ABSTRACT
Museum displays are composed of objects that are of interest on account of the temporal and/or cultural separation between the social system for which they were originally intended and the museum visitor’s own social context. It is through processes such as buying and selling, collecting, hoarding and recycling that these historical and cultural heritage artefacts have been preserved over time, acquired by new owners, and relocated across national boundaries. During their spatial and temporal journeys it is common for their original functions to be overlaid with other attributes ascribed according to the new contexts in which they are used and viewed. It is therefore a rare museum exhibit that can tell only one story and represent only one point of interest to the visitor. The professional judgement of museum curators is relied on not only for
the selection, preservation and display of exhibits, but also, through the provision of relevant information, for guidance in the appreciation of their qualities and attributes. In fulfilling these responsibilities, curators face many dilemmas concerning the conservation and contextualisation of their collections. Should a museum aim only to guide visitors in developing a factually correct interpretation of an exhibit’s original function, or should they also be encouraged to attribute new meanings within the context of today’s society? How can these complexities be adequately explained within the confines of a museum’s financial and spatial limitations? Furthermore, given that both unintended damage and intended alterations bear witness to the complexity of an object’s history, should a museum display heritage artefacts in their present state or in a state closer to their original form? This chapter examines the contextualisation and conservation of heritage
items through the study of a collection of masks from the Japanese nô theatre in the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. The set of fifty-two masks includes most major character types: men and women, young and old, innocent and insane, divine beings, demons, living people and tortured souls. Although most date from the late eighteenth century, the oldest one is believed to have been carved as early as the late fifteenth century, while the most recent ones date from around 1840 (Figure 5.1). The masks formed part
of the collection of 20,000 objects given to the University of Oxford by Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (1827-1900), a Lieutenant-General in the British Army who devoted much time to the collection and classification of ethnological artefacts (Petch 1998). Pitt Rivers himself did not purchase the masks in Japan, but we know that they were in his possession by 1880, when he lent much of his private collection to London’s South Kensington Museum, the forerunner of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Four years later they were transferred to Oxford following disagreements between the London curators and Pitt Rivers over his choice of display style. A considerable amount is known about the provenance of these masks,
which were some of the first to enter a Western collection. The museum owns a copy of the list dating from the time of the collection’s sale and transfer to England which records the character types, estimated age and cultural background of the individual masks, and a reference to their display at an exhibition in Kyoto. On the basis of this information it was possible to locate the catalogue from the Kyoto Exposition of 1879 describing just such a mask set that was submitted for display by Kongô Kinnosuke, the iemoto (titular head) of the Kongô nô school. Kongô family memoirs record that it was around this time that Kinnosuke assembled a number of masks for display and sale in response to interest from a Western collector (Kongô 1983: 143-4). The identity of that original purchaser remains unclear. Whoever he was, we can
assume either that he was commissioned by Pitt Rivers to buy artefacts for his growing collection, or that he sold them to Pitt Rivers in late 1879 after the close of the Kyoto Exposition. The Museum is justly proud of this mask collection, which, in addition to
its great beauty and interesting history, is rare in the West on account of its large size and wide range of character types. However, fieldwork conducted in 2002-3 has revealed a strong feeling among nô experts that the display style at that time did not adequately portray the vital role that masks still play in their theatrical environment. Moreover, several professional actors considered that the closely packed and brightly lit masks were deprived of their visual power and mystical aura. One commented that the collection looked like the packed faces in a Tokyo commuter train! What explanation can we give for the difference in perception of an appropriate display style between those connected to the masks’ original function and their present curators? Should the Pitt Rivers Museum try to rectify the situation? If so, how? These problems are best addressed through study of the social system for which the masks were originally created, and an appreciation of the enormity of the status change they have undergone in their spatial and temporal journey from their locus of production to their present location.
