Book Review: Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols: Ethnographic Collections and Source Communities

Abstract

In Museums, Infinity, and the Culture of Protocols: Ethnographic Collections and Source Communities, Howard Morphy expands the idea of the “universal museum” into the “infinite museum.” Because museums have stakeholders who exist around the world and into the distant future, he argues, they are mandated to perpetually preserve collections and collections access. Morphy identifies repatriation and access protocols as threats to museum mandates and the rights of future stakeholders. In this review I will restrict myself to one of several potential discussions of this work: that Morphy’s account does not take the roles of Indigenous sovereignties seriously enough, thus undermining them as bases for heritage governance. Morphy begins by reflecting on his life in museums, from his boyhood fascination with displays at the Pitt Rivers Museum to his professional roles there as a collector, curator, and anthropologist. Then, in the second and third chapters, he lays out an history of anthropological museum collecting to argue that ethnographic museums promote global appreciation for Indigenous cultures. This history, he believes, originated in colonial violence but shifted to anthropological contexts formed by Indigenous agency, partnership, and—increasingly—collaboration. In the fourth chapter, Morphy makes his case for preserving the remains of ancient Indigenous ancestors in museum collections for research. Here he outlines the implications of his “infinity perspective” for the definition and agency of stakeholder groups.1 In the case of reburial for ancestors and their grave goods, “the wish of a particular group to destroy an object may be framed as a denial of the rights of future generations to have a say in the decision and to have access to the objects themselves.”2 Morphy argues in his penultimate chapter for the importance of open access to museum collections. He sees open access as resolving the inequities of cultural gatekeeping and warns that movements toward repatriation and respecting sometimes restrictive protocols “result in the information