Museum Anthropology

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

Abstract
This chapter examines the performative and embodied nature of the museum visit and in doing so mounts a challenge to the dominance of the idea that the museum visit is, or should be, about learning. Rather, the argument advanced is that visitors use museums in a wide range of ways and that the learning paradigm restricts the ability of researchers and museum professionals to recognize this diversity.  Understanding the visit as an embodied performance reveals the means by which visitors emotionally engage with museum exhibitions and thus identifies the ways in which visitors undertake their own ‘heritage making’ and the production and reinforcement of their own meanings and cultural and political values. Interviews with visitors to museums and other sites of heritage in England, Australia and the USA are used to illustrate and support the argument.

https://www.routledge.com/Emotion-Affective-Practices-and-the-Past-in-the-Present/Smith-Wetherell-Campbell/p/book/9781138579293

Emotion, Affective Practices, and the Past in the Present is a response to debates in the humanities and social sciences about the use of emotion. This timely and unique book explores the ways emotion is embroiled and used in contemporary engagements with the past, particularly in contexts such as heritage sites, museums, commemorations, political rhetoric and ideology, debates over issues of social memory, and touristic uses of heritage sites.

Including contributions from academics and practitioners in a range of countries, the book reviews significant and conflicting academic debates on the nature and expression of affect and emotion. As a whole, the book makes an argument for a pragmatic understanding of affect and, in doing so, outlines Wetherell’s concept of affective practice, a concept utilised in most of the chapters in this book. Since debates about affect and emotion can often be confusing and abstract, the book aims to clarify these debates and, through the use of case studies, draw out their implications for theory and practice within heritage and museum studies.

Emotion, Affective Practices, and the Past in the Present should be essential reading for students, academics, and professionals in the fields of heritage and museum studies. The book will also be of interest to those in other disciplines, such as social psychology, education, archaeology, tourism studies, cultural studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, and history.

Museum Theory is the first volume of a four volume set of International Handbooks of Museum Studies. Edited by myself and Kylie Message, the book is organised around the central idea of conjunctures – between theory, practice and context. It therefore looks at ideas about museums, the relationships between various disciplines and knowledge production in museums, and at practice -the latter in terms of the application of theory in museum contexts as well as thinking about practice as a form of 'doing theory'. Contributors come from many different countries. They include early career scholars as well as internationally renowned figures and they come from practice as well as academia. The range of museums discussed is also wide and from around the world.

The Incas carried out some of the most dramatic ceremonies known to us from ancient times. Groups of people walked hundreds of miles across arid and mountainous terrain to perform them on mountains over 20,000 feet (6,096 m) high. The most important offerings made during these pilgrimages involved human sacrifices (capacochas). Although Spanish chroniclers wrote about these offerings and the state-sponsored processions of which they were a part, their accounts were based on second-hand sources, and the only direct evidence we have of the capacocha sacrifices comes to us from archaeological excavations. Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, where the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study, we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (22,109 ft / 6,739 m), which has the world's highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and analyzed. By comparing the archaeological evidence with the chroniclers' accounts and with findings from other mountaintop sites, common patterns are demonstrated, while at the same time previously little-known elements contribute to our understanding of key aspects of Inca religion. This study illustrates the importance of archaeological sites being placed within the broader context of physical and sacred features of the natural landscape.

