ABSTRACT
The exhibitions function as a window onto contemporary racial understandings and negotiations; they provide a platform for analyzing Danish constructions and understandings of race. In Denmark, race, racial categories, and race relations were never ascribed fixed meanings; rather, their meanings changed from context to context. The number of Danish race scientists was rather small, but their influence was great. The surgeon Christian Friedrich Schumacher founded the Anthropological Museum in 1810, as a part of the University of Copenhagen. In relation to race science, it is crucial how scientists studied and described non-white people, how races and people were categorized and ordered into racial hierarchies as well as given specific mental characteristics corresponding to their racial affiliation. The exhibition of exotic people interested European anthropologists because they believed that each group of people, each race, had developed differently. The programs scientific underscoring of the racial description was further emphasized by statements from leading European anthropologists about the exhibited individuals.
