The Redpath Museum: An Orientation

Before we begin our exploration, we are fortunate to be given some background on the museum’s collections by Annie Lussier, the museum’s Curator of World Cultures Collections. The collections, we’re told, are particularly eclectic because – as with Sir William Dawson’s considerable natural science collection - they were largely acquired by donation. The museum’s collections are thus a testimony to the interests of those patrons who did the collecting, its assorted glass display cases acting as institutional cabinets of curiosity. It falls to the museum’s curators to weave this eclectic material testimony into historical narratives (but, according to Lussier, we should not expect to find a grand overarching story).

The Redpath’s auditorium seems an apt place to receive our orientation, given the historic use of the museum’s collections for teaching and research. We’re told you can also see evidence of the auditorium’s storied history as a place of learning via the marks students have left on the hefty wooden posts that dot the room. Later, I sneak back into the lecture hall to examine the posts, and don’t have to wander far to find what the curator meant (see Figure 1). I run my fingers over the markings, wondering at their inspiration: Tradition? Rebellion? Boredom? Curiously the markings seem to occupy a kind of liminal zone of permitted-yet-illicit touch – so commonplace that they now form a kind of heritage (rather than a spoiling thereof). Much later, I find a different inscription that a visitor has left on the bathroom walls - albeit written, rather than carved - declaring “Milan a vu son premier dinosaur ici,” accompanied by a rough drawing of what looks like a suitably skimpy-armed T-Rex. My visit to the museum is thus bookended by both visible and tactile traces of other visitors and learners (and their illicit touch).

Figure 1: (Left): inscriptions on the posts of the Redpath's auditorium; (Right) Inscription on a bathroom stall

Of course, the presence of others in the museum does not begin and end with traces: across the various field reports, our researchers all describe the ways the atmosphere of the museum is transformed by other visitors.  Since our visit coincides with a public sector strike (which had closed schools and evidently left many parents turning to the museum as a way to keep their children occupied), what might otherwise have been a staid weekday atmosphere is ruffled by the shuffle of children’s snowboots over the wooden floors, the hum of curious questions, and occasional reminders from the adults not to touch. (Still, fingerprints on the glass vitrines attest to the fact that neither children nor adults manage to fully discipline their tactile impulses in the museum, as Melanie notes).

On our way back through the entrance hall to the stairs, we pass under the fossilized remains of ancient-looking sea creatures.  Past the first set of stairs, visitors wend their way through the museum’s Mineralogy collection: a bounty of stones and crystals in every colour under the sun.  Though they’re laid out in waist-height cases behind protective glass, the alternating fuzzy, jagged, and smooth exteriors nevertheless beckon to be touched.  Beyond, the atrium galleries at the heart of the museum make quite the first impression: step through the door, and you are greeted by a looming patina-bronze-hued dinosaur – Gorgosaurus - his teeth bared (alongside the rest of his skeleton). Past the atrium’s prehistoric sentry, assorted treasures wait in glimmering glass and warm wood cases, and your gaze travels up past the finely wrought balconies of the upper ethnology gallery to an elaborately coffered mint and white ceiling. The stately interior cannot help but envelop everything under its roof in a glow of significance; if it is assembled here, the building whispers, then it must be important.

The interior of the museum has been transformed both by shifting technology and shifting fashions of display.  Up until the 1950s, when the museum primarily relied on natural light, windows ringed the interior, and display cases were arranged so that visitors could walk around them, viewing specimens from a variety of angles (see Figure 3). However, direct sunlight posed a threat to the collections (limiting the museum’s ability to display textiles and degrading pigments, for example).

Nowadays, display cases – though still glass - are largely mounted against the walls (with few exceptions).  Thus arranged, the cases position the artifact and the visitor/viewer in a more fixed, face-on arrangement (though some aim to provide other views on artifacts using things like mirrors). The earthy orange colour of the display case mounts in the museum’s ethnology gallery also reflect past fashions in museum display (somewhat to the dismay of our curator-guide, who notes that clay pottery and other artifacts have a tendency to fade into the terracotta backdrop).  Evidently, efforts to give the cases a neutral grey makeover – to help exhibits pop - were skuttled by the pandemic (though some cases in the ethnology gallery remained empty in anticipation).

