[Last modified: March, 25 2019 03:50 PM]
Change in ownership
Welcome to The Kitchen. The owner (or lack of owner) is intricately tied to an object itself. In many ways, possessions are imbued with the identity of their owner. Think about heirlooms and objects belonging to your loved ones: they gain a sentimental value. This exists purely because of the identity of the owner. What happens when that identity changes? If the owner changes, the object will as well.
Change in ownership happens in many forms: gift-giving, theft, purchase, donating, losing and finding, and many more. All of these processes affect object in different ways.
Museums are places where object ownership has many interesting consequences. When an object enters a museum collection, its value changes. Museums are often places associated with truth and prestige (almost like a sacred space). This means that exhibiting objects in museums often elevates and amplifies their value. A classic example is the exhibition of the moon rock at the National Air and Space Museum. It looks just like any other type of rock – and yet when it is put in a museum, in a glass case on a pedestal, museum audiences become fascinated. If it were on the ground in a forest, no one would stop to look at it. The very act of being exhibited in a museum changes how viewers interact with the object, and its value. Therefore, aquisition of the object by the museum has significant consequences on the object itself. This is not a physical change – the object looks exactly the same – but a change in its embedded value, as perceived by the viewers. Even the objects you see here today are changed by being included in this exhibition itself (although they do not technically ‘belong’ to the curators).
Object ownership is quite a political issue. Recently, there have been many campaigns about it, especially lead by groups of people who were once colonized. These groups want to send museums objects back to their country of origin (or, repatriate) because they claim these objects belong to them. Under colonization, many objects were taken by colonizers from colonized people, often violently. These objects were often placed in museums owned by colonial powers. This meant that the objects significantly changed value. For example, they were often portrayed as exotic and unusual (or, exoticized). They lost local value and traditions which they were part of. This change in ownership was very traumatic for the colonized people and this is why they seek a reversal of ownership.
The tools for collection of palm wine shown above come from the Yakö tribe of Southern Nigeria. They were likely acquired by Professor Daryll Forde, the founder of the UCL Ethnographic Collections. He was on a fieldwork trip in Nigeria in the 1920s. At that time, Nigeria was under British colonial rule.
We do not known about the circumstances of the acquisition of this object. Maybe they were given as a gift, or perhaps they were taken by force. In any case: there was a change in owner: from the tribe to Daryll Forde. In Nigeria, this was an object of low value, disposable, with many similar objects existing. At UCL, it is frequently exhibited (including in this very exhibition!) and used to teach university students. Its value has changed.