ONLINE LECTURE - Rose Taylor - Weaving Relations: Community collaboration and cross-institutional engagement with Chumash basketry

The Society for the History of Collecting 

are delighted to invite you on 

18 January 2024, 6:00 pm (GMT); 7:00 pm (CET); 1:00 pm (EST); 10:00 am (PST)

for an Online Lecture delivered by Rose Taylor

on the subject of 'Weaving Relations: Community collaboration and cross-institutional engagement with Chumash basketry'

Somolelu (Chumash brim hat) © The Trustees of the British Museum

This paper offers an example of the benefit of museums working cross-institutionally and with communities of origin. As a case study it focuses on recent collaboration with members of the Chumash community, a Native American group in Southern California, and Chumash weaving. It explores Chumash basketry collections stewarded at the British Museum, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). By comparing and contextualising these collections, the presentation will highlight how different collections were formed and the impact of such collection histories, the benefits of knowledge sharing between institutions, and how museums can better engage with communities of origin. 

SPEAKER'S BIOGRAPHY: Rose Taylor is the Curator for North America at the British Museum. She is an anthropologist and art historian specialising in Native North American material culture and museum anthropology. She has experience working with Indigenous communities in the Americas focusing on their historic and contemporary material culture and exploring issues relating to museum collecting, present day display and access, and Indigenous curatorial practices. Rose's research explores the 'social lives' of objects and the different narratives they can tell and how their meanings change over time periods and societal milieus. Rose has held research fellowships at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. and previous roles include research positions at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 

Rose's lecture will be chaired by Louise de Mello. Louise is Project Curator at the British Museum and Head of the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin America Research (SDCELAR). She is a historian and anthropologist, with a PhD from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Spain and the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil, specializing in archaeology and ethnohistory of Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant communities in Amazonia. Louise is an ATBL Transatlantic Fellow and has held further affiliations with the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, the National Museum in Brazil and the Museum of Huelva in Spain. Her experience draws from the development of community-based projects for the conservation and promotion of traditional knowledge, heritage and memory mostly in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.

*Registration for the event will close on 17th January 2024