FEATURE In 1910, George Byron Gordon, curator of the department 102 of General Ethnology and American Archeology since 1903, was appointed director of the museum. With the help of Henry Usher Hall, curator of the ethnographic collections, during the seventeen years of his directorship he extensively enhanced the African collection, acquiring thousands of works. To do so, he relied on a strategy unique among museums at the time in that the works were acquired by purchase, largely drawing upon two distinct levels of the art market: European ethnographica vendors on the one hand and American and European art dealers on the other. In a statement published as a preface in many issues of the institution’s quarterly publication, The Museum Journal, which was issued from 1910 onward, Gordon described “The Purposes of the University Museum”5 with bullet points that included: -To assemble collections that will illustrate the achievements of Mankind in the field of Art, and to cherish and preserve this heritage from the Past. -To gather and preserve the early Arts and ancient Lore handed down by the vanishing races of Mankind. -To illustrate the unity of all races and the diversity of their Art, to inculcate a better and more sympathetic understanding of all peoples and to afford a just measure of the contribution that each has made to Civilization. -To encourage the Arts; and to demonstrate the debt that Civilization owes to the Artist and to the Craftsman. While highlighting two of Penn Museum’s specificities— its educational mission and its humanist perspective, which embraced a high regard for the arts, artists, and craftsmen—this statement firmly asserts the museum’s sophisticated place within the larger context of the development of ethnographic museums during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the birth and growth of the market for ethnographica was tightly intertwined with the development of anthropological science and of ethnographic museums. Throughout Europe, newly built ethnographic museums started competing for the acquisition of ethnographic material. Such objects were seen as the last remaining traces of times past and disappearing cultures as a consequence of colonial expansion, but little attention was given to the aesthetic qualities of the objects they were acquiring. The sense of urgency this created led museums to try to “collect everything.”6 With such high demand, ethnographica shops flourished and prices escalated. Museums became the main protagonists in the development of the market for African artifacts. They were not only the main buyers but also nourished the market. Not satisfied to be dependent on dealers, some museums sponsored their own collecting expeditions. Among the objects they brought back, those considered to be “duplicates” were sold to intermediaries, who then injected them back into the market. Among the most influential of these dealers, whose names are found in the archival records of ethnographic museums throughout Germany, France, England, and even the United States, are William O. Oldman and William D. Webster in England; the firm J. F. G. Umlauff in Hamburg, Germany; and Henri Pareyn in Antwerp, Belgium. These individuals, who can be seen as wholesale sellers, used commercial practices that, Internet aside, do not diverge much from today’s, particularly in their extensive use of striking photographic images and their wideranging reach through the mailing of illustrated catalogs. The year 1912 was an important turning point for the African acquisitions at the Penn Museum, as it began purchasing large collections of African works from two of these European vendors (fig. 1), Oldman and Umlauff. W. O. Oldman7 was the first to reach out to the Penn Museum in 1907 with an offer of Oceanic material. An early photograph taken between 1908 and 1911 shows Oldman surrounded by a group of works from New Caledonia (fig. 2). The hand numbering added to the photograph leaves no doubt as to its commercial purpose, since the numbers certainly referenced an accompanying price list. From 1907 until his retirement in 1927, Oldman sent one list a month to the museum promoting items available for sale. At first simple typed lists, they later became enhanced with photographs. 8 In February 1912, shortly after the sale of three Yoruba epa masks to the museum, Oldman approached Gordon with a group of 2,000 objects. In a letter, the dealer presented this as a “complete” collection from across the entire continent that avoided “duplicates.” Within this group were the first Congolese objects purchased by the Penn Museum from Oldman. While weapons, currencies, and objects of daily use are predominant in this collection, a new interest appears for works with important political and religious connotations (figs. 3 and 5). This tendency would be continued throughout the following decade of acquisition. In 1912, Gordon was also approached by the Hamburg based firm J. F. G. Umlauff.9 Founded in 1868, this firm originally sold everything that could be bought from
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