Routledge Research in Museum Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. xxi, 219 pp. (Tables, figures, B&W photos.) US$140.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8153-5908-1.
Tanja Schubert-McArthur began her engagement with Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s flagship national museum, nine years after its opening. Starting with the visitor and market research team in 2007, she eventually moved on to become an event organizer. She formalized her interest in 2009 by enrolling in a PhD in anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. Her thesis is the basis for this book, an origin that is reflected in its style and organization. It contains such perennial thesis fallbacks as a brief literary review, a table of research participants, and a methodological appendix that traverses issues surrounding research involving Maori, the indigenous population of New Zealand. The origins and contours of the latter issues are too complex to expand on here but, in the end, she argues that her status as a German immigrant gave her outsider status, granting her an escape clause from the cultural baggage accruing to researchers from the majority Pakeha/settler population. As someone in the latter category, I tend to agree.
The book is structured in a logical and convincing way. In deference to the emphasis expressed in the title, the substantive chapters (1 to 7) illustrate biculturalism through the lenses of establishing it, interpreting it, performing it, learning it, enacting it, tackling it, and grasping it. In other words, the author investigates in sequence the background to the setting-up of the museum, how staff make sense of the bicultural remit, how the orienting idea is performed through welcomes and other events at Te Marae (the museum’s ceremonial meeting place), how staff are trained and in turn learn how to educate visitors, how biculturalism works (or not) in terms of the museum’s organizational culture, how tricky issues such as working with human remains and artefacts are managed, and how the museum has transformed itself into something that yearns to express bicultural goals.
Schubert-McArthur describes her work as ethnography. She has every right to do so, as she was immersed in the life of Te Papa over many years. At the same time, the research only intermittently takes advantage of what Clifford Geertz called “deep hanging out.” Major interlocutors were interviewed once only, with no further ongoing conversations reflected in the text. Admittedly, a more fluid and dialogical form of ethnography may have been difficult given the constraints hinted at in her discussion of research ethics (e.g., the ease of identifying individuals in such a small world) but sometimes the endless worry of how she is positioned constrains her approach. Interspersed in several of the chapters are break-out boxes where the author reflects on her role and the dilemmas she faced. These tales are among the most interesting parts of the book but they are few and far between—and the fact that they are separated from the main text is revealing.
In negotiating the ethical minefield, some individuals are named with their permission but many are not. In an excess of zeal, the latter are described in only the sketchiest of terms. More information on the anonymous participants would have been useful. “Male Pakeha” or “female Maori” are too broad definitions: even the simple addition of age bracket and role or occupation identifiers would have helped to flesh out the sample.
To put this quibble in context, Te Papa is, amongst other things, a national art gallery and a science museum with a world-class collection of materials. Much of this patrimony dates from the time of the precursor Dominion Museum and much work still needs to be done to align these legacies, if possible, with the more overtly bicultural agenda in play since Te Papa was first conceived.
Internationally recognized scientists have been made redundant through restructuring or have not been replaced as they reached retirement. According to media reports, some were resistant to the policies of the new regime. I doubt that this is just a matter of Western science failing to recognize an indigenous perspective, though that may be true in some instances. In contemporary New Zealand, major tensions surround the compatibility or otherwise between conventional science and what has come to be known as Matauranga Maori, but there are encouraging signs of mutual recognition. Whether or not an ongoing accommodation can be negotiated between them looms as one of the true litmus tests of the long-term structural success of biculturalism.
None of these points detract from a worthy contribution to museum studies. I do have two gripes, however. First, the master bibliography foreshadowed by author references in each chapter’s endnotes is simply missing. Try as I might, after several careful page-by-page scans of the book, I could not find it. As this item of scholarly apparatus could not have escaped the eagle eyes of Schubert-McArthur’s supervisors, its accidental omission in the published version is an embarrassment.
Second, many years ago I added to the voluminous literature on Te Papa with an essay in an e-journal (Ethnologies Comparées #6, 2003), in which I questioned the widespread negative reaction to the perception that the new museum presented Pakeha cultural items as frivolous and profane while Maori items were displayed as serious and sacred. I argued that such a contrast was an intrinsic part of the grammar of bicultural nationhood of the time and therefore a reflection of a certain cultural reality. Schubert-McArthur, however, assumes (49) that I sided with the commentariat when, in fact, I was simply describing their critiques as a matter of record. It’s a small point but one that implies a certain tunnel vision on her part. Biculturalism is a project with many twists and turns, of which Te Papa is an important but rather atypical example.
Michael Goldsmith
University of Waikato, Hamilton