analysis of the many failed attempts to plan and package Port Royal as a heritage tourism site, coupled with her attention to social memory, will also be valuable to scholars studying the politics of the past through the lens of a world heritage site. Waters’ Planning the Past represents an important case study of the contested and changing representations of history and heritage, one that sheds light on Jamaica’s relationship with its colonial past and the region’s continuing struggle with historicity and authenticity.

Heather A. Horst is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley. She is author (with Daniel Miller) of The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication (Oxford: Berg, 2006), a book that explores the specific implications of the cell phone and the cell phone industry in rural and urban Jamaica. She has also published several journal articles on the relationship between transnationalism, place, and belonging. Her recent work on family life and technology in Silicon Valley is described in a recent essay published on the Material World weblog. [2007.2.39]

Looking Reality in the Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility. Robert R. Janes and Gerald T. Conaty, eds. Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2005. 196 pp.

Reviewed by Shelby J. Tisdale

The idea for the book, Looking Reality in the Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility, emerged from a panel discussion on museums and social responsibility at the annual meeting of the Canadian Museum Association in 2002. The themes of the different chapters presented look closely at social responsibility and use specific examples of museums connecting with communities to examine a variety of issues that affect our everyday lives. These include such topics as the social and natural environment, crime, economic inequality, and political issues such as the repatriation of human skeletal remains to native peoples. A question that runs through this book is how museums can continue to be relevant and sustain themselves when they are challenged by the perils of the global marketplace, declining attendance, reduced public funding, and earned revenues. The examples offered demonstrate that there are museums moving beyond their preoccupation with the bottom line and that are embracing activities that address the “troublesome aspects of our contemporary world that help to make sense of this emerging search for significance in the museum world” (p. 3). Many of the authors suggest that museums have two choices: (1) they can stay where they are and maintain status quo in their mission of collecting, preserving, and caring for the collections and quite possibly become irrelevant, or (2) they can connect with their surrounding communities, and possibly world communities depending on their mission, and address the many issues and choices that humans are faced with on a daily basis. Instead of the exhibitions and educational programming being determined by the collections and developing stories around them, these stories are based on connections with the communities and focus on topics that pertain to social responsibility internally and externally using the collections.

The book is divided into 10 chapters based on the papers presented at the CMA annual meeting. Robert R. Janes and Gerald T. Conaty’s “Introduction” provides a brief history of museums and points out that museums are a product of the society that supports them (p. 1)—that they essentially became the “temples of the dominant society” where their “reality had been constructed by the educated classes of society and that the perceptions of more marginal groups were mostly excluded from this reality” (p. 3). They argue that because our societies are more complex and diverse, that “museums are no longer the monolithic institutions of the past” and many are focusing instead on “telling particular stories with larger meanings” (p. 3). These stories often reflect issues and people that have been marginalized by mainstream society—First Nations peoples, immigrants, the chronically ill, and criminals. Others relate to the ongoing issues in nature and environmental degradation through educational programming. The chapters that follow provide examples of museums that are continuing traditional museum work but have chosen paths that embrace socially responsible missions that require intuitive appreciation of certain values that are largely absent or unspoken in contemporary museum work (p. 8). These values, as outlined by these authors, include idealism, intimacy, depth, and interconnectedness. Each chapter demonstrates how museums incorporate these values into their searches for meaning as they build new kinds of relationships with their publics.

In “History is as History Does: The Evolution of a Mission-driven Museum,” Ruth J. Abram discusses how the Tenement Museum located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side tells the stories of the changing and ethnically diverse occupants of this single tenement through its exhibits. The staff decided to select dramatic stories that capitalized on the “power of place” and used the artifacts to support these stories. The goal was to have the museum be accessible to all of the public and that it be a safe and neutral place where a dialogue could take place concerning the tough issues of immigration, race, and other enduring social issues in this culturally diverse neighborhood.

