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Nazi Science, wartime collections, and an American museum: An object itinerary of the Anthropologie Symbol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Dru McGill Open the ORCID record for Dru McGill [Opens in a new window]  and
Jennifer St. Germain
Dru McGill*
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States
Jennifer St. Germain
Affiliation:
Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
*
*Corresponding author. Email: demcgill@ncsu.edu
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Abstract

A number of recent works have explored the value of scholarly efforts to “unpack” museum collections and examine the constitutive networks and histories of objects. The interrogations of collections through methods such as object biographies and itineraries imparts important knowledge about the institutions, disciplines, and individuals who made museum collections, contribute to deeper understandings of the roles of objects in creating meaning in and of the world, and suggest implications for future practice and policies. This article examines the object itinerary of a cultural property item of negative heritage: a three-dimensional painted plaster work of craft-art originally designed to symbolize the scientific practice of anthropology in early twentieth-century Germany and later associated with wartime collecting during World War II, the history of American archaeology, and the modern repatriation movement in museums.

Keywords

object itinerarieswartime collectionsnegative heritagerepatriationmuseum collecting
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 87 - 106
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Cultural Property Society

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