Paper short abstract:

The recent redisplay of a series of 'anthropological' portraits of Indian physical and social types highlight troubling and productive ambiguities between art and anthropology, professionals and amateurs. It questions how museums should deal with the more complex histories of their collections.

Paper long abstract:

Between 1935 and 1938 Mrs Marguerite Milward, Associate of the Paris Salon, sculptor and world traveller, journeyed throughout the Indian subcontinent sculpting the heads of men and women for a collection of 'types'. Praised at the time for their accuracy and value as anthropological data, they were donated to the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1948.

Milward's sculptures seem caught somewhere between anthropology and art, or ethnography and portraiture. Well connected within fine art circles in France and India, Milward was also closely acquainted with prominent figures in anthropology, including Elwin, Hutton, Furer- Haimendorf and Guha. Her position, and that of her work, remained ambiguous. Along with her accompanying collection of ethnographic objects and photographs, the sculptures highlight the productive (if contentious) position of the amateur, or the extra-disciplinary professional, in the formation of both museum collections and disciplinary identities. Since their donation they have rarely if ever been exhibited and have remained hidden in storage - regarded as unpleasant reminders of anthropology's historical concern with race. As they return to public view in a new exhibition, the heads highlight historic convergences between anthropology and art, and the changing nature of the 'ethnographic object' in museum collections. Moreover, they raise questions about how museums deal with troubling aspects of their history.