Viele Ansätze der frühen Ethnologie des 19. Jahrhunderts waren von Perspektiven auf die »Anderen« geprägt, die man heute als »eurozentrisch« kritisiert. Vorstellungen von der kulturellen Unterlegenheit der »primitiven« Völker in Afrika und Übersee wurden auch anhand der zahlreichen materiellen Artefakte geprägt, die während der Kolonialzeit ab der Mitte des 19. Jahrhundert in großer Menge aus den eroberten Gebieten in europäische Sammlungen gelangten (Bergner 1996: 227). Eine Motivation der damals noch jungen Völkerkunde war es, das kulturelle Inventar der sogenannten »Naturvölker«, die man in den Kolonien angetroffen zu haben glaubte, möglichst lückenlos zu dokumentieren, bevor diese Kulturen vom »Strome zerstörender Zeit« (Bastian 1885: 40) erfasst, also im Sinne des Sozialdarwinismus den europäischen Zivilisationen weichen würden. Die sozialdarwinistische Idee ging von einer stufenweisen Entwicklung menschlicher Gesellschaft aus: von primitiven und kulturlosen »Wilden« zu einfach strukturierten Gesellschaften bis hin zu komplexen und kulturell überlegenen Zivilisationen, als deren Krönung -wie sollte es anders sein -die europäischen Nationalgesellschaften galten. Die unterworfenen Gesellschaften wurden in dieser Perspektive oft an den Ursprung der menschlichen Entwicklungsgeschichte verwiesen. Ihre materiellen Hervorbringungen, die angesichts ihrer Schriftlosigkeit als die einzigen »Abdrücke« ihres »Volksgeistes« galten (Bastian 1885: 40), wurden so in vielen musealen Vergleichsreihen an den Beginn der kulturellen Evolution gestellt, wo sie als krude Artefakte der »Primitiven« aus den Kolonialgebieten zugleich die eigene kulturelle Überlegenheit zu beweisen schienen.

When we wrote the manifesto of the ACHS we were keen to promote a strong sense of critical engagement with social justice issues, and to encourage people to draw on the wider social sciences to study museums and heritage. We are heartened that so many people have embraced the ACHS, and that the ACHS conferences have been such a success, and intellectually and socially happy and exciting places to be. Having said that, we also have some reservations about some of the theoretical sources that are being drawn on as CHS develops, the way they are being taken up, and the consequences this may be having for developing a critical approach to the issues of social justice we hope to promote. What we are going to do in this paper is to outline the problems we have with these theoretical borrowings from what has loosely been termed the New Materialism or Post-Humanism. In some ways our discussion is impressionistic, but we would like to look at the 'local' influences these borrowings have, and the flavour they may impart to the work we do. We would also like to ask some questions about what sort of questions and themes might be foreclosed, and what that might mean for 'being critical'.

This chapter explores the dynamic relationship between contemporary art and anthropology from multiple perspectives. In recent volumes specifically investigat- ing the relationship of contemporary art and anthropology, the focus is primarily on the capacities of both art and anthropology to represent social worlds,and there is surprisingly little discussion of the border zones and aesthetic frames that define contemporary art as a specific material genre and institutionalized practice.

Las sucesivas victorias del hijo de Filipo pronto preocuparon a Darío III, quien escapó de su perseguidor solo para caer a manos de su aliado Beso, el sátrapa de Bactria. Su subordinado no vio mejor oportunidad para usurpar el trono y Alejandro se vio obligado a ocupar Bactria para acabar con cualquiera que amenazara su control del Imperio persa. Las tropas de Beso no supusieron un problema para los experimentados soldados macedonios, que una vez allí, se encaminaron en dirección a Sogdiana tras atravesar el rio Oxo y el Yaxartes. Inicialmente, la región no pareció organizarse activamente para impedir la llegada de aquellos extranjeros. Beso se retiró acompañado de unos pocos nobles de Sogdiana y planeó una guerra de guerrillas en las provincias del norte con la ayuda de los sacas, por lo que Alejandro no tuvo problemas para ocupar Bactria, probablemente de manera mucho más sencilla de lo esperado. Sin embargo, un contingente macedonio fue sorprendido cerca del Yaxartes mientras se encontraban forrajeando, pero las fuentes no sitúan la responsabilidad en un grupo de tropas enemigas organizado, sino más bien en salteadores que intentaron obtener botín mediante un ataque sorpresa.

The authors use a social network analysis to map the changing patterns of obsidian supply among the Maya during the period of Classic to Postclassic transition. The quantity of obsidian received from different sources was calculated for 121 sites and the network analysis showed how the relative abundance of material from different sources shifted over time. A shift from inland to coastal supply routes appears to have contributed to the collapse of inland Maya urban centres. The methods employed clearly have a high potential to reveal changing economic networks in cases of major societal transitions elsewhere in the world.

