Seeing art in objects from the Pacific around 1900: how field collecting and German armchair anthropology met between 1873 and 1910

Abstract

Reports by travellers on their discovery of works of art in remote places become more frequent in the early years of the 19th century. In 1842 sculptures from Hawai’i are mentioned in a handbook of art history, based on an artist’s field drawings. In the 1860s scientists start collecting ethnographica, including works of aesthetic value, which begin to reach European and overseas museums in the late 1870s. Between 1894 and 1900 collecting and discussing art, often based on documentation obtained in the field and with the help of local interlocutors, becomes an accepted practice in leading museums, both in Germany and the USA.

Keywords

• early field anthropology
• collecting art from the Pacific for museums before 1910
• early visions for a global history of art
• J. St. Kubary and Museum Godeffroy
• Felix von Luschan
• Karl von den Steinen and the Ethnological Museum Berlin
• history of anthropology of art