Two chapters focus on the incorporation of the indigenous voice in exhibition planning and interpretation. In “Our Story in Our Words: Diversity and Equality in the Glenbow Museum,” Gerald T. Conaty and Beth Carter address the history of relationships between indigenous peoples and museums and discuss how the Blackfoot became full partners with the Glenbow Museum in the development of an exhibition that interprets their culture. The result of this partnership was the exhibition Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life, which opened at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in November 2001. This was the first significant modification to Glenbow’s First Nations exhibits in over 25 years and became a model for how the curatorial staff works with First Nations peoples. Paul Tapsell, a descendant of the Maori tribes Te Arawa and Tainui, also discusses the importance of including the voices of the peoples represented in exhibitions, in “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Human Remains at the Auckland Museum—Te Papa Whakahiku.” He also describes the history of the removal of Maori human remains and the attempts by the tribe to have these individuals repatriated. Tapsell discusses in detail the consultation process for the repatriation of Maori human remains and associated funerary and sacred objects from the Auckland War Memorial Museum. In both these cases the voices of the Blackfoot and the Maori have become an integral part of each museum’s goal to become more socially responsible.

Three chapters focus on educational outreach. First, Joanne DiCosimo from the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) provides an overview of “One National Museum’s Work to Develop a New Model of National Service: A Work in Progress.” To develop this model the museum followed a systematic process of consultation, analysis, pilot testing, and then further consultation and analysis. DiCosimo details the steps in developing the model, which is a useful tool for any museum rethinking its approach to educational outreach to include a wider audience. In the case of the CMN, their outreach was embedded in new ways of looking at social responsibility in terms of the nation as a whole. In “Engaging Young Minds and Spirits: The Glenbow Museum School,” Michèle Gallant and Gillian Kydd discuss the collaboration between the Glenbow Museum School, local schools, and Chevron Calgary Resources (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chevron Texaco Corporation), The Calgary Foundation, and individuals in the community to develop a unique school program. They discuss the four main areas of the program that they believe define its uniqueness, including: “what makes this different from traditional field trips; the philosophy of the program and why [they] do it; the impact on the students, teachers, museum staff and parents; and the role in the community” (p. 71). They operate from the premise that “museums are public places with enormous potential for human growth and enjoyment” (p. 71). Through the development of the innovative and highly collaborative educational outreach program, they demonstrate that the old model of the isolated classroom and teachers needs to change, as does the old model of the isolated museum (p. 84).

The Liberty Science Center in New Jersey approaches their education program a little differently. In “Liberty Science Center in the United States: A Mission Focused on External Relevance,” Emlyn H. Koster and Stephen H. Baumann profile three of the Center’s mission-driven learning experiences that have strong emphases on social responsibility. Their primary goal is to reach underserved audiences. One educational program focuses on youth smoking through plays and websites while another is learning “live” through the real-time observation of a cardiac surgeon performing surgery on a patient. The students are able to ask the surgeon questions and have the opportunity to learn firsthand in a classroom set up in the Center. Both institutions have come up with innovative ways to reach wider audiences.

Susan Pointe’s chapter “Is Art Good for You” points out the challenges of being relevant to a very different type of audience. Her art gallery located inside a hospital was not being utilized other than to exhibit some of the hospital’s art collection and she was under pressure from the hospital administrators who were considering using this space for other purposes. Pointe had to first determine who her audience was and then develop a plan to reach out to them. She did this in several ways by taking the art and artists to the patients and bringing the families of patients into the gallery to see the art as well as to have the opportunity to create art. In “Telling It Like It Is: The Calgary Police Service Interpretive Centre,” Janet Pieschel also discusses reaching out to a very different audience than that of the typical museum. She had the difficult task of developing an interpretive center within the administration building of the Calgary Police Service and her target audience was primarily at-risk youth. The goal of this Center was to “educate young people about crime, the consequences of crime, and the poor lifestyle choices that our youth can make” (p. 177). Pieschel reviews three exhibitions at the Center: (1) substance abuse, (2) juvenile prostitution, and (3) domestic abuse, family violence, and healthy relationships. These exhibits are all done as dioramas with audio tracks of youth in trouble and are based on real life stories. While the Center focuses on prevention through its exhibitions it also offers assistance to young people who are being abused or using drugs and alcohol, for example.