This chapter, from the edited book, ‘Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums’, examines the community consultation process that occurred at seven museums in England during the lead up to the development of exhibitions marking the British bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Museums, at this time, were faced with the opportunity of engaging with a range of community groups over how exhibitions should be framed, and the messages and meanings they should portray. Through interview material with curators and community activists and representatives, the chapter documents the issues that arose, highlighting in particular tensions between the expectations of both museum professionals and community groups.

The fourth known pre-Columbian Maya codex—the only one discovered in the 20th century—was found by looters in the mid-1960s. First exhibited in New York in 1971, what has come to be known as the Grolier Codex is half of a hybrid-style 20-page, 104-year Mesoamerican divinatory Venus Almanac. With new radiocarbon dates that place it in the 13th century CE, it is likely to be the oldest surviving book on paper from the Americas as well as the only ancient Maya codex now residing in Mexico. Although most Mayanists have accepted it as authentic, based in part on the author’s 40 years of research,* it remains an unacknowledged Mexican national treasure as it has never been officially recognized except in the State of Chiapas. Mesoamerican Venus Almanacs were widely used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to regulate practices of sacred warfare and ritual sacrifice, the goal of which was to obtain captives whose blood was shed to invoke the personified forces of rain and fertility. The Grolier Codex offers unique images of 10 of the 20 manifestations of Venus (named in the Maya Dresden Codex), greatly enriching our knowledge of these traditions documented in four other pre-Columbian codices as well as numerous archaeological and ethnohistoric sources. This article is a summary of the talk given on November 7, 2014 to the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington DC and includes a brief history of accounts of the discovery of the Grolier Codex and allegedly associated artifacts; photographic history; outlines the author’s comprehensive program of research, including several new scientific discoveries leading to an interpretation of the Codex—based on the Dresden Codex and other sources; and offers a new Latinized name that recognizes that the “Codex Mayano-Mexicanus” is an authentic ancient book deriving from the Maya culture and now properly residing in Mexico.

          *See <http://umd.academia.edu/JohnBCarlson>.

Also utilized as part of the November 7, 2014 talk are TWO 1983 historical STUDY GUIDE documents which can be viewed at the following academia.edu links:

• GROLIER CODEX Page Study Guide: Pages 1-9 and Reconstructed Page 10/11 (1983): 

https://www.academia.edu/7911420/GROLIER_CODEX_Page_Study_Guide_Pages_1-9_and_Reconstructed_Page_10_11

• GROLIER CODEX Comparative Study Guide (1983): Grolier pages 1-9 and reconstructed page 10/11 with Maya Dresden Codex Venus Almanac page numbers 48/1 – 50/2 with Venus Station and Directional Associations; Names (on Dresden Rows 17 & 22) of the associated Venus Impersonators; and Initial (1983) interpretations of the Grolier Codex scenes & iconographic interpretations. Over the three decades since 1983, some of the glyphic and iconographic interpretations have changed, as discussed in the presentation. The details are in press:

https://www.academia.edu/9208071/GROLIER_CODEX_Comparative_Study_Guide_1983_

*****

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Museum salvage refers to critical studies of museum collections with little or no provenience information that seek to glean useful archaeological information from these artifacts and examine the nature of their origins and possible connections to the illicit antiquities trade and the art market. Our case study focuses on artifacts from Mesoamerica and objects from the ancient capital of Teotihuacan in particular. We take a multi-scalar approach, including a quantitative analysis of Sotheby's auction records for Mesoamerican items from 1966 to 2010, a survey of Teotihuacan attributed items in U.S. museums, and a more detailed examination of Teotihuacan-style artifacts in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science collections. The study tracks and attempts to explain diachronic patterns in the Mesoamerican antiquities trade, connections to museum collecting practices, and looting behavior. The study illustrates the potential benefits of museum salvage, while also revealing the clear limitations of research on poorly documented archaeological material.

