John M. MacKenzie’s Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities is a hugely detailed exploration of colonial museums that narrates their establishment during the nineteenth century in Canada, South Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, while at the same time interrogating their purposes in communicating the messages and global reach of the power of the British Empire. The book also points to the changes in political influence and organization that the museum institution reflected and was subject to during the shift and ultimate demise of British colonial power that stretched into the twentieth century.

MacKenzie’s exemplary and exhaustive accounts of the establishment of institutions as diverse as the South African Museum in Cape Town, the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, and the War Memorial Museum in Auckland provide fascinating insights into the central sociopolitical notions behind the construction of their collections of ethnographical and natural history materials, and also the power of these early museum institutions and their intellectual elites. High-minded ambitions for the museum and its visitors were still subject to the pervasive influence of an empire ruling at a distance but still very much in control. The ties to that relationship were reflected for many years in the shape of their collections. MacKenzie shows how the construction of their collections, when combined with some very pragmatic commercial concerns, resulted in museums becoming significant teaching and instructional archives while at the same time providing plenty of evidence of the abundance of natural resources to explorers and investors in the British colonies. Museums in this context occupied positions of considerable power and influence throughout many social and political spheres. The examination of the architecture of these institutions is also particularly revealing in the extent to which they were often imitative of the archetypal European museum building’s composition, materials, and configuration. This tie to European and British academies was also clear in the contribution colonial museums made to the intellectual life of their locations. MacKenzie details the interrelationship that museums developed with scientific thought and investigation through their collections and research, as well as some of the more suspect activities associated with the fields of anthropology and archaeology in their acquisition of human and natural history materials. At the same time he outlines their ties to universities and other professional bodies throughout the globe and the importance of the evidence they were providing to them for research and display purposes. The trans-global nature of the museum collection and the constant exchange of materials between institutions are also well documented here with particularly interesting accounts of the export of cultural artifacts and botanic materials back to Britain for inclusion in their own major museums and arboretum.

MacKenzie explores how these early colonial museum collections were primarily composed of natural history, geological and ethnographic specimens, with the concentration on human culture and history eventually becoming the focus in many instances. This focus also led to the introduction of some of the more questionable investigations into race through the acquisition of human remains. Many museums are now in the process of identifying such remains and making arrangements for them to be repatriated and properly buried. Museums and Empire is also a comprehensive account of the development of the early museum display and the significance of the exhibition materials. The tendency to emulate the “cabinet of curiosities” approach to displays is slowly overtaken by a more structured and didactic, and, with the advent of the “diorama,” more entertaining exhibit. Sadly the methods by which the materials on display were acquired were not always quite so civilized, and MacKenzie’s accounts of this give further insights into the “pioneer” mentality of early museum founders.

In addition, MacKenzie examines the museum’s gradual transformation into a fully-fledged center of research expertise and education, useful as a place of instruction and recreation. His accounts of the recruitment and activities of the museum directors and boards of trustees are accompanied by an analysis of the foundation of the museum profession with its keepers, curators, and conservators in place to guide and govern acquisitions and display policies. He provides powerful insights into the lengths to which early museum directors and founders went to acquire exhibits and the effects of their activities as “cultural pioneers.”

The colonial museum in philanthropic mode, however, continued to address the education and civilization of the lower classes, much as its British counterparts did, while at the same time it sought to be an instrument of political power and indicative of mature government. As each of the colonies MacKenzie discusses grew and prospered, the establishment of museum institutions confirmed their global significance and position. The establishment of a museum, a library, or an art gallery was symbolic of a place having status and importance economically, socially, and culturally. They were seen to be both civilized and capable of civilizing, while at the same time presenting access to “civilization.”

That something of the colonial museum’s legacy still remains in the collections, displays, and buildings of museums worldwide is without doubt. However, it is clear that in many cases they have been able to commemorate colonial power and authority without celebrating it, and to move on to a new understanding of the museum, its collections, and its purpose for contemporary audiences. Museums and Empire is an exceptional book, and it is hard to do justice to its enormous scope, depth of study, and complete erudition. This text should be on the reading list of every Museum Studies course.

Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations presents a strong and truly representative survey of the current thinking in museums, with an emphasis on the main issues of audience, access, interpretation, and participation. The question of how the contemporary museum can fulfill its remit to its audiences is thoroughly addressed. This collection of essays tackles the main issues and debates within museums today that surround identifying and up to a point quantifying the nature of the experience visitors have of objects and material artifacts. The book’s various sections outline the basis of the museum in its objects, in the forms with which it engages its audiences, and in the interpretations it makes available to them. These ideas also reveal the many functions of the collection and the purposes of the museum visit. Collectively providing a well-rounded overview of the range of engagement activities found in the contemporary museum, each of the sections entails a detailed examination of the interpretation of objects, audience interaction, aesthetic experience, and museum effects. The sensory and perceptual aspects of the museum experience are also presented in a particularly insightful set of observations that expose the power of the material nature of the object.

