Louise Tythacott
Contact Details
Email: louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk
Phone: 0161 275 3328
Room: 3.7 Mansfield Cooper
Profile
Louise is a part-time Lecturer in Museology, who teaches on the MA in Art Gallery & Museum Studies. Her research focuses on the collecting, representation and display of non-Western objects in museums, and she is particularly interested in the interpretation of Chinese material culture. Louise was awarded a first class degree in Social Anthropology with Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury (1986-9). Her post-graduate research was based at the University of Hong Kong (1990-1) where she undertook fieldwork on deity imagery and temple iconography. She holds Diplomas in written and spoken Mandarin and Cantonese.
Louise has worked in the museum field for over a decade. She began her career as a volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in 1990. In 1991 she became the curator of a private museum of Burmese textiles and the following year, an exhibitions officer at The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton (1992-1996). Among the exhibitions organised and curated during this period are 'Textiles from Burma' (1993), 'Kinyozi: The Art of African hairstyles' (1994), 'Fetishism: Visualising Power and Desire' (1995), 'Hold: Recent Work by Shirley Chubb' (1995), 'The Impossible Science of Being: Dialogues between Anthropology and Photography' (1996). In 1996 Louise took up the post of curator of ethnology, and then, later, head of ethnology, at Liverpool Museum (part of the National Museums Liverpool). She was the lead curator for a major suite of HLF-funded galleries devoted to World Cultures, which opened in 2005 - and had particular responsibilities for the Asia and Buddhism displays. She has worked at the University of Manchester since 2003.
Apart from teaching, Louise's present administrative responsibilities in the Centre for Museology include chairing the Staff-Student Liaison committee and organising the Museology research seminar series. In the past she has been Programme Director for the MA in Art Gallery & Museum Studies (2003; 2006) and Work Placement Tutor (2004-5; 2009-10).
Louise is a member of CHIMERA, an interdisciplinary research area on cultural heritage, memory. CHIMERA brings together academic staff, postdoctoral research fellows and doctoral students working in various disciplines across the University of Manchester.
Louise is also a Managing Editor of the journal Museum and Society.
The Lives of Chinese Objects
Current Research
AHRC-funded project : 'The Lives of Chinese Objects'
In 2005, the discovery of a watercolour depiction of five large Buddhist sculptures at the Great Exhibition of 1851 led to a new research project on the 'Lives of Chinese Objects'.
Louise has recently published a monograph on the biographies of the five sculptures, which are presently displayed in the World Museum Liverpool. The images originate from China's most popular pilgrimage island, Putuo, the key devotional centre for the Goddess of Compassion, Guanyin. The largest figure in the group is an almost life-size image of this deity, with 22 outstretched arms, and it dates to the early fifteenth century - as such, it is probably the oldest surviving bronze from the island. Louise visited Putuo in 2007 to interview Buddhist monks and research the origins of these sculptures.
The five statues were taken by a British soldier during the First Opium War (1839-42). After being displayed in Great Exhibition (1851) and the Crystal Palace in Sydenham (1854), the sculpture of Guanyin was exhibited in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. All five were sold for a high price at Sotheby's two years later. By the 1860s they formed part of the Joseph Mayer collection, which was donated to Liverpool in 1867. Over the years they were placed in evolutionary displays and an 'Oriental' art gallery. Louise was responsible for reinterpreting the sculptures when she worked as head of ethnology at the Liverpool Museum, though by that time they had lost all historical documentation. Three of the images were placed on display