|
In 2015 Jane Wildgoose was awarded a PhD from Kingston University London, where she presented her practice-based doctoral research in the School of Art & Design History 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 as 'the heyday of craniology' (Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 1981/1996) - 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The project investigated previously unpublished correspondence from a wide network of suppliers, who transported quantities of human skulls from the colonies to metropolitan museums.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.
The resulting Lost But Not Forgotten archive 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.
Jane Wildgoose also devised a new piece of hairwork, the Lost But Not Forgotten wreath, 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 has exhibited the Lost But Not Forgotten archive and accompanying commemorative hairwork wreath at the Crypt Gallery St Pancras (2014) and the Lumen Crypt Gallery at St John on Bethnal Green (2018).
In 2025 she exhibited the Lost But Not Forgotten wreath "in conversation" with Tasmanian Aboriginal artist
Janice Ross's nuratinga milaythina kani mana-mapali (Country holding our stories) (first exhibited in taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Hobart, 2022) at Conway Hall in London, as part of Seeing Truth in Museums: a project commissioned by the University of Connecticut and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, developed in collaboration with Nick Kaplony (Senior Programme Co-ordinator at Artquest) as a new London-based iteration of UConn's Future of Truth project.
The Lost But Not Forgotten wreath has also been exhibited in
- Material Mourning, Futurecade exhibition, Millennium Gallery, University of Sheffield Festival of the Mind (2022)
- Whitaker Museum, Rossendale (2022)
- Dialogues of the Dead: a Day of Explorations of Life Writing & Death (exhibited to accompany Dialogues of the Dead conference) King's College London (2018)
- Research Practices in Art & Design, Platform Gallery, Kingston University London (2015)
- (Difficult Women) exhibition, Norman Rae Gallery (accompanying Difficult Women conference) University of York (2015); Jane also subsequently published "The Work of Mourning & Measurements of Silence" in a special '(Difficult Women)' issue of Garageland magazine of art/culture/ideas (Garageland issue 22, 2018)
- Trauma, Grief, Loss: The Art of Bereavement, International Textile Research Centre, University for the Creative Arts (2015)
|
In 2023 Jane Wildgoose began presenting her research into the history of collecting during the colonial era, and its legacies in museum collections today, as the subject of a series of Wildgoose Memorial Library Pamphlets published in collaboration with Roelof Bakker and Negative Press London.
The first two pamphlets in the series
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.
The third pamphlet in the series
was published in January 2025 to accompany Seeing Truth in Museums at Conway Hall.
|
Jane Wildgoose regularly speaks about the Lost But Not Forgotten project at conferences and in public debates:
- as co-convenor, with Nick Kaplony, of the Seeing Truth in Museums conference at Conway Hall, "in conversation" with Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Janice Ross (2025)
- 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)
- on 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)
- as a speaker at Sheffield University's Festival of the Mind (2022)
- as a speaker at the Representing the Medical Body conference at the Science Museum (2019)
- as a speaker at the Troubling Objects: interrogating collecting and collections conference at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2018)
Jane Wildgoose 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, Jane Wildgoose began extending her investigations into colonial legacies in museum collections 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: laying the foundation for Seeing Truth in Museums, hosted by Jane Wildgoose and The Wildgoose Memorial Library at Conway Hall in 2025.
Jane Wildgoose has also presented papers on her work with human remains in museums at:
|
LINKS TO PUBLICATIONS:
Ross, J, These Are Our Living Stories with Afterword by Jane Wildgoose, WML Pamphlet No. 3 (London: Negative Press, 2025)
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, 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, '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) pp 239-270
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, 'The Work of Mourning & Measurements of Silence,' Garageland #22 (2018): pp 14-15
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 |
| | | |
