By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting difficult objects, from a historical and contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. The aim is to apply a critical approach to the rigidity of museums in maintaining essentially nineteenth-century ideas of collecting; and to move towards identifying priorities for collection policies in museums, which are inclusive of acquiring difficult objects. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies.

J. C. H. King writes about the art and material culture of Native North America, and is interested in wider issues of museum ethnography, cultural policy and the visual arts, and the collection of contemporary art, photography, and ephemera. He became research Keeper of Anthropology at the British Museum, in 2010. His recent publications include:Three Centuries of Woodlands Art: A Collection of Essays(European Review of Native American Studies, 2007), ed. with C.F. Feest,Provenance: Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England 17601990, with H. Waterfield (Somogy, 2006) andArctic Clothing, ed. with B. Pauksztat and R. Storrie (British Museum Press, 2005).

List of Figures

Extreme Collecting: Dealing with Difficult Objects
Graeme Were

Part I: Dificult Objects

Chapter 1.The Material Culture of Persecution: Collecting for the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum
Suzanne Bardgett

Chapter 2. Lyricism and Offence in Egyptian Archaeology Collections
Stephen Quirke

Chapter 3. Contested Human Remains
Jack Lohman

Chapter 4.Extreme or Commonplace: The Collecting of Unprovenanced Antiquities
Kathryn Walker Tubb

Chapter 5. Unfit for Society? The Case of the Galton Collection at University College London
Natasha McEnroe

Part II: Mass Produced

Chapter 6. Knowing the New
Susan Pearce

Chapter 7. T he Global Scope of Extreme Collecting: Japanese Woodblock Prints on the Internet
Richard Wilk

Chapter 8. A wkward Objects: Collecting, Deploying and Debating Relics
Jan Geisbusch

Chapter 9. Great Expectations and Modest Transactions: Art, Commodity and Collecting
Henrietta Lidchi

Part III: Extreme Matters

Chapter 10. Extremes of Collecting at the Imperial War Museum 19172009: Struggles with the Large and the Ephemeral
Paul Cornish

Chapter 11. Plastics Why Not? A Perspective from the Museum of Design in Plastics
Susan Lambert

Chapter 12. T ime Capsules as Extreme Collecting
Brian Durrans

Chapter 13. Canning Cans a Brand New Way of Looking at History
Robert Opie in conversation with J.C.H. King

Notes on Contributors
Index