The question was how to present the objects left by such a controversial figure in New Guinea’s colonial history as Luigi Maria D’Albertis, while at the same time proposing a reflection on the practices of 19 th century scientific collectors in general, and specifically on the complex, often violent relations that were at the origin of the exhibition itself 2.ĥThese questions were of particular relevance in the cultural context in which issues of representation and agency in museums were under scrutiny and in which, as Clifford said, «Current developments question the very status of museums as historical-cultural theatres of memory.» (Clifford, 1988: 248). The location of the collection within what was originally conceived as home-museum and a self-aggrandisement project by D’Albertis’ cousin, himself another explorer of the era, imposed a further dimension to the problem of going beyond the exhibition of exotic objects as representing putatively archaic cultures. D’Albertis (see for example Goode 1977, Kirksey 2002, Mosko 2009, Pu (.)ĤOne issue raised was that of displaying artefacts from New Guinea in a way that would be meaningful in a city with very little connections with the Pacific area, unlike others represented in the museum. Cette démarche permet à chaque visiteur de percevoir qu’il y a plusieurs parties dans l’activité de collectionner et que le valeur des objets dans le musée est historique, non absolue. La solution a été de juxtaposer les objets aux passages des mémoires de l’explorateur, aussi qu’aux témoignages oraux des « premières rencontres » registrées parmi les descendants de quelqu’un des gens parmi lesquelles les objets ont été collectés. La collocation dans la maison/musée du cousin du Luigi Maria, Enrico D’Albertis (lui aussi navigateur et explorateur) nous a suri d’insérer les objets dans un discours sur les explorations du xix e siècle, plutôt que de les utiliser pour représenter les cultures de la Nouvelle-Guinée.
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Plus de cent ans après, la question était comme exposer les objets, c’est-a-dire avec quelles objectifs représentationnels. La première opération de récupération a été donc celle d’ouvrir la collection au public. Cette collection, rassemblée par Luigi Maria D’Albertis pendant ses expéditions en Nouvelle-Guinée dans les années 1870 et donnée à la Municipalité de Genova dans les années 1930, est finalement devenue accessible au public en 2004, avec l’inauguration du Museo Castello D’Albertis. In this way we hoped to emphasise to the public that there are more sides to the activity of collection and of the historical, not absolute, meaning of the objects.Ĭet article examine un procès de récupération du passée relatif à une des premières collections ethnologiques de la Nouvelle- Guinée. The solution was to juxtapose the objects with passages from D’Albertis’ memoirs, and with oral history accounts of those ‘first encounters’ recorded among descendants of some of the ‘natives’ from whom the objects were taken. Its location within the reconstructed museum/home of Luigi Maria’s cousin Enrico (also a navigator and explorer) suggested contextualising it within a discourse on 19 th Century collectors, rather than displaying the artefacts as material instantiations of New Guinea cultures.
The question – raised more than one hundred years after the collection was made- was how to stage this exhibition, with what representational aims. The first process of recovery is that of bringing it to public attention. Made in the 1870s and donated to the municipality of Genova in the 1930s this collection of artefacts from Luigi Maria D’Albertis’ expeditions in New Guinea has finally become available to the public in 2004, with the opening of the Museo Castello D’Albertis. This paper illustrates a process of recovering the past concerning one of the earliest ethnographic collections from New Guinea.
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