Notably, the museum’s upper level - which houses displays on Hominid Evolution, Egyptology, and World Cultures – represents a conscious separation of “cultural material” from “natural history.”  This separation was not a feature of the museum when it opened in 1882, when the museum’s ethnological and archaeological material was housed on the second floor, alongside the natural history collection.  It was not until the late 20th century that the museum’s world cultures collection was separated out and relegated to the third floor.  (When we are visiting, a selection of the museum’s preserved animals seem to have wandered up to the third floor in reprobation of this divide, but a sign informs us that they are only there temporarily as a nod to the importance of animals in Egyptian culture).

The proffered view from the Ethnology Gallery – which wraps around the atrium’s balconied upper floor - means that looking in the Redpath Museum happens not only up-close, but also from a distance.  The visitor is offered a panoramic view of the displays, gazing out over the second floor’s natural history collection in what seems like a visual representation of human mastery over nature. Still, the direct gaze of the many taxidermized animals in the collection unsettles this sense of mastery to a degree (even as their frozen forms would seem to enhance it).  For example, Maria describes the sense of intimate connection she felt with the animal others of the museum (most notably in catching the gaze of a wolf, who strikes her as an “old friend,” rather than an object).

Particularly in its lower levels and staircases - where some of the animal specimens have seemingly broken free of the glass enclosures and started scaling the walls - the Redpath gives the distinct impression of its artifacts looking back. Some, like a slithering skeleton mounted atop a display case, seem more like they’re lying in wait for visitors, and are only really visible from above.  Still others peer down from high mounts along the walls and display cases – seeming more spectator than spectacle when you catch their eye (see Figure 4).

Sensing the Ethnology Gallery

While the museum’s geology and natural history sections offer a buffet of potential sensations to explore, we opted to center our sensory ethnographic exploration of the Redpath around the museum’s Ethnology Gallery. (The artifacts for our handling session similarly come from the third floor’s world cultures collection).

Passing from display to display in the gallery, it becomes clearer what curator Annie Lussier meant when she described the museum’s collections as eclectic. We travel from a celebration of Mexico’s Day of the Dead (decked in paper marigolds) as intangible culture, to Columbian pottery, African instruments, Egyptian mummies, Sri Lankan eye treatments, and so on.  The display cases each have an internal narrative, but they seem to offer a collection of short vignettes about human culture, moreso than an expansive view.  However, the effect is that the exhibits can technically be observed in any order and from any starting point (though, given how the gallery circles the atrium’s balcony, one feels rather committed once having chosen a direction of travel).

In addition to the way they seem to position the viewer in relation to the artifact, the museum’s glass display cases appear to require a particularly self-conscious form of viewing. Depending on how the light reflects off the glass, the visitor is apt to have to look past their own reflection to get a good view.  This also tend to complicate the practice of photographing artifacts, though some visitors seem to find creative workarounds: as a watch, one fellow visitor rests first a cupped eye and then her phone camera directly against the glass of a display case. (The first act affords a clearer view; the second, a clearer photo).  Some exhibits – like the Egyptian mummies – also offer viewers an extended form of vision for their trouble (by letting them peek beneath the wrappings with an x-ray view).

Absent the ability to smell or hear the artifacts, I am often most struck by the textures on display. From the contrasting textures of Pacific Islander women’s dress as it was transformed by colonialism, to the darkened linen strips contouring mummified remains, to the feathers and beads adorning artifacts in the special exhibit on Richard Salisbury’s fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, so much of the Ethnology Gallery provokes me to touch it with my eyes. 

I am most struck by the display case linking northern Columbian pottery practices to the decoration of the human body.   Historically, the display placard notes, humans have often adorned pottery with many of the same marks, symbols, and motifs with which we adorn our bodies (in practices of tattooing or piercing, for example). We also speak of pottery in terms that offer it a living form – it might have a neck, or legs.  The connection between clay and human flesh which the display conjures up is sensorially evocative – one might imagine the molding of the pot’s body, the pinching of its neck, the piercing of its flesh, the rough texture of its final form (see Figure 5).