The relationship between excavation and museums is often assumed to be linear, with artifacts removed from the field and transferred to a museum. This article, however, envisages a more complex connection between the two based on the premise that archaeological context is a continuous process rather than a static setting. The article’s departure point is the legacy and history of collections that were excavated in Egypt and widely distributed to the world’s museums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These collections comprise not only excavated artifacts, but also the related documents of fieldwork and finds distribution. As a whole, this material allows for continual contextualization as the colonial legacy of archaeology in Egypt, and the hyper-reality of its presentation in museums, is confronted. Concepts such as the contact zone, indigenous archaeologies and radical transparency are just a few of the ways these issues might be addressed. Museum assemblages also permit a critical assessment of both the contemporary and possible future relationships between Egyptian archaeology in the field and museums.

De-Introducing the NT is without a doubt one of the most probing and incisive works in the field of NT studies to have appeared in a long time. Far more than a rehearsal of research methods and theories operative in the historical study of the NT, the book constitutes a call to reflect on who we are, what we do, and why we do what we do as " historians " of the NT. The work is endlessly informative, unapologetically iconoclastic, and disarmingly understated, even empathetic. Readers should brace themselves, however. There is no second naiveté once the work is read.

A Dança das Cabeças. Os Munduruku  no século XIX, em Augustat, Claudia (org.), Além do Brasil. Johann Natterer e as coleções etnográficas da expedição austríaca de 1817 a 1835 ao Brasil. Catalogo da Exposição do Museum für Völkerkunde, Viena, Viena 2012, p. 47-57

This paper is a case study of the trams now kept at Depot No. 5 at Legnicka 65 in Wrocław, Poland. The site provides a context for exploring two core issues around archaeological approaches to the contemporary past. The first is how materiality and immateriality are deeply interwoven in the context of modern heritage sites, with the overlap providing the grounds for discussion on the material theology of modern ruins. The second is the consequences of seeing modern ruins as heritage sites worth preserving for future generations. The conclusion of this paper is that if heritage is to be saved, it should be saved first of all from its saviours.

Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del alto río Negro (Brasil/Colombia) Durante la conferencia internacional " Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural. Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del alto río Negro (Brasil/Colombia) " , que se realizó del 31 de julio al 2 de agosto de 2014 en el Ethnologisches Museum de Berlín, se evaluaron críticamente las investigaciones recientes e históricas sobre la región multicultural del alto río Negro. Se reunieron y contrastaron las perspectivas de diferentes actores en base de sus respectivas especializaciones sobre la historia de contacto de la región, sobre la situación actual y sobre el signii cado de la cultura material en este proceso. Participaron por lo tanto representantes de los kotiria (wanano) y wira poná (desana), miembros de los museos, antropólogos académicos y activistas. Todos ellos contribuyeron con sus enfoques sobre el papel actual de las colecciones, los museos y las exposiciones para las comunidades indígenas y la ciencia.

In questo articolo sono presentate tre differenti piattaforme tecnologiche adatte all'innovazione tecnologica nella gestione e nel controllo di flussi turistici nelle strutture ricettive e culturali.
La prima, eFlowTourist, per strutture ricettive; le altre due, eFlowAccess (in entrata) eFlowFeedback (in uscita), per musei e siti culturali. Queste piattaforme sono utili per la raccolta di dati statistici in tempo reale (da esportare in grafici, tabelle, report etc.) al fine di approntare strategie mirate. Le piattaforme sono multilingue e si basano su questionari a scelta multipla, a domanda secca, con form da compilare etc.
Sono strumenti adatti ad un monitoraggio interno e diretto della propria utenza, al fine di migliorare i servizi e la customer satisfaction.

These are three different platforms, the first eFlowTourist for hotels, the last two for museums and cultural sites. They are useful to collect real-time statistical data that will help define appropriate strategies: eFlowAccess to monitor visitors' access at the entrance and eFlowFeedback to monitor their feedback at the exit. These applications use highly customisable templates to generate multilingual feedback forms and multiple-choice questionnaires. The data thus obtained are processed to get statistics and reports (graphs, bar charts, pie charts) for each individual item. With all this information at hand, the museum has a powerful tool to monitor visitors' behaviour based on primary quantitative and qualitative data.