In “Negotiating a Sustainable Path: Museums and Societal Therapy,” Glenn C. Sutter and Douglas Worts describe the development of The Human Factor exhibit at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. This chapter explores “the links between sustainability (in the Brundtland [Commission’s] sense), culture, and the potential of museums as agents of social change” (p. 131). They believe that “while museums can and should be addressing sustainability through the non-formal education system, they also have a broader role to play as active facilitators of social change at local and regional levels” (p. 131). Sutter and Worts argue that, “[M]useums can help by encouraging people to become more conscious of critical relationships that link them to nature and to other people. Some of the roles that museums can play include being storytellers through non-formal education providing sanctuaries that inspire reflection, and acting as catalysts to spark needed social change” (p. 137). They apply the classic model of sustainable development that integrates social, economic, and environmental concerns to the development of their exhibit.

These chapters present case studies in which individual museums and science centers have searched for ways to be internally and externally sustainable by connecting to communities to develop ways of coping with environmental and social degradation and to create new levels of understanding history and cultural diversity. This is accomplished through educational outreach, incorporating oral histories and voices from the past as well as the present into exhibitions, and bringing the public into a dialogue with museums as ways of expressing their interests and concerns about the social, political, and physical environment surrounding them.

The authors are as diverse as the museums they work in and include anthropologists, scientists, social activists, and artists. Some chapters are more “academic” while others are less so. Collectively, they represent experiments at redefining what museums can be. Although the chapters could have been arranged in a more cohesive manner, each one offers possible ways in which museums can become more socially responsible and more connected to the publics that they serve. Some authors provide useful step-by-step guidelines while others are more general. This book would be useful in museum studies programs and should be read by those working in museums wanting to move beyond mere entertainment and who are looking for ways to engage younger audiences. Museum staff that are searching for ways to create a dialogue about relevant issues such as globalization, environmental degradation, and high crime rates or wanting to develop more meaningful, positive relationships with indigenous peoples and other populations that tend to be marginalized should consider reading this book. As museum lovers and workers we cannot sit back and assume that our exhibits will bring people to our doors. These authors make a good argument that when museums take on the challenge of becoming socially responsible and connect to the communities whom they serve, they become more relevant and sustainable. This is important to consider when we are asking ourselves, “Why do museum matter?”

Shelby J. Tisdale is the Director of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tisdale is a specialist in the Native American art and archaeology of the American West, in particular the Southwest and northern Mexico, and she has produced numerous exhibits and publications. Her most recent book Fine Indian Jewelry of the Southwest: The Millicent Rogers Collection (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2006) received the Southwest Book Award from the Border Region Library Association and the Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award from The Historical Society of New Mexico. She has also published on the basketry of the Great Basin and the Northwest Coast in Woven Worlds: Basketry from the Clark Field Collection at the Philbrook Museum of Art (Lydia Wyckoff, ed. Tulsa: Philbrook Museum of Art, 2001).[2007.2.38]

Remote Possibilities: Hoa Hakananai‘a and HMS Topaze on Rapa Nui. Jo Anne Van Tilburg. London: The British Museum Press, 2006. 76 pp.

Reviewed by Georgia Lee

As Jo Anne Van Tilburg acknowledges in her preface, Remote Possibilities: Hoa Hakananai‘a and HMS Topaze on Rapa Nui is a revised edition of her 1992 publication, HMS Topaze on Easter Island: Hoa Hakananai‘a and Five Other Museum Statues in Archaeological Context. Both publications have the same dimensions, and both feature most of the same illustrations, including sensitive drawings by Cristián Arévalo. As part of the “British Museum Objects in Focus Series,” Van Tilburg also published a small book titled Hoa Hakananai‘a in 2004. This glossy 64-page booklet has 21 illustrations.

Van Tilburg’s 1992 book, HMS Topaze on Easter Island, contains 207 pages, 43 footnotes, 87 Figures, including maps, 1 table, and 12 Plates. By contrast, Remote Possibilities has only 76 pages but contains 243 footnotes, 1 table, 2 maps, and 98 “images,” plus three and a half pages of unnumbered drawings. The quality of the paper stock in Remote Possibilities is superior to that of the earlier publication (resulting in far better detail for the many photographs and drawings), and the two-column layout is easier to read even though the size of the font is smaller. The illustrations are scattered throughout rather than gathered into an end section, as was the case in HMS Topaze on Easter Island. Having them incorporated into the text makes for a much more attractive and accessible book.

