Angola: English Museum Seeks Collaboration
Located in southern England, the Powell-Cotton Museum is open to collaborations to study the vast collection of thousands of indigenous Angolan cultural objects collected in the early 20th century by British explorers, a source at the institution said today.
The Powell-Cotton Museum is located on a historic ten-acre estate in Birchington, about 110 kilometers from London. The collection consists primarily of objects from Africa and Asia collected by explorer and hunter Percy Powell-Cotton (1866–1940).
In addition to thousands of stuffed wild animals, the museum's collection includes everyday and ceremonial objects from indigenous peoples from different countries, including jewelry, clothing, musical instruments, ornaments, and utensils made from materials such as wood or clay.
The collection
The Angolan material culture collection was primarily the result of two trips by Powell-Cotton's daughters, Diana and Antoinette, in 1936 and 1937, during which they collected nearly five thousand objects. Detailed diaries from the period describe not only the names of the objects in their original phonetic form, but also the prices at which they were purchased from natives through helpers hired specifically for the expedition.
However, there are flaws because hundreds of photographs taken at the time were not properly catalogued, leaving it unexplained where they were taken, who appears in them and what situation they portray.
“I think their attention [Diana and Antoinette] was diverted by World War II and they ended up not being able to do what they had planned.”
Museum archivist Hazel Basford stated, "In existence since 1896, the Cotton-Powell Museum is currently undertaking a renovation and interpretation project for its entire collection, which spans the late XNUMXth to mid-XNUMXth centuries. This year, the museum unveiled a new section dedicated to East Africa, featuring objects from countries such as Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia."
“The museum has some wonderful spiritual artifacts that we know very little about and that are in desperate need of conservation.”
Collections Director Mady Beardmore said, "These include a series of masks that were part of male initiation ceremonies collected in the south of the country. In addition to the physical restoration work, the museum wants to understand their spiritual significance and how best to treat them."
In the medium term, the museum would like to collaborate with members of the community and Angolan cultural institutions to reinterpret the collection, which will have around five thousand objects, in addition to hundreds of photographs and films taken during trips made in 1936 and 1937.
"I've been told that we have the largest collection of Angolan material outside of Angola itself. We have a great responsibility to try to understand this collection well and treat it with respect," she stated.
The goal is to renovate the museum's oldest gallery, replacing most of the outdated captions with updated descriptions that provide more context about the meaning and stories of the original owners and the communities they belonged to.
This new exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Powell-Cotton Museum and an outside advisory group to ensure the collection is presented in a more rigorous and ethical manner.
Cultural Restitution
Aware of the current discussions about the provenance of the collections of many Western museums and private collections over decades of colonization, Beardmore does not rule out discussing the possibility of repatriating pieces.
"We are open to talking to communities and working with people to ensure that these collections are better known in their own country, and we are open to those discussions," he added.
Conclusion
It is surprising that the Angolan government, so committed to recovering Angolan pieces found in museums in Portugal and Brazil, whose provenance is clear and of proven acquisition, therefore, without being of dubious origin, behaves differently in relation to other countries.
When British museums propose to collaborate, to better “reinterpret the collections” and exhibit them “with dignity,” they no longer care that these are pieces whose origins are unclear and more than dubious.
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Picture: © 2018 cairodeb / flickr
