Conal McCarthyVictoria University of Wellington · Museum and heritage studies
Conal McCarthy
PhD
Professor and Director, Museum and heritage studies programme
About
65
Publications
8,667
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468
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am an interdisciplinary scholar, working in museum studies and related fields, who explores issues and themes which are articulated at the intersection of museums, heritage, and public culture. I am working on two books, an edited handbook with Palgrave on cultural heritage in Aotearoa NZ, and one with Nebraska University Press on the Maori engagement with museum anthropology in the early 20th C. I am also co-editing a special issue of the journal Humanities Research on museums and archives.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
January 2005 - July 2021
Position
- Professor
Description
- Programme Director, Museum and heritage studies programme
June 2003 - January 2005
Publications
Publications (65)
The coauthors of this theoretically innovative work explore the relationships among anthropological fieldwork, museum collecting and display, and social governance in the early twentieth century in Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, and the United States. With case studies ranging from the Musée de l'Homme's 1930s fieldwork missions in French...
Despite their reputation for stasis and fixity, museums are about change and transformation. What can we learn from the history of New Zealand museums about the study of museum history? This article considers the lessons we can glean from New Zealand museums in the colonial period. It surveys recent theories about history, social change and museums...
25th ICOM General Conference. International Conference Center, Kyoto, Japan, 1–7 September 2019 by Sheila K. Hoffman
Interaction, Integration, and Flow. Researching the Museum in the Global Contemporary, Shaanxi Normal University, Xian, 15–20 September 2019 by Conal McCarthy
‘Amui ‘i Mu’a: Ancient Futures Conference. Tanoa International Dateline Ho...
As museums continue to change in the twenty-first century, the ‘figure of the curator’ is in flux. This introduction explores how curating globally is being (re)conceptualised through engagement with Indigenous people in the Pacific, and collections and exhibitions in Euro-American institutions. It provides an overview of this book, which brings to...
This volume argues that curatorship may be ‘recalled’ and remade through collaborative relationships with communities leading to experiments in curatorial theory and practice. What can museums of ethnography in the Americas and Europe learn from the experience of nations where distinctive forms of Indigenous museology are emerging and reshaping the...
What is the future of curatorial practice? How can the relationships between Indigenous people in the Pacific, collections in Euro-American institutions, and curatorial knowledge in museums globally be (re)conceptualised in reciprocal and symmetrical ways? Is there an ideal model, a ‘curatopia,’ whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia, which ca...
The papers in this issue trace a particular set of Māori interventions in anthropology, arts, museums and heritage in the early twentieth century and consider their implications for iwi ‘tribal communities’, development and environmental management today. They follow Apirana Ngata, Te Rangihīroa (Peter Buck) and some of their Māori and Pākehā (Euro...
In 1923 Apirana Ngata set up the Board of Maori Ethnological Research under Section 9 of the Native Land Amendment and Native Land Claims Adjustment Act. The purpose of the Board, also known as Te Poari Whakapapa, was the “study and investigation of the ancient arts and crafts, language, customs, history, tradition, and antiquities of the Maori and...
While a great deal of attention has been paid to museum visit data in the last few decades, very little is known about long-term trends. This article examines the distinctive history of museum visits in Australasia through a comparative study of eight key institutions from across the region. Archival research was undertaken at each institution to c...
A commissioned history of the national museum.
The following conversation took place during the Critical Heritage Studies conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 6 June 2012. The initial idea and topic was suggested by Kylie Message, the session was chaired by Conal McCarthy, and the recording was transcribed by Jennifer Walklate and edited by Conal McCarthy and Jennifer Walklate. © 2019 selection...
This article sets out to globalize Māori museology through mana taonga, a concept that is historically grounded and articulated in contemporary museum practice. Mana taonga can be used to reconceptualize issues of engagement, knowledge, and virtuality by exploring ways in which the mutual, asymmetrical relations underpinning global, scientific enta...
This chapter focuses on New Zealand’s Pacific colonies of the Cook Islands and Sāmoa, drawing on material culture studies and actor network theory to trace the relations between scientific activities and colonial governmentality. The focus here is on the collaboration and critical engagement of Māori politicians Māui Pōmare and Āpirana Ngata with g...
See my blog for more information about this book including an overview of contents, and outlines of chapters:
http://museumpractice.wordpress.com/
Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press] concept of immutable combinable mobiles to illustrate how Henry Devenish Skinner, ethnologist and anthropology lecturer at the Otago Museum and University sought to form and shape Māori identity, history, culture and populations as subjects of liberal government. It does this through an exploration...
The papers selected for this special issue of Museum and Society have their beginnings in the workshop, ‘Colonial Governmentalities’, held in late October 2012 and hosted by the Institute of Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, followed by the seminar ‘Reassembling the material,’ hosted by the Museum and Heritage Studies programmes at...
In 1929, Āpirana Ngata published an article titled “Anthropology and the government of native races in the Pacific”. This would appear to confirm the link between anthropology and the rule of indigenous populations in New Zealand and its Pacific empire, but the evidence presented in this article suggests a more complex situation. This paper examine...
In this short communcation, two museological discourses are compared and scrutinized, the one from the Peruvian National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History and the one from the Peruvian National Museum of Culture.
Bourdieu wrote that the sacralisation of art serves to consecrate the social order by ‘enabling educated people to believe in barbarism’ and persuading ‘the barbarians of their own barbarity’. But what about the ‘primitive’ art now accepted within the canon of western art? Do the ‘rules of art’ apply to the recent success of Maori art or do Maori a...
This article considers the connections between museum collections and communities, and explores the ways in which this relationship has been transformed by recourse to ancestral Māori culture in New Zealand museums. Two case studies illustrate the application of the Indigenous concept of mana taonga at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa an...
What relationship has the university subject of museum studies had with the museum sector? It is often claimed that there is an oversupply of graduates in museum studies ill-equipped to work in museums, an issue that reveals tensions between understandings of academic study and practical experience. This article addresses these tensions between mus...
Despite the recent growth of virtual museums, we lack detailed research on the intersection of museums and new media. This study presents the results of a survey of websites of New Zealand museums and heritage organisations using an idealised model of the basic functionality required in a well-defined professional sector. When this empirical model...
On the cover of Museum Frictions, we see a group of tourists looking at a monument in the New Mexico desert. This nondescript stone cairn marks the spot where the first atomic explosion took place at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945. It is being photographed by a group of people who look Japanese, but might be Native American. They look at us looking at th...
This article first looks at the relationship between museums and art galleries and their potential audiences and, in particular, the under-represented sector of young visitors. It examines the main findings from the limited research available on young visitors, and goes on to discuss theories delineating the differences between the cultures, identi...
This article first looks at the relationship between museums and art galleries and their potential audiences and, in particular, the under-represented sector of young visitors. It examines the main findings from the limited research available on young visitors, and goes on to discuss theories delineating the differences between the cultures, identi...
Projects
Projects (4)
This project led by Tony Bennett at Western Sydney University 2010-14 culminated in the DUP book Collecting, ordering, governing (2017).
A 3 year research project funded by Marsden (Royal Society of NZ) which explores the engagement of Maori leaders in the early 20th C NZ with western science, technology and heritage. It focuses on the Dominion Museum ethnological expeditions 1919-23 which included James Macdonald, Elsdon Best, Peter Buck, Apirana Ngata, and others, and seeks to reassemble the material from this research scattered amongst various public collections and reconnect with tribal communities today.
Launch book July 29 2017
