HOME /

Blog

Storytelling in Archival Contexts

John Marshall filming ≠Toma throwing an assegai
Display Title: [No folder title]: John Marshall filming ≠Toma throwing an assegai (print is a cropped image) 2001.29.656

 

The Marshall Family Archives at the Peabody Museum is rich with stories. The collection as a whole tells us about a family that pushed the boundaries of anthropological research in taking eight expeditions into the Kalahari Desert of South West Africa from 1950 to 1961, intending to document people – primarily the Ju/’hoansi – who were on the brink of transitioning from living as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers to being settled on a reserve. The images in the collection vividly tell stories about the Ju/’hoansi and other Kalahari peoples in what is now Namibia, Botswana, and Angola. As archivists, our goal is to uncover and convey the many stories buried within the Marshall Family Archives through the processes of cataloging and digitization.

 

... Read more about Storytelling in Archival Contexts

The Marshall IMLS Grant and Resources for Reparative Description

Woman and her daughter standing, with Lorna Marshall squatting next to them, on Fritz Metzger's farm
Woman and her daughter standing, with Lorna Marshall squatting next to them, on Fritz Metzger's farm
2001.29.2352
 

Describing archival collections from marginalized and oppressed communities is hard work for archivists. It’s emotional and triggering when we are confronted with racist ideologies baked into the language used in historic materials, especially for those of us who identify with marginalized groups we see in the collections. Reparative description is the practice of deciding how to use language to accurately describe the people and history of a collection without perpetuating harm and how to use language to accurately describe and inform users.

... Read more about The Marshall IMLS Grant and Resources for Reparative Description

Rewriting the Past: The Problem of Historic Language in Museum Collections

Folder of photographs sitting on a desk
Print from the Marshall Family Archives
≠Toma (Khuan//a's son) holding an axe
2001.29.28859
 

The Marshall Family Archives Digitization Project is one of the Peabody Museum’s most ambitious digitization projects to date. With generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the project will make the entire Marshall Family Collection digitally available, creating over 50,000 new media files from the negatives, prints, slides, stereoscopic transparencies, and paper records.... Read more about Rewriting the Past: The Problem of Historic Language in Museum Collections

Chac Mool installation

Plaster statue of reclining figure
Mayan Chac Mool, 92-50-20/C1099 


This plaster cast is a model of a Chac Mool statue originally found at the Post-Classic Maya site of Chichen Itza in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Along with approximately one thousand other casts in the collection, this one was created in the late 19th century and was on display at the museum until the mid-1980s.... Read more about Chac Mool installation

Marshall Family Archives Digitization Project

Group of people standing outside talking
//Kushay telling Laurence, Ledimo, and John that //Ao has gone to the farms, 2001.29.621


In June of 1950, Laurence K. Marshall, former chairperson of Raytheon Company, and his 17-year-old son John trekked into the deserts of Southern Africa seeking the famed “Lost City of the Kalahari.” They did not find a lost city, but this expedition began a life-long relationship between the Marshall Family and people of the Kalahari Desert. Ten years, eight expeditions, and close to 40,000 images resulted in one of the most significant anthropological field projects of the twentieth century.... Read more about Marshall Family Archives Digitization Project

Inman Portrait Collections

Young woman standing next to a painted portrait
Jaidyn Probst with a portrait of Rant-che-wai-me (Female Flying Pigeon), Iowa. 82-51-10/57030

 

A guest blog post from Jaidyn Probst, a second year Harvard student and member of the Lower Sioux Indian community. Jaidyn is a concentrator in Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology who worked with the Peabody remotely this past January break as a “wintern.” The Arts & Museums winternship program, run by the Harvard Office of Career Services, offers students a chance to learn more about what it’s like to work in a cultural institution.... Read more about Inman Portrait Collections

Egyptian Collections Research

Desert landscape in black and white
Mesa'eed, one of the sites excavated by George Reisner and his associates. Mohammedani Ibrahim Ibrahim (expedition photographer), Mesaid, Cemetery from West, April 1, 1913, Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition photograph A886_NS


The Peabody Museum curates a collection of human skeletal remains from the Nile Valley in Egypt, most of which are from the joint Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts Boston expeditions led by George Reisner in the early 20th century. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA) holds the documentation for these expeditions, as well as the majority of the artifacts, while most of the human skeletal remains, dating from the Predynastic to the Ptolemaic period, are stewarded at the Peabody.... Read more about Egyptian Collections Research

Salt Prints Research

portrait of a seated man wearing traditional native american dress
Portrait of Wi-ga-sa-pi, 2004.1.125.33

As a research institution, the Peabody Museum hosts hundreds of research visits every year. This post from our Senior Archivist, Katherine Satriano, tells us about a past visit from Dr. Arthur McClelland of Harvard’s Center for Nanoscale Systems. Arthur visited the Peabody Museum Archives this past spring to study salted paper prints, a rare early photographic format, as part of a research project he developed with Elena Bulat of the Harvard Library’s Weissman Preservation Center.... Read more about Salt Prints Research

Conservation for Publication Photography

Headdress made of painted wood
Yukuna headdress, 53-47-30/7499


Welcome to the Peabody Museum’s conservation lab! In the lab we treat and care for objects for a variety of reasons including exhibits, loans, and publication photography. For publication photography, we work collaboratively with curators and the Associate Registrar for Rights and Reproductions to prepare objects so they can be safely and appropriately photographed for exhibit catalogs, Peabody Museum Press publications, and use in other print and digital media.... Read more about Conservation for Publication Photography