Students are forbidden to access the attics and basements of many houses on campus that now serve as classrooms and offices. You may have asked yourself: What’s in these restricted spaces?

This semester, we were 5 out of 14 students who discovered the answer to this question for one building in particular: the Anthropology Department Offices, located at 281 High St. We were enrolled in “Thinking with Objects: Processing a Museum Collection from Southern Africa” (HIST364)—a course taught by Associate Professor of English Lily Saint and Associate Professor of History Laura Ann Twagira—and worked with a collection of objects from the Bushmen of Namibia that had been stored away in the building’s attic for decades. As students, we identified, cataloged, researched, and found methods to store the objects, detailing the damage and neglect they underwent during the time that they were improperly stored in the building. This class covered one part of a history of neglect for collections and facilities at the University, culminating in an effort to do justice to these previously forgotten objects and the stories they tell.

The Namibian objects that the class examined were originally sent to the University by a singular missionary, J.M. Swanepoel. Swanepoel shipped two boxes filled with objects collected in southern Africa to Emeritus Professor of History Richard H. Elphick in 1976. While Swanepoel is still alive and currently in Namibia, not much is known about him except that he was a missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church in the 1970s. He was interested in research on Bushmen history and culture but was unable to access such research because of international restrictions during the Apartheid regime. Swanepoel sent the objects to Elphick in return for books and articles about the Bushmen. While little is known about why Swanepoel collected these specific items or when he began his collection, he is part of the University’s larger history of engagement with missionary work, particularly in Africa. 

In 1834, a missionary organization was established at the University as part of its relationship with the Methodist Church. This organization, the Missionary Lyceum, wanted to spread Methodism around the world, and part of its work included building a mission museum in Middletown. These Methodist missionaries traveled abroad and took class field trips, where they continued to gather items to be stored and displayed at the University. Students who were a part of the Missionary Lyceum collected objects, and one particular student—the first corresponding secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Lyceum, Daniel P. Kidder—sent two letters, one in 1834 asking a reverend to send his African items and one in 1835 requesting more artifacts from missionaries. By 1870, the Lyceum had collected a large number of items from around the world, which they donated to the University.  

Many of these objects became the start of the Wesleyan Museum in Judd Hall, which opened in 1871. Over time, the collection expanded to more than 100,000 items related to natural history or ethnology that were donated by Methodist missionaries, local collectors, alumni, and faculty, or transferred from other institutions. This museum was located on the top two floors of Judd Hall and was used for research and teaching until it closed in 1957 to make room for laboratories. Upon closure, the items were either transferred to other institutions, given to faculty for educational use, or haphazardly stored in tunnels and attics. 

Items from the museum collections, including Liberian objects, were stored in poor conditions in the tunnel systems that run beneath campus. Some were damaged by unsuitable conditions, including moisture, while others were stolen or vandalized beyond repair. Many of the larger objects, including the two-story-tall cast of a giant ground sloth, are completely unaccounted for. While this was supposed to be temporary storage, the collections were left underground for at least 13 years. When they surfaced again, the natural historical objects went into the Joe Webb Peoples Museum, and the cultural objects became the Archaeology & Anthropology Collections. 

Though the Namibian objects that HIST364 researched were never part of the Wesleyan Museum, they are a poignant example of the University’s neglect of objects, especially those from Africa. After Swanepoel sent them to the University in 1976, they were primarily stored in the attic of the Anthropology building. There, they were left completely exposed to the elements in cardboard boxes without lids. The items became folded, bent, and filled with bugs. They were not properly stored or examined until this semester, 47 years after they arrived at the University.

When first uncovered, these objects exhibited varying types of damage. Archaeology Collections Manager/Repatriation Coordinator and Adjunct Professor of Archaeology Wendi Field Murray, who specializes in the care of cultural objects, worked with the classes to create condition reports that officially documented the state of each object. The next step was to fully catalog the items, a process that included recording measurements, materials, historical and cultural context, and condition. Originally having been folded, stacked, wrapped in non-archival plastic, and kept in acidic, degrading cardboard boxes, the collection of objects from southern Africa was in dire need of modern archival storage solutions. 