The target audience for Remote Possibilities is not clear. This book, similar to Van Tilburg’s 2004 booklet, appears to be a generalist work intended for visitors of the British Museum who wish to take home more information about the famous Easter Island statue. However, this new work is somewhat too academic for the average tourist and yet not comprehensive enough to constitute an in-depth contribution to the literature.

Remote Possibilities includes updated information regarding the statues of Easter Island, reflecting field research conducted since the earlier book was published. New statues and fragments of statues have been discovered in the intervening time, and the author cites these as one reason for the revised version. Another factor is the addition of some excellent old photographs of crewmembers of the HMS Topaze (including J. Linton Palmer) as well as delightful watercolors by Palmer showing the HMS Topaze at sea, the Tahitian home of John Brander, and views of the island (Akahanga, Puna Pau, Rano Kau, Vinapu, ‘Orongo, etc.). A sketch by another member of the crew, Lt. Matthew James Harrison, shows the statue Hoa Hakananai‘a in situ at ‘Orongo. These are priceless early images and it is wonderful to see them in print.

HMS Topaze on Easter Island included a good bit of information about Katherine Routledge and her research; Remote Possibilities, however, focuses more on the crew of the HMS Topaze and other sources. This may be because, in the interim, Van Tilburg published a biography of Routledge (2003), titled Among Stone Giants: The Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island.

As can be seen by the titles, Hoa Hakananai‘a is the focal point of these books, and so we are provided with considerable detail concerning the statue: the location in which the statue was found (half buried in an ‘Orongo stone house, its back toward the door), its discovery by the crew of the HMS Topaze, removal from ‘Orongo, transport to England, the reaction of the press to its arrival in London, and its installation at the British Museum.

The location of the statue, Hoa Hakananai‘a, at the time of its discovery on Easter Island remains a conundrum. What was a large late-period basalt statue doing at ‘Orongo? The author suggests a relation to the shrine at Complex A at ‘Orongo, but that seems a bit tenuous (p. 44). Not only is the Complex A shrine very small, a base of volcanic tuff remains in situ suggesting the former presence of a statue from the quarry at Rano Raraku. Moreover, the ahu (platform) at Complex A has fairly early dates: Structure 1 has been dated at AD 1420±70 years and Structure 2 “probably occurred during the early years of the Middle Period” (Ferdon 1961:248-249). There is no other known ahu at ‘Orongo. Van Tilburg also postulates that Hoa Hakananai‘a, as it was placed at ‘Orongo’s Complex B, marked the east-west boundary of the island (p. 44). It seems odd that, as a territorial marker, it was half-buried and hidden inside a stone house. The function of a marker is to be seen, to mark a location or a clan boundary line. If this was so for Hoa Hakananai‘a, why was it concealed from sight?

It took forty men from the HMS Topaze to tear down the stone house at ‘Orongo and dig up Hoa Hakananai‘a. According to R. P. Gaspard Zuhmbohm (1880), it took ropes, levers, 300 sailors, 200 natives, and a great deal of difficulty to transport it downhill and out to the ship (see also Bahn and Flenley 1992:195); Van Tilburg rightly suggests that these numbers seem excessive. Moving the statue downhill had the benefit of gravity. However, one can only imagine the labor involved in transporting this statue uphill to ‘Orongo, excavating a hole of sufficient size to accommodate it, putting it into the hole, and then building a stone house around it. And, we may ask, why?

From the drawing by Harrison (image 57), showing the statue’s head, a hole broken into the ceiling of the stone house, and two figures inside, there seems little room to accommodate any sort of group that might collect around it. Edwin N. Ferdon (1961:250) speculates that the statue was in a “long and excessively wide house …[that] may have been for the purpose of housing the Hoa-haka-nana-ia statue and to give ample room for native ceremonial participants who presumably gathered around it. When structural failure resulted, the special quarters for the statue were of necessity reduced and, since its original position within the previous large building had, in all probability, been a central one, the figure was housed in R-13.”

