(a note on content)
Some of the stories in the exhibition feature racist, ableist, and/or homophobic medical terms which are offensive. As curators and writers of this exhibition, we have done our best to use these terms responsibly, with a view to appropriately contextualising and exploring these ideas and their history, and encouraging continuing critical thought in the interests of positive social change in the future.
While trying to address these issues squarely, we are also aware that we may ourselves use racist and ableist language naively or in error. As such, we welcome corrections and suggestions for improving the language used here, and encourage you to get in touch with us to help us learn and improve the language of the exhibition if you feel we have done so. The exhibition also features images of pathology specimens which include human organs.
The construction of ideas of racial difference and associated hierarchies of ability and intelligence were central to eugenics.
The construction of ideas of racial difference and associated hierarchies of ability and intelligence were central to eugenics. In Hereditary Genius (1869), Galton developed a graduated ranking of the relative intelligence, ability and general “worth” of human populations. In doing so, he drew in part on his experiences in South West Africa (now Namibia) during the 1850s, where he made observations of indigenous people, and he claimed his later observations of the statistical evidence which he suggested demonstrated that “eminence” and inherent intellectual ability ran in families, and was thus biologically determined. Galton’s distinctions between the abilities of “savages” and “civilised” peoples were elaborated on by anthropologists and archaeologists such as Herbert Spencer, Henry Morgan and E.B. Tylor, who posited theories of social or cultural evolution in which societies advanced through fixed cultural and technological stages. They further suggested that different groups of people had different capacities which accelerated or slowed their passage through these stages. While the idea of culture as a non-hierarchical replacement for race and a way of understanding human variation became increasingly important throughout the early- to mid-twentieth century in anthropology and archaeology, it has been argued that the "culture" concept never really quite shook itself free from its origin in such racial hierarchies, and that it was also deployed in broader programmes of liberal and illiberal government (see Bennett et al 2017).
These objects show some of the ways in which race was produced, graduated and ranked through material and discursive processes relating to different emerging disciplinary practices in the historical, social and biological sciences, and their respective field and laboratory collecting and recording practices.
Works cited
Bennett, Tony., Cameron, Fiona., Dias, Nelia., Dibley, Ben., Harrison, Rodney., Jacknis, Ira., and McCarthy, Conal. 2017. Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums, and Liberal Government. Durham: Duke University Press.
Galton, Francis. 1869. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences. London: MacMillan Publishers.
LDUGC-040ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Hair Colour Gauge, UCL Science Collections (Galton Collection), 1905.
Far too often we avert our eyes and ears from unpleasant history. Claim it long gone or relegate it to distant lands is much more palatable than....
LDUAC-UCL1623ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Ceramic head, “Ceramic figurine, head of an African male”, Institute of Archaeology Collections, date of manufacture unknown, collected early 20th Century.
This figurine is from the Hellenistic period and was collected by Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson in the early 20th Century....
LDUCZ-Z490ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Mounted Taxidermy Orangutan, Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, 1917
This taxidermied juvenile male Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) owned by the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College....
LDUCE-UC33278ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Racial ‘type’ head from Memphis, Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, date of manufacture unknown, purchased or excavated early 20th century.
The racial ‘type’ head from Memphis, is a terracotta statue head, possibly made from Nile Silt clay (Ashton, 2003, p.188) and....
LDUEC-I.0035ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Southern African Beaded Girdle, UCL Ethnography Collections, late 19th/early 20th century.
How does the field of anthropology, particularly the act of collection of an object, put into the context of an ethnographic collection....
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