Coleccionando el Pacifico: A Study of 18th and 19th Century Oceania Collections in Spanish Museums

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This study focuses on the 18th and 19th century ethnographic collections from Oceania held in Spanish museums. These collections were mostly assembled via large scientific expeditions such as the Malaspina Expedition (1789-1794), three Tahiti Expeditions (1772-1775), and the Comisión Cientifica del Pacifico (1862-1869), as well as via the Spanish missionary and colonial presence in the Pacific (Philippines, Marianas Islands, Caroline Islands). Spanish museums have an estimated 500 remarkable objects from Oceania. However, as the Spanish presence in Oceania was marginal to more intense colonial developments in America, these collections have been largely neglected and treated only tangentially by both Spanish and foreign researchers, unlike similar collections in the UK, France, Germany or The Netherlands. Most of these objects are kept in storage, and hence remain unknown to the wider Spanish public. Thus, this topic presents a unique opportunity for original research that will be assisted by, and complementary to, research done on collections in other European countries.On their arrival in Spain, Pacific objects were catalogued, at times wrongly, and distributed among state museums. Later, as collections and state institutions were refashioned, objects were redistributed with no clear pattern, usually ending up in storage. Today, the main Spanish museums that house 18th and 19th century material from the Pacific are Museo de América, Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Museo Naval (all in Madrid), and Museo del Ejército (Toledo).This topic presents a unique research opportunity because Spanish collections have not been studied in the way that British, French, Dutch or German collections have been. My project will add an innovative, integrated and comparative analysis to existing literature. Understanding these objects not only entails the identification of the collections and related documentation, but also making sense of the colonial context and the intellectual traditions in which they were collected and classified. Thus, through an original, comparative and systematic study of these collections, the project will focus on object biographies, the case of the Spanish empire in the Pacific via-à-vis other European empires, the intellectual roots of Enlightenment-era systematic collecting in Spain, and the interaction between museums and communities of origin. Such an ambitious project requires a multidisciplinary methodological approach, bringing into play methods from Anthropology, History, Museology and Art History.This project is important not only because it adds fresh research to the field of collections studies, but it will also contribute to three interrelated processes: placing Spanish collections within the broader field of Pacific studies, contributing to the history of Museology in Spain, and connecting Spanish museum collections to communities of origin.