We know that Hoa Hakananai‘a likely stood, at one time, on an ahu. The statue’s eyes had been carved (opened), an action that indicated its erection on a platform. There is no ahu at ‘Orongo that might have held a statue of this size and grandeur. Might the statue have been a war prize, taken during one of the many conflicts between tribes? Van Tilburg mentions this possibility (p. 36). If so, its name, “stolen friend,” would certainly apply (Fischer 1991:50).

There remains the question of why Hoa Hakananai‘a was hidden in a house, and why its back was to the doorway (the only source of light). One cannot appreciate the circumstances of the stone houses at ‘Orongo from reading the literature. The houses are claustrophobic crawl spaces with low stone ceilings that leak when it rains; interiors are dark and dank and often muddy. There is no light source other than a tiny doorway. That groups might gather around a statue in such a space seems highly improbable.

If the statue had been captured during one of the island’s many skirmishes, it may explain why it was brought up to ‘Orongo and secreted inside a house. What better way to enrage a defeated enemy? The author discusses the carvings on the back of the statue in detail, comparing them with motifs found in petroglyphs, tattoo, body painting, hami (loincloth), initiation ceremonies, and fertility and hereditary power (pp. 38-40). Perhaps, rather than an ideographic commemoration of ‘Orongo’s ceremonies as Van Tilburg argues, the petroglyphs that were added to the back of Hoa Hakananai‘a represent the insignia of its new owners, a form of “gotcha” graffiti.

The story of Hoa Hakananai‘a thus remains incomplete despite three books on the subject. The entire ‘Orongo phase seems particularly intriguing to archaeologists in so far as it was the last truly ancient phase before profound influences from various European visitors emerged. I realize that there are many Easter Island mysteries that may never be solved. However, I had hoped that this third book would come closer to answering questions about this outstanding statue and its strange placement at ‘Orongo.

Hoa Hakananai‘a is not the only statue discussed in Remote Possibilities. The author describes statues in many other museums around the world, providing an excellent overview of what and where they are, and the circumstances of their acquisition. Remote Possibilities does not provide all the answers regarding the famed statue, although we now have more factual information for asking questions. It appears that the rationale for Hoa Hakanana‘a being brought to ‘Orongo and concealed inside a stone house may be amongst those things that we are not likely to ever know for certain–yet one more mystery of Easter Island!

Other aspects of this publication balance out any deficiencies, and afficionados of Rapa Nui will find much to enjoy and ponder in Remote Possibilities: Hoa Hakananai‘a and HMS Topaze on Rapa Nui. The collection of photographs and drawings are of particular interest and to have them compiled into one publication is a rare treat for anyone interested in Easter Island and its past.

References Cited

Bahn, Paul G. and John Flenley

1992 Easter Island Earth Island. London: Thames and Hudson.

Ferdon, Edwin N.

1961 The Ceremonial Site of Orongo. In Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific (Archaeology of Easter Island, Vol. 1). Thor Heyerdahl and Edwin N. Ferdon, eds. Pp. 221-25. Santa Fe: Monographs of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, No. 24.

Fischer, Steven R.

1991 Has the British Museum a “stolen friend” from Rapa Nui? Rapa Nui Journal 5(4):49-51.

Van Tilburg, Jo Anne

1992 HMS Topaze on Easter Island: Hoa Hakananai’a and five other museum statues in archaeological context (British Museum Occasional Paper 73). London: The British Museum Press.

2003 Among Stone Giants: the Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island. New York: Scribners.

Zuhmbohm, R. P. Gaspard

1880 Lettres du R. P. Gaspard Zuhmbohm au directeur des annals sur la mission de L’Ile de Pâques. Annales de la congregation des Sacrés Coeurs de Jésus et de Marie 6:377-385.

