Recycled objects: curatorial practice and the engagement of contemporary art in the interpretation of historical African figurative sculpture

ABSTRACT

Through a case study approach those acts of assembling, juxtaposing and exhibiting collections of objects, which constitute the western museum, are analysed as artistic processes which produce the museum as a form of ‘public art’. The paper takes as its fulcrum L’Ange, a contemporary artwork formed from recycled materials by the Fon artist Gérard Quenum. It examines how this contemporary work is deployed in National Museums Scotland to recycle historic collections of African figurative sculpture into present-day displays. In particular, it focuses on how Africa is presented, represented and aestheticized in, and for, audiences in Scotland. Drawing on the Museum’s public statements, archival documents, and a semi-structured interview with the curator of the African collections, the study reflects on wider issues regarding the relationship between artistic and curatorial practices and the respective roles of artist and curator in producing that expression of public art that is a museum display.

KEYWORDS:

• Curator as artist
• curatorial agency
• material agency
• museum as performance
• public art

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Sarah Worden for discussion of her agency in acquiring and displaying L’Ange, to the staff of the library of National Museums Scotland for assistance with access to published and archival sources and to the staff of the institution’s Image Library for providing most of the illustrations. I express my gratitude to National Museums Scotland for granting me the status of Research Associate and to Charles Withers for his continued encouragement to think geographically. I thank also two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

A version of this paper was presented at ‘Collecting Geographies – Global Programming and Museums of Modern Art’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, March 2014. Comments and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the institution(s) with which he is associated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Geoffrey N. Swinney, following his retirement, completed a doctoral thesis in 2013 on the historical geographies of some of the precursors of National Museums Scotland, the institution in which he had been employed as a Principal Curator of Natural Sciences. He is currently an Honorary Research Associate in the Museum's Department of Science and Technology.

Notes

1 NMS Purchase Acquisition Form, 31 July 2009. NMS World Cultures object files.

2 The term ‘sculpture’ is used in the loose sense of the word. Strictly L’Ange is a construction, not a sculpture, as it is an assemblage of found objects combined together with little use of carving or other shaping techniques.

3 The National Museum of Scotland is the principal building and the headquarters of National Museums Scotland.

4 Collins and Evans’ scheme applied specifically to science and they acknowledged the challenges of extending it to other fields of knowledge.

5 Worden interviewed by the author in ‘Artistic Legacies’, 18 December 2013.

6 Worden interview.

7 Worden interview.

8 NMS Purchase Acquisition Form.

9 Worden interview.

10 Worden interview.

11 Label text, ‘Artistic Legacies’, National Museum of Scotland, 2011.

12 NMS Purchase Acquisition Form.

13 Label text, ‘Window on the World’, National Museum of Scotland, 2011.

14 Comment on a draft of this paper by an anonymous reviewer, 30 October 2016.