The Cuming Museum 89 FIG. 32 (below): Detail of club with incised decoration. Guyana. Before 1839. Wood. L: 32 cm. Cuming Museum, C3170. Collected by Robert Schomburgk between 1835 and 1839. FIG. 31 (below): Poster for the exhibition of material from Guyana collected by Robert Schomburgk during the Royal Geographical Society Expedition, 1838–1839. Courtesy of the Cuming Museum. More recently, in March 2013 a fi re seriously damaged the museum building. Fortunately, the damage to the ethnographic collection was minimal, but the museum is once again closed and the collection in storage. Plans for a new building are in the early stages. The Southwark Council is taking the opportunity the unfortunate occurrence has offered to rethink its plans for the collection, and these include a complete change of the staff responsible for it. A new curator, Judy Aitken, is in place and there are plans for a new heritage manager, collections offi cer, and research and fundraising offi cer. It is hoped the new building and exhibition galleries will reopen in 2019 and this extraordinary collection will be able to emerge from obscurity and enthrall a wider public in its newly built home. FURTHER READING Humphrey, Stephen. An Introduction to the Cuming Family and the Cuming Museum, London: Borough of Southwark, 2002. Hyacinth, Bryn. The Ethnographic Collection at the Cuming Museum, London: Cuming Museum, 2006. Kaeppler, Adrienne L. Holophusicon: The Leverian Museum: An Eighteenth- Century English Institution of Science, Curiosity, and Art, Altenstadt: ZKF Publishers, 2011. FIG. 30 (left): Girl’s beaded apron. Guyana. Before 1839. Beads, fi ber. Cuming Museum, C9493. Collected by Robert Schomburgk between 1835 and 1839.
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