A presente dissertação aborda e define os processos de incorporação e de desincorporação de objectos nos museus, entendendo o museu enquanto conceito universal, isto é, atravessando tipologias museais e fronteiras geográficas. As questões que envolvem a incorporação, a permanência e a desincorporação de objectos no museu são aqui examinadas, bem como analisados os seus conceitos.

Com base numa análise teórica, pretendem encontrar-se respostas para questões como “o que guardam os museus?”, “por que razões o guardam?” e “para que servem e a quem interessam os objectos de museu?”.
São analisados dois sistemas museológicos aparentemente opostos, em que o maior ou menor grau de “desprendimento” relativamente aos objectos, revela dois modos diferentes de ver e interpretar a instituição museal: o sistema anglo-saxónico, centralizado nos Estados Unidos e na Grã-Bretanha, caracterizado pela visão do museu enquanto museu-escola, e o sistema latino, centralizado na França, caracterizado pela visão do museu enquanto museu-templo. Sensivelmente entre os dois situa-se o modelo português. Claramente derivado da tradição francesa, por óbvias razões culturais, seria, contudo, marcado pela tradição britânica. Assim, percebe-se, pela análise do estatuto das colecções públicas portuguesas que, não obstante a enunciação inequívoca – mas não enfática – da sua inalienabilidade, se tenham previsto tantas portas de saída para os objectos.

“To put something in context” is a common sentiment in everyday speech and scholarly analysis alike. Yet despite widespread familiarity, such expressions bear commonly overlooked and sometimes contradictory meanings based upon distinct, case-specific assumptions. The article makes explicit the assumptions and consequences of “putting memory in context.”  It proceeds under four headings. The first (“Context”) surveys the multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to context in the study of memory; the second (“Container”) and third (“Identity”) elucidate the consequences of some of the principal contexts in use, and the conceptual problems arising from them; and the final section explores possible alternatives.

The Oceanic Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science is one of the smallest collections contained within the museum’s World Ethnology Collection, yet it is perhaps one of the largest regional collections of Oceanic materials in the Rocky Mountains— second only to the Denver Art Museum. This article provides the first in-depth look at this collection through an accession-based approach of describing the objects, peoples, and histories found within it. In using the concepts of (re)discovery and wayfinding as material culture research methods, this paper presents a “voyage” through the Oceanic Collection facilitated by collections-based and archival research. The essay ends by reflecting on the Department of Anthropology’s mission statement to curate “the best understood and most ethically held anthropology collection in North America,” and on how this statement can be promulgated through further research on the Oceanic Collection, as well as future partnerships with diasporic Pacific Islander communities living in Colorado.

Ethnographic museum collections have traditionally been acquired, maintained, and utilized by anthro-pological and other museum-based researchers. Increasingly, indigenous communities consult museum holdings in order to inform social movements reclaiming cultural heritage, though collections and their records are often not conserved or made accessible with these goals in mind. We report a project conducted with Arctic Sámi communities in collaboration with the Sámi Museum Siida. Coupling the results of detailed ethnographic interviews with accessible three-dimensional modeling techniques – in particular photogrammetry – we propose a community-based methodology in archaeological ethnogra-phy aimed at increasing accessibility for descendant community members that may potentially expand collections' use for researchers. Concurrently, we stress that such an integrative approach must be particularly cautious in the sharing of models of indigenous cultural heritage, which encounter frequent threats of misuse and appropriation in an era of easy 3D modeling and printing. This abstract appears below in North Sámi.

Davvisámegiella: Etnográfalaš museaidčoakkáldagaid leat dábálaččatčoaggán, bajásdoallán ja geavahan antropologiijadahje museasuorggi dutkit. Eamiálbmotservošat galledit muse-aidčoakkáldagaidain eanet ja eanet vai besset ealáskahttit iežaset kulturárbbi. ˇ Coakkáldagaidja daidda gullevaš die – duid eai goittotge dábálaččat leat seailluhan ja dahkanrabasin dan dárkkuhusa várás. Dárk-ilis etnográfalaš jearahallamiid bohtosiidovttastahttin álkit logahahtti 3D hábmenteknihkkii, erenomážit fotogrammetriai-mii evttohit servoša geahččanguovllus vuolgi metodologiija, man ulbmilin leabuoriditčoakkáldagaid rabasvuo – da servoša lahtuide ja jos vejolaš, maiddáidutkiide. Seammás mii deattuhit, ahte dakkár lahkonanvugiin 3D-málliidjuohkimis galgá leat várrugas. Erenomážit dakkár eamiálbmogiid bokte, geaidkulturárbbi geavahit boastut dálá áiggis, goas 3D-hábmen ja prenten lea álki.