Here, I also encounter the aforementioned chorus of absent sensations – some that whisper, some that all but shout. In the latter category is the gallery’s case of assorted African musical instruments – some of them suspended from the display as though held by ghostly players. While the placards beside each often described how the instruments were used (in social settings, in rituals, alongside other instruments) and even how they might be played (with alternating hands striking and muting a drum), rarely did they seem to give much sense of what the instruments sounded like. Once we were given a chance to encounter the artifacts up close, I got some clue as to why the collection’s instruments seemed muted (even in their description).

Encountering the Artifacts Up Close

A few weeks prior to our expedition, Professor David Howes had visited the Redpath to confer with curator Annie Lussier and select which objects we might encounter up close. His selection was based on his own experience conducting field research in Papua New Guinea in 1990 in two regions adjacent to the area where Professor Salisbury had done his groundbreaking research in the 1950s (see Howes 2003; Salisbury, 1962).  Our encounter with the objects was also modelled after an exercise Howes had led at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow – entitled “Sensing Art and Artifacts” - with a team composed of an analytic philosopher, a sociologist, a sinologist, and a musicologist (Howes et al 2018).

The artifact handling session represented a unique opportunity for us to (temporarily) destabilise the “look, don’t touch” aesthetics of the modern museum, wherein (authorized) touch is typically reserved for curators alone (Candlin 2010; Classen & Howes, 2006).  Before we begin our handling session, we are instructed on proper techniques for handling artifacts by the curator. We are told to look carefully at the items before we touch. We are instructed on how to hold them (with both hands), how to feel them with our fingers (gently stroking, rather than drumming or grasping), how to don and remove gloves (seemingly as much to protect us from contamination by the artifacts as vice versa).  Touch in the context of museum curation is thus constructed as a particular cultural technique – something we have to learn.  What’s more, we’re instructed not to smell the artifacts (I imagine not an instruction the curator often has to give except to sensory ethnographers) – evidently, some things are simply not deemed safe to know via the nose (due to the oftentimes toxic chemicals that had been used to conserve them in the past).

There’s a sense of enchantment that settles over the table as we each set about examining the artifacts, and a hush broken only by the soft sounds of our careful handling, like the tinkling shells along the side of the ceremonial drum, or latex gloves being drawn over wooden and woven surfaces. I become engrossed in the sensations of each artifact, drawing contrasts between their particular materiality in ways that go beyond the first glance, or that rearrange my vision. I look inside the eye of a ceremonial yam mask, and imagine looking out from within it.  I lean my nose down to sniff the darkened interior of a jar for any hint of medicinal pungency, and – more than anything – I delight in getting to know the artifacts with my fingers.

From my first hands-on encounter with an artifact – with a board of mounted textiles (see Figure 7)  – I was struck by the urge to draw what I felt. This was not particularly, for me, a way to capture the look of the artifacts – since I had a camera that could do that with considerable more accuracy.  Rather, the motions of putting pen to paper helped me make sense of what I was feeling beneath my fingers, to draw in sharper relief the contrast of textures in various parts of the artifacts.  Around my sketches, I write what I can feel (see Figure 8). The drawings are rudimentary, likely nonsensical (or perhaps I should say nonsensible) to others, but they were meaningful for me in conjuring the absent others in the room: the makers and users of the artifacts.  In drawing the weave of the textiles as sensed through both my eye and my finger, for example, I was forced to pay closer attention to the craftwork of the weave – how the yarn looped over and under itself, tighter or looser, affording each piece a different look and a different texture.  To draw it, I had to conjure the motion of the weaver’s hands (albeit considerably less skillfully, and only for a moment).

One artifact on the table remains conspicuously silent for much of our session – we are asked not to play the hourglass drum from Papua New Guinea (the Kundu), for fear of damaging its reptile-skinned drumhead. As the curator notes, in its original (more humid, tropical) context the skin of the drum may have remained pliable, but in the context of a Canadian museum, it becomes dry, brittle, and effectively unplayable. However, Maria requests and is given permission to give the drum a shake, to hear the rattle of its shells against the wooden side, and effectively reanimate it as an instrument (vs. an object of display). When Maria shakes the drum, we all sit in rapt attention. As Rosalin notes, the sound immediately transforms the atmosphere of our handling session, enveloping our individual encounters with the artifacts into a moment of shared knowing and encounter. We are, at once, making sense of the Redpath together.