Reinterpreting Marianne North: life writing, botanical travel, and the legacies of empire

玛丽安·诺斯（1830-1890）的声誉主要取决于她在最后十年完成的两个项目：她在皇家植物园建立的独特的公共画廊，邱园（旨在永久展示她的植物油画和木材标本），以及她死后出版的生活写作。本研究旨在重新解读这些项目——诺斯作为旅行者、作家、艺术家和画廊制作人的作品——以他们的殖民地、知识分子和社会背景为重点。在此过程中，本研究将考察策展和史学方面的挑战，即叙述一个杰出人物的生活，同时明确地研究种族、殖民主义、阶级和性别构成她的作品及其表现的方式。该项目突出了种族、帝国和殖民劳工的问题，使诺斯的旅行成为可能，该项目将有助于对邱园的殖民遗产进行更广泛的（重新）评估，并有助于为画廊的重新诠释提供信息。该项目的研究结果将通过与非高等教育机构（如皇家地理学会（与英国地理学家研究所））的合作，帮助遗产组织更广泛地讨论如何最适当地讨论帝国主义遗产的收藏。

The reputation of Marianne North (1830-1890) rests largely on two projects completed in her final decade: the unique public gallery she established at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (designed to permanently display her botanical oil paintings and wood specimens), and her posthumously published life writing. This study aims to reinterpret these projects - North's work as a traveller, writer, artist, and gallery maker - by taking their colonial, intellectual, and social contexts as a key focus. In so doing, the study will examine the curatorial and historiographical challenges of narrating the life of a remarkable individual while at the same time engaging explicitly with the ways race, colonialism, class, and gender structured both the production of her work and its representation. In foregrounding issues of race, empire, and the colonial labour that enabled North's travels, the project will contribute to a wider (re)evaluation of Kew's colonial heritage and help inform plans for the gallery's reinterpretation. The project's findings will, through collaboration with non-HEIs such as the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), help to inform wider discussions among heritage organisations about how most appropriately to negotiate legacies of imperialism in their collections.