Over the last 40 years museums have become important sites to understand the politics and poetics of heritage management, display, and knowledge production. The books under consider- ation here all help demonstrate how museums as relational entities—containing dynamic relations between persons and things, as well as generating them—are emergent processes. Each work helps demonstrate why museums in their many guises remain critical terrains for the negotiation of identity, history, and culture in the push for more collaborative accounts of our world and the circulation and display of things.

Discussion and Review of:

Bodinger de Uriarte, John. 2007. Casino and Museum: Representing Mashantucket Pequot Identity. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Carpenter, Edmund. 2005. Two Essays: Chief & Greed. North Andover: Persimmon Press.

Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip, Stephen E. Nash, and Steven R. Holen. 2010. Crossroads of Culture: Anthropology Collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Boulder: University of Colorado.

Price, Sally. 2007. Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Silverman, Helaine, ed. 2006. Archaeological Site Museums in Latin America. Gainsville: University Press of Florida.

This paper revisits and reassesses two enigmatic archival photographs taken in the 1890s showing Japanese katana, or samurai swords, in situ with American Indians in the northern Great Plains. Both have been published, correctly presented as enticing unexplained oddities in nineteenth-century Indian possession. The katana seen hanging on a wall of the home of Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala Lakota (Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota), which we believe was photographed in November or early January of 1890 (fig. 1), was first discussed in print by Bleed (1987). The second photograph (fig. 2) shows a katana held by Dog Child of the Blackfoot (Siksika) tribe, formerly a scout for the North-West Mounted Police (later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), photographed in c. 1890–1894 at Gleichen, Alberta, and first discussed by Drew (1980). We attempt here to provide context and likely explanations for the presence of samurai swords in these two only known nineteenth-century in situ American Indian contexts. For that purpose, we first briefly survey the much broader diffusion and integration of the (largely Euro-American) sword—called “long knife” in many North American Indian languages—within American Indian cultures. We then look at possible Japanese sources for these swords and the resulting implications.

Este artículo parte de la noción de "complejo exhibitorio" sobre la función pedagógica clásica del museo occidental (histórico y etnográfico), y la repasa en contextos latinoamericanos contemporáneos, específicamente mexicanos. El texto contrapone trabajo de corte etnográfico en museos comunitarios con ciertos aspectos de las salas de etnografía en el Museo Nacional de Antropología de México. La tesis central que persigue demostrar es que la retórica actual del patrimonio en entornos poscoloniales y de "diversidad cultural", sigue utilizando la lógica del complejo exhibitorio pero con un mecanismo y un fin diferente a la noción clásica de inicios del siglo XX. Ya no se trataría de exhibir las proezas del orden moderno y de la construcción nacional, sino de una poética del retorno. La tradición no estaría ya fijada por siempre en el museo nacional de la capital, sino que se instala en la lejanía espacial del pueblo o de la aldea: los que fueron objeto del museo y de exhibición se vuelven sujetos de producción de una mirada y de un orden. Finalmente se pregunta: ¿se han desplazado realmente los mecanismos que definían y retenían la autoridad cultural sobre el patrimonio?

This chapter, from the edited book, ‘Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums’ (2011) introduces the concept of registers of engagement. Drawing on interviews with visitors to exhibitions marking the 2007 bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of its slave trade, the chapter explores the range of affective responses visitors had to the exhibitions. The paper maps the various ways people engaged, or did not engage, with exhibition content, the ways in which emotion was used in both passive and active ways to frame their responses, and the social meanings and messages people subsequently took from the exhibitions.