Museum networks: the exchange of the Smithsonian Institution's duplicate anthropology collections

This dissertation examines a practice of scientific museums in the 19th and early 20th centuries: the exchange of their duplicate specimens. Specimen exchange facilitated the rise of universal museums while creating a transnational network through which objects, knowledge, and museum practitioners circulated. My primary focus concerns the exchange of anthropological duplicate specimens at the Smithsonian Institution from 1880 to 1920. Specimen exchange was implemented as a strategic measure to quell the growth of scientific collections curated by the Smithsonian prior garnering to the broad political support needed to fund a national museum. My analysis examines how its practice was connected to both anthropological knowledge production, particularly in terms of diversifying the scope of museum collections, and knowledge dissemination. The latter includes an examination of how anthropological duplicates were used to illustrate competing explanations of culture change and generate interest in anthropological subject matter for non-specialist audiences. I examine the influence of natural history classification systems on museum-based anthropology by analyzing how the notion of duplicate was applied to collections of material culture. As the movement of museum objects are of particular concern to anthropologists involved in repatriation practices, I use specimen exchange to demonstrate that while keeping objects is a definitive function of the museum, an understanding of why and how museum objects have been kept or not kept in the past, particularly in terms of the intentions and value systems of curators, is critical in developing an ethically oriented dialogue about disposition of museum objects in the future.