Program

Research Programs: Summer Stipends

Period of Performance

7/1/2008 - 8/31/2008

Funding Totals

$6,000.00 (approved)
$6,000.00 (awarded)


A Cultural History of the P.G. Black Collection of Pacific Islands Artifacts

FAIN: FT-55891-08

Robert J. Foster
University of Rochester (Rochester, NY 14627-0001)

The Buffalo Musem of Science's P.G. Black collection provides important clues about early encounters between Pacific Islanders and European traders, missionaries, government officials, and tourists. I propose to write a book that puts the Black collection in the economic, political, and cultural contexts of its creation, purchase, and display. The project will contribute to scholarly discussions of topics of comparative and interdisciplinary interest: the production and transformation of material culture in settings of intercultural encounter and European colonialism; the politics of museum displays and national cultural property; and the invention and development of the idea of Primitive Art. It will also establish the basis for publications and traveling and online virtual exhibits that interpret the collection for the general public in both the United States and in the Pacific Islands where the collection originated.





Associated Products

Art/Artefact/Comodity: Installation Design and the Exhibitionof Oceanic Things at Two New York Museums in the 1940s (Article)
Title: Art/Artefact/Comodity: Installation Design and the Exhibitionof Oceanic Things at Two New York Museums in the 1940s
Author: Robert J. Foster
Abstract: This article documents some of the experimentation in museum installation designs for the exhibition of non-western objects during the 1930s and 1940s.
Year: 2012
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Australian Journal of Anthropology
Publisher: Australian Anthropological Society