Franz Boas & Exhibits Response

In Jacknis' writing about The Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology, the reader is introduced to Franz Boas’s (the "Father of American Anthropology") experience in the museum setting, as well as the problems and constraints between the convergence of anthropology with the topics of classification, capital, entertainment, and presentation.

In the discussion of museum classification, Boas challenged the Smithsonian's curator for ethnology, Otis T. Mason, on the idea of how cultural material artifacts should be organized. Mason organized the artifacts by function or level of technology, under the belief that the objects’ form was a direct reflection of the evolutionary state of the culture in which they were created. Boas argued, however, that the artifact’s form was a mere reflection of circumstance and usage, devoid of heavy reliance on ‘evolutionary process.’ He argued that, “though like causes have like effects, like effects have not like causes,” reinforcing the idea that just because two objects are similar in form, does not indicate they are of similar context or evolutionary state. As the writing cycles through the many problems Boas finds within the museum setting, it becomes apparent that the institution of the museum is guilty of favoring concepts like capital, entertainment, and incomplete research over heavy anthropological assesment. Ultimately, Boas leaves his position at the museum, after an installation of the Peruvian collection remained in the museum “for a long time without any approach to adequate classification, instructive labeling, or creditable exhibition.”

After reading this writing, I wonder how often museums and like institutions question and act on the role of modern anthropology in terms of their methods of presentation, classification, and organization.