Georgia Lee is a founding member of the Easter Island Foundation, a not-for-profit originally established to create a research library on Rapa Nui to house the collections of the late anthropologist William Miulloy and to encourage objective study and research about the island. Today the library is a thriving research center, and the Foundation has moved forward with a scholarship program that provides promising Rapanui students support for advanced academic studies. The Foundation also works toward conservation and preservation of the island’s heritage and environment.[2007.2.37]

Fine Indian Jewelry of the Southwest: The Millicent Rogers Museum Collection. Shelby J. Tisdale. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2006. 215 pp.

Reviewed by Deborah C. Slaney

Jewelry designer, model, and socialite Millicent Huttleston Rogers, known affectionately by her children as “MR,” was a fascinating woman. A courageous battle with rheumatic fever and its complications left her a fragile but determined soul who sought meaning in life through her creativity. Captivated by the Southwest in the 1940s, she brought her family to Taos in 1947 shortly after her friends, Hollywood couture designer Adrian and his actress wife Janet Gaynor, made the move. Ultimately, she befriended a circle of talented individuals known collectively as the Taos Society of Artists.

Shelby J. Tisdale’s Fine Jewelry of the Southwest: The Millicent Rogers Museum Collection details the story of Rogers’ life from her privileged beginnings in New York to her love affairs with princes and dukes, numerous marriages and divorces, and finally her eye-opening introduction to the history, landscape, spirituality, and cultures of New Mexico. Like many early 20th-century collectors, Rogers perceived that Native traditions were vanishing and felt compelled to collect major examples of Navajo and Pueblo art including weavings, pottery, and jewelry. Rogers collected until her untimely death in 1953, and her family honored her legacy in 1956 by founding the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos.

Tisdale’s book serves the museum and anthropological community on several levels. In addition to providing an illustrated history of Millicent Rogers’ all-too-brief life, Tisdale traces southwestern jewelry making from prehistory to present using spectacular examples from Rogers’ collection, mostly donated by her son Paul Peralta-Ramos. The book, however, also includes significant examples acquired by the museum through other donors. Her survey is drawn from standard publications including John Adair’s classic Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths and Larry Frank and Millard J. Holbrook’s Indian Silver Jewelry of the Southwest, 1868-1930, as well as more recently published sources.

The collection is wonderful and well illustrated, with makers and dates identified and provenance information included when known. This kind of information is useful to the museum community as it helps to establish makers and dates for other, often undocumented museum collections. Clearly Rogers had a good eye, choosing well-crafted traditional necklaces, rings, and bracelets, and examples with large, good-quality turquoise and careful lapidary work; Although some of the pieces do reflect the influence of tourism, they are still grounded in traditional forms or iconography. Documented examples include a stunning turquoise tab necklace by Leekya (Zuni) purchased at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial in 1947. Tisdale also showcases contemporary jewelry (although not from Rogers’ personal collection) including major examples by Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird (Navajo and Santo Domingo/Laguna), Charles Loloma (Hopi), and other cutting-edge jewelers whose works are listed with dates and catalogue numbers (Table I) to assist researchers.

Tisdale closes with an overview of Rogers’ own dramatic jewelry creations. While many of her designs were influenced by cultures outside of the American Southwest, some designs, such as her unusual cross shapes, reflect inspiration from Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. It would be interesting to learn if specific examples in her collection (such as the exquisite cross necklaces illustrated as figures 4.13 and 4.14) served as her points of reference, or if other types of Native art were an influence. One pin, Cloud Mountain (figure 8.1) suggests that Rogers also may have derived inspiration from Navajo weavings similar to those depicted in a photograph of the interior of her Taos home (figure 2.1).

In conclusion, Fine Jewelry of the Southwest is an alluring glimpse into the short life and creative endeavors of Millicent Rogers, and serves as a solid reference for scholars looking for a concise, well illustrated summary of the history of southwestern jewelry.

Deborah C. Slaney is curator of history at The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1998, Slaney served as curator/author of Blue Gem, White Metal: Carvings and Jewelry from the C.G. Wallace Collection, an exhibit and catalogue at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. She also curated Traditions: Southwestern Native American Jewelry at the Albuquerque Museum in 2003.[2007.2.36]