Twagira, Saint, and Murray stand at the forefront of the endeavor to foster better care for African objects at the University, spearheading the unveiling of Wesleyan’s African material culture archives. The genesis of the archival project started last year as a collaboration between African Studies and the Wesleyan Library.  

“When Professor Saint and I learned that Wesleyan had a collection of 19th-century objects from Liberia, we knew that we needed to learn what other African objects were on campus and that a project on African material culture was needed,” Twagira said. “We were also excited to work with Professor Murray in the AAC, who had the expertise to help us assess the condition of these objects and how best to advocate for their care.” 

Where did the collection come from? What were the objects actually used for? In 2019, Elphick shared the collection of objects that were stored in the attic of the Anthropology building with Twagira, who began working with Saint and Murray. In the course of their research, Saint and Twagira decided students would be integral to this exploration. 

“We need to know what African objects are on campus before we can discuss the best future for all of this material,” Twagira said. “Also, it’s a way to make Africa more visible on campus.” 

Throughout the class, students conducted firsthand assessments of the objects as well as in-depth research to draw out possible conclusions about the histories of this collection. Take one of the beaded objects with a geometric design, for instance. Uncovered were comparisons to rock carvings from the area and other geometric designs found by anthropologists, which hinted that they might represent the tracks of a puff adder, a highly venomous snake found in southern Africa. 

Some objects were easily interpretable. The dongu—a type of lamellophone, an array of metal keys mounted on a rectangular wooden board—is an instrument in the collection that was first recorded in Tsumkwe, Namibia in 1961. Despite their physical differences, both the beaded object and the dongu, like many of the objects, have great emotional importance for the Bushman people, an aspect of material culture that anthropologists, cultural historians, and curators have consistently overlooked. 

The dongu, for example, is often accompanied by song. One resident at Nyae Nyae, a reserve in Namibia, told anthropologists that he often sang of his childhood illness and the death of his mother as he played the dongu. Emotional power is also imbued in objects with less clear functionality. Typical designs featured on beaded objects were noted to be derived from personal experiences. These may represent animals, natural objects, or any other kinds of features in the environment. Not all Bushmen create beadwork with specific traditional motifs in mind; some simply sew their thoughts or create new designs. The research the class has conducted throughout the semester has given valuable insight into the characteristics and origins of the collection’s objects. Although it has been challenging to fully understand them, we have made some progress nonetheless. 

Ethics were a cornerstone of the class’s mission and were discussed at length throughout the semester. The professors emphasized the ethical responsibility of handling cultural belongings and frequently reflected on the collection’s future and its connection to the communities from which it originated.

“Given the colonial history of museums and museum collecting, I do not think you can extricate discussions of ethics from museum work,” Murray wrote in an email to The Argus. “I am thinking about ethics constantly and at different scales—big-picture planning for the collection and my teaching, but also at the scale of my daily work and language—from how I prioritize my to-do list for the day, to how I allocate my budget, to which objects I select for a class visit. In addition to how we can think more expansively about repatriation, I also think a lot about how we acquired objects, how we name/describe them in the catalog, how to provide culturally informed care for them, and how we can make them more accessible.” 

As for the next step with this particular collection, Twagira envisions many different possibilities.

“If we are going to reach out to anyone in Namibia, we need to know who might have been the original owners or creators of these materials,” Twagira said. “Otherwise, it would be difficult to move forward in discussing the ethical future of this collection. We had to start researching. I had in my mind that there [would] be a potential range of possible futures for this collection, including a conversation with the community where [the objects] were made and collected from and that might also involve repatriation. What that future is depends on what that community itself wants. Teaching with these objects could also be part of their future.” 

The future of these objects remains to be seen. The students are working with Olin Library on a possible exhibition in the spring, and are putting together extensive reports that would aid in future repatriation efforts or other avenues for inclusive, culturally informed care. 

Imogen Shearmur can be reached at ishearmur@wesleyan.edu.  

Adrian Peoples can be reached at apeoples@wesleyan.edu.  

Daniel Holt can be reached at dsholt@wesleyan.edu. 

Terra Hoyt can be reached at thoyt@wesleyan.edu. 

Katherine LoCascio can be reached at klocascio@wesleyan.edu.