Nicholas Thomas: Exhibiting entangled histories - Reflections from Oceania
Historic Observatory, 23rd November 2018, 6:15 p.m. - in co-operation with the Zentrale Kustodie
Museum collections are increasingly understood, not as masses of artefacts, art works or specimens, but as assemblages made up of relations as well as objects, and assemblages that are mutable and emergent, susceptible to reactivation, with the capacity to have novel social effect. Collections are moreover understood as profoundly cross-disciplinary. Whether situated in institutions of art, ethnography or science, they are the products of, and they speak to histories of culture, knowledge and empire, and to the projects of the present. This talk reflects on these questions, drawing on a major project resulting in the ‘Oceania’ exhibition currently at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.Nicholas Thomas is Professor of Historical Anthropology, and Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. His books include Entangled Objects (1991), Oceanic Art (1995), Discoveries: the voyages of Captain Cook (2003), and Islanders: the Pacific in the Age of Empire (2010).