Museumercenary: Unravelling Borys Malkin’s collection and trade of South American Indigenous material culture through his personal correspondences with museums (1957-1994).

Museumercanary: a title fitting for Borys Malkin (1917-2009), owing to the dualistic nature of his occupation: on one side he is remembered as an anthropologist, who for 40 years (1960s-90s) conducted fieldwork amongst over 46 Indigenous groups in South America. On the other side, however, he was a full-time private collector, dealer, and smuggler of Indigenous material culture, who sold ethnographic (and some archaeological) collections to more than 40 museums in Europe and North America. In this thesis, I investigate Malkin’s work process in both of his occupations, in order to establish his true motivations and intentions for creating and selling Indigenous South American collections. I do so through a combination of literature review and archival research, involving the analysis of Malkin’s private correspondences with 8 of his museum clients. His letters not only contain his stories from collecting in the field, full of his personal views, opinions and commentary on Indigenous...Show moreMuseumercanary: a title fitting for Borys Malkin (1917-2009), owing to the dualistic nature of his occupation: on one side he is remembered as an anthropologist, who for 40 years (1960s-90s) conducted fieldwork amongst over 46 Indigenous groups in South America. On the other side, however, he was a full-time private collector, dealer, and smuggler of Indigenous material culture, who sold ethnographic (and some archaeological) collections to more than 40 museums in Europe and North America. In this thesis, I investigate Malkin’s work process in both of his occupations, in order to establish his true motivations and intentions for creating and selling Indigenous South American collections. I do so through a combination of literature review and archival research, involving the analysis of Malkin’s private correspondences with 8 of his museum clients. His letters not only contain his stories from collecting in the field, full of his personal views, opinions and commentary on Indigenous life and culture and South American politics, but also his collection documentation and invoices. The two museums, which corresponded with Malkin the most, were the Museum of Cultures in Basel (Switzerland) and the National Museum of the American Indian in New York (USA). While Malkin’s interest in Indigenous material culture was mostly financial, his methods of collecting and documenting material culture influenced the way Indigenous South American people were perceived by both Western scholars and the public. Therefore, it is important to uncover the details of his oeuvre and add them to our knowledge of the history of displacement of Indigenous material culture and its transformation into museum collections. Most importantly, we must make that history available to the Indigenous, and allow them to be reunited with knowledge about their own objects, lost to them due to the activities of collectors and dealers, such as Borys Malkin.Show less

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Museumercenary: Unravelling Borys Malkin’s collection and trade of South American Indigenous material culture through his personal correspondences with museums (1957-1994).