|
In 2015 Jane Wildgoose was awarded a PhD from Kingston University London, where she presented her practice-based doctoral research as an artist's response to the 'unique status' ascribed to human remains in the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums (2005).
The research took as its starting point the DCMS Guidance's acknowledgement that human remains may be perceived both as objects - in scientific, medical and anthropological contexts - and as subjects 'that have a personal, cultural, symbolic, spiritual or religious significance to individuals and, or, groups.' It also responded to the Guidance's acknowledgement that some human remains in museums 'were acquired between 100 and 200 years ago from Indigenous peoples in colonial circumstances, where there was a very uneven divide of power.'
Focusing on the circumstances in which human remains were acquired from Indigenous peoples under British colonial rule, and the legacies of that historical practice concerning their presence in museums today, Jane Wildgoose's doctoral project aimed to contribute to developing new ways of engaging the public with a significant and problematic aspect of the history of collecting, which is little discussed in the narratives that museums present to their visitors.
Taking the form of a Comparative Study, Jane's research focused on the late nineteenth century: when human skulls were collected in great numbers for the purposes of comparative anatomical and physical anthropological research in metropolitan museums (a phenomenon in the history of collecting described by Stephen J. Gould, in The Mismeasure of Man, as 'the heyday of craniology') while, at the same time, the fashion for incorporating the hair of known individuals into mourning jewellery was widespread throughout society in the UK.
The project investigated previously unpublished correspondence from a wide network of suppliers, who sent quantities of human skulls from the colonies to metropolitan museums. It also examined catalogues and gallery guides published by those museums: in which the resulting collections of human skulls were measured, compared, classified and displayed according to hierarchical theories of racial "type."
The associative significance popularly attributed to mourning hairwork in wider society in the UK (revealed in contemporary diaries, literature, and hairworkers' manuals) was examined in parallel for the purposes of comparison.
Combining inter-related historical, archival- and object-based research with subjective and intuitive elements in her practice, Jane developed her findings, concerning the collection and interpretation of human skulls from Indigenous peoples under colonial rule by metropolitan museums, into a new archive of The Wildgoose Memorial Library: which contains transcriptions from letters from suppliers of human skulls in the colonies; editions of museum catalogues in which the skulls were analysed and organised according to craniometrical methods - that is, 'the leading numerical science of biological determinism during the nineteenth century' (Gould) - and gallery guides describing their presentation in racially differentiated hierarchical displays in museums.
She also devised a new piece of hairwork: which commemorates the lives of the individuals whose skulls were historically taken without consent for the purpose of providing data for pernicious theories of (long-since discredited) racial science in metropolitan museums.
|
Jane Wildgoose presented the Lost But Not Forgotten archive and the accompanying commemorative hairwork at the Crypt Gallery St Pancras (2014) and the Lumen Crypt Gallery at St John on Bethnal Green (2018); she has exhibited the work at Sheffield University's Festival of the Mind (Millennium Gallery, 2022) and the Whitaker Museum, Rossendale (2022); King's College London (2018); the Platform Gallery, Kingston University London (2015); the Norman Rae Gallery, University of York (2015) and the International Textile Research Centre, University for the Creative Arts (2015).
Jane Wildgoose's research into the history of collecting during the colonial era, and its legacies in museum collections today, is the subject of a new series of Wildgoose Memorial Library Pamphlets published in collaboration with Roelof Bakker and Negative Press London. The first two pamphlets in the series - Passing Fables & Comparative Readings: Soundings from the Lost But Not Forgotten Archive of The Wildgoose Memorial Library (WML Pamphlet No. 1) and 'Lovely Objects' and Natural history Specimens: Jane Franklin's 'Civilising Experiment' of Pan-Imperial Significance (WML Pamphlet No. 2) - launched at the Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall in London, together with a reading from 'Lovely Objects' as part of the programme of talks accompanying the Fair, on 27 October 2023.
|
Jane regularly speaks about the work at conferences and in public debates: as Chair of the 'Difficult Material - navigating ethical challenges in collections' panel at The Artist as Researcher conference organised by Artquest at the Foundling Museum (2019); as a member of the 'Museums: Is This Any Way to See Truth?' panel with Dan Hicks and Nelson Maldonado-Torres at The Future of Truth: At the Intersection of Art & Science conference convened by the University of Connecticut, in association with the American Museum of Natural History, in New York (2023); at Sheffield University's Festival of the Mind (2022); the Representing the Medical Body conference at the Science Museum (2019) and at the Troubling Objects: interrogating collecting and collections conference at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2018).
She appears in an online interview with Alexis Boylan, Director of Academic Affairs at the University of Connecticut, as part of the University's Seeing Truth: Art, Science, Museums, and Making Knowledge project: discussing her work with human remains in museums in the context of the development of her wider practice as Keeper of The Wildgoose Memorial Library (2022).
During 2024, at the invitation of the University of Connecticut's Seeing Truth project led by
Alexis Boylan (Professor of Art History and Africana Studies Institute at UConn), funded by the
Henry Luce Foundation, Jane Wildgoose is extending her investigations into colonial legacies in museum collections. This work is being developed in partnership with Nick Kaplony at Artquest, building on the Artists Decolonise Museums project they commissioned in 2021, and Conway Hall, the UK's historic hub for free speech and independent thought. Jane is making regular visits to Conway Hall where, working closely with Librarian Olwen Terris, she is teasing out interconnections between material in their Library - the largest and most comprehensive Humanist and ethics-related research resource of its kind in the UK - and the Lost But Not Forgotten Archive at the WML. This, and ongoing Research & Development during 2024, will lay the foundation for an event to be hosted by Jane Wildgoose and The Wildgoose Memorial Library at Conway Hall early in 2025.
Jane Wildgoose has also presented papers on her work with human remains in museums at:
IABA Europe Life Writing, Europe and New Media conference, King's College London (2017)
In This Place Cumulus Association Biannual conference, Nottingham Trent University (2016)
The Personal, Fashionable and Archival Spaces of Hair (Image and Artists' Practice panel), Somerset House, London (2016)
Curiosity 2.0: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Contemporary Art conference, Hochschule for Bildende Kunste, Dresden, Germany (2015).
|
LINKS TO PUBLICATIONS:
Wildgoose J, Passing Fables & Comparative Readings: Soundings from the Lost But Not Forgotten Archive of The Wildgoose Memorial Library, WML Pamphlet No. 1 (London: Negative Press, 2023)
Wildgoose, J, 'Lovely Objects' and Natural history Specimens: Jane Franklin's 'Civilising Experiment' of Pan-Imperial Significance, WML Pamphlet No. 2 (London: Negative Press, 2023)
Wildgoose J, 'Post-Specimens and Present Ancestors: Passing Fables and Comparative Readings at The Wildgoose Memorial Library - An Artist's Response to the "Unique Status" of Human Remains in Museums,' chapter in Post-Specimen: Encounters Between Art, Science and Curating, Ed Juler and Alistair Robinson, ed. (Intellect, 2021) pp239-270
Wildgoose, J, 'Afterlife Writing and the Situation of Graves,' European Journal of Life Writing Vol. IX (2020), pp LW&D.CM1-LW&D.CM17
Wildgoose J, 'Collecting Human Skulls and Hair: In Pursuit of Wonder in Death's Chambers,' chapter in Wonder in Contemporary Artistic Practice, Christian Mieves and Irene Brown, ed. (Routledge, 2017), pp 211-229
Wildgoose J, 'Ways of Making with Human Hair and Knowing How to "Listen" to the Dead,' West 86th Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring-Summer 2016), pp 79-101
Wildgoose J, 'Presenting Lost But Not Forgotten at the Crypt Gallery St. Pancras: Negotiating and Constructing Active Critical Conversation Concerning Contested Human Remains in Museums,' In This Place Cumulus Association Biannual Conference Proceedings Wednesday 27 April - Sunday 1 May 2016, D. Higgins, ed. (Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University, 2016) pp 43-50
Wildgoose, J & Roelof Bakker, 'Strong Room: Material Memories and the Digital Record,' European Journal of Life Writing Vol. 7 (2018), pp C1-C16
|
Copyright Jane Wildgoose and The Wildgoose Memorial Library |
| | |
