Home - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Art Galleries and Archives
Editor: Susan Cochrane and Max Quanchi
Date Of Publication: Feb 2007
Isbn13: 9781847180841
Isbn: 1-84718-084-1
This volume investigates Pacific collections held in Australian museums, art galleries and archives, and the diverse group of 19th and 20th century collectors responsible for their acquisition. The nineteen essays reveal varied personal and institutional motivations that eventually led to the conservation, preservation and exhibition in Australia of a remarkable archive of Pacific Island material objects, art and crafts, photographs and documents. Hunting the Collectors benchmarks the importance of Pacific Collections in Australia and is a timely contribution to the worldwide renaissance of interest in Oceanic arts and cultures. The essays suggest that the custodial role is not fixed and immutable but fluctuates with the perceived importance of the collection, which in turn fluctuates with the level of national interest in the Pacific neighbourhood. This cyclical rise and fall of Australian interest in the Pacific Islands means many of the valuable early collections in state and later national repositories and institutions have been rarely exhibited or published. But, as the authors note, enthusiastic museum anthropologists, curators, collection managers and university-based scholars across Australia, and worldwide, have persisted with research on material collected in the Pacific.

This volume is a very important one for anyone studying the art and material culture of the Pacific. It focuses on collections now in Australia. Even those well versed in museum collections from the Pacific will learn about many important but little-known collectors as well as better-known figures like the anthropologists F. E. Williams and Thomas Farrell, the husband of Queen Emma. This will be a treat for students and specialist alike.

—Professor Robert L. Welsch, University of Dartmouth

Susan Cochrane is a scholar and curator specialising in contemporary indigenous art. Her research interests since 1984 have been in the field of recent and contemporary Pacific art and art history and the past, present and future representation of indigenous Pacific cultures in museums.

Max Quanchi is a Pacific Historian specialising on the history of colonial photography in the Pacific, and on the many historical connections between Australia and the Islands. He teaches Pacific History at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.

“The books contributes greatly to the scholarship on collecting . . . Many of the essays show evidence of thorough archival research. We read fascinating historical anecdotes, especially from Melanesia; the many black and white photos enhance the volume and often illustrate poignantly the colonial character of these collections . . . Scholars of the Pacific interested in objects will undoubtedly read the book with interest.”

—Eric Kline Silverman, Wheelock College, Boston, USA in Pacific Affairs: Volume 82, No. 1, Spring 2009

“A valuable addition to published material on collections in Australians institutions.”

—Geoffrey Gray, The Journal of Pacific History

Price Uk Gbp: 34.99
Price Us Usd: 52.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

We recommend

Linguistics
Applying Language Science to Language Pedagogy: Contributions of Linguistics and Psycholinguistics to Second Language Teaching

Women's Studies
Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists

History
The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations

Interesting reviews

From Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia

''Stratton offers important critiques of the function of racism in everyday relations in Australia. In so doing, he canvasses an impressive array of sites and theories, inviting the reader into significant debates and urging them to appreciate the magnitude of these urgent ethical issues and their fundamental relationship to the workings of capital. More than a snapshot of a specific political landscape, however, Uncertain Lives provides a way into key theoretical debates circulating in the first decade of the 2000s, weaving complex theory into grounded debates. These critical interventions highlight the continuity current policy and law has with historical forms of racism and exclusion in Australia. As such, the insights developed in this book bring to the forefront the urgent need for our politicians to reflect upon the ethics of our policy positions. While the book is brought together by the overriding concerns of race, culture and neoliberalism, each chapter also makes sense on its own, making it an ideal choice for inclusion on University courses concerned with the nexus of politics and race, immigration and exclusion, neoliberalism and punishment, or popular culture and racism.''
- Elaine Kelly, 'Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies', (March 2013).

“For thirty years, Jon Stratton has been the sharpest, most acute observer of cultural phenomena around. This latest collection of his investigations into the racial contours of Australian neoliberalism is further testimony to the extraordinary contribution he has made to cultural studies around the globe.”
– Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside, USA; author of The Well-Tempered Self (1993), Technologies Of Truth (1998), Cultural Citizenship (2007) and Makeover Nation (2008)

“In a context of global crises – political, economic and social – Stratton’s book stages a series of compelling interventions that clarify the origins of these crises and their impact on the lives of both citizens and socially designated ‘others.’ At once analytical and impassioned, this is a landmark book offering a rigorous and inspired account of the destructive ways in which neoliberalism has critically transformed Australian society and culture.”
– Joseph Pugliese, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; author of Biometerics (2010); editor of Transmediterranean (2010)