While the museum’s capability in preserving objects is being interrogated by their originating communities, it is also pivotal to re-examine how it organizes knowledge and information about these objects obtained from other cultural groups in unequal power relationships.
In this respect, Hannah Turner’s book Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation is a very timely contribution to the research area.
Grounded in thorough archival studies of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s (NMNH) documentary practices, the book demystifies the historical origins of the museum’s production of knowledge about First Nation objects as colonial legacies.
Museum documentation is not neutral. Turner examines how categories were applied to ethnographic material culture and became routine throughout federal collecting institutions.