This view of museum practice takes the perspectives of the curator, museum educator, visitor, researcher, and artist. The methods employed in the retelling of history through collections and the recording of histories (plural) through objects have been instrumental in placing participation at the center of these debates. Collections are exposed to scrutiny in these processes with the questions of collecting for whom and with what narrative in mind central to the discussion. The diverse communities and many constituencies found in any museum audience each have agendas that can be located within the collection and its presentation. Smaller, local museums are discovering ways to involve these constituencies in both the creation and interpretation of their collections. As Sandra Dudley, the book’s editor, points out in her introduction, a move toward handling objects and visible storage has enabled a shift away from textual interpretation and the privileging of text over the physical experience of actual objects.

In the essay “Touching the Buddha: Encounters with a Charismatic Object,” Christopher Wingfield examines points of contact that visitors may use to construct experiences of religious icons. This also highlights the ways in which many institutions have begun to address the place of religious icons in their collections, their methods of display, and modes of interpretation. Wingfield observes the fascination and urge to touch experienced by visitors when viewing the Sultanganj Buddha in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. This need for sensory experience of the object and its powerful presence is encouraged further in the museum, a context far removed from the original circumstances and intended setting of the object, by the celebration of the Vesakh or “Buddha Day” during which visitors may worship or simply observe the object. This approach to revering an object provides insight into new functions for the municipal museum and its unique connections with audiences constructed through objects in the institution’s collection.

In “Making Meaning Beyond Display,” Chris Dorsett shows how curatorial methods such as “visible storage” expose the good, and sometimes the not-so-good, resources museums hold in their collections. He also argues that this may be a surprisingly successful vehicle to provide access to and illuminate the substance of many museums’ reserve collections. The reserve collection is so often the preserve of scholars and curators that it can be problematic when exposed to a general public who may be unaware of its significance or subtleties. The urge to display objects without regard for their meaning can be usefully subverted when they are presented in a “raw” state divested of the authority of the curator’s hand.

In “Dreams and Wishes: The Multi-Sensory Museum Space,” issues of aesthetic experience are also addressed as Viv Golding shows how varied and subjective responses to objects allow meanings to be constructed from interaction with collections. Handling objects, and in particular the tactile experience, intensifies the relationship with the object and by virtue of that further intensifies its significance and meaning. In addition, it is decisive in constructing cross-cultural communication. Golding shows how this in-depth examination of the object can be an important factor in increasing learning and oral engagement in particular.

“Engaging the Material World: Object Knowledge and Australian Journeys” by Kristen Wehner and Martha Sear exposes the place of the object in establishing a shared experience and narrative across time and history. The ethnographical approach so familiar from colonial institutions detailed in Museums and Empire has been reclaimed to be more representative and to enable new understandings of objects and their histories in a transnational context. Each object on display is active in recounting and framing the historical moment, while proclaiming an understanding of identity and social history. Furthermore, the strategies utilized to transmit some sense of the “agency” of objects are exemplary of a museum practice that understands the object as the basis for social and cultural formation.

Overall these essays form a thoroughgoing examination of current curatorial and education practice in museums. They also represent a significant insight into the development of the audience’s role in remaking an understanding of material engagement in galleries and museums today. As important contributions to Museum Studies in the realm of objects and their presentation, each of these essays illuminates an invigorated museum space that uses the object as a vehicle of expression, self-realization, history, and identity.

The conjunction of these two books provides an opportunity to interrogate the practices and principles developed in museums from their first colonial contexts to their current incarnations. A useful juxtaposition, these texts illuminate the broad spectrum of museum activity while at the same time elaborating the challenges that this has posed to an understanding of material artifacts and their place within culture. In addition both texts provide clear evidence of the changing purpose of the museum. In each case the museum is presented as a place of transformation, learning, and political power. Each illuminates a significant stage in the history of the development of the museum and its functions, while at the same time articulating the problems associated with their newly developed roles. Museums have grown from significant political and cultural institutions, emblematic of powerful industrial forces, to their present post-industrial incarnations, situated in many cases inside the very same buildings from which their economic power first emanated, and representative of a new social order. In them can be seen the change in contemporary approaches to the interpretation and display of artifacts and their histories at the same time that the new work of museums to explain and explore the colonial past and museum heritage begins to emerge.

The context of the museum has never been simple. In Museums and Empire and Museum Materialities readers are treated to a deeper understanding of these institutions’ challenges and the means by which they have realized their potentials. Both books are exemplary in their explanation of the composition of the museum and the artifacts in its collections, along with its audiences and purposes, and both are significant contributions to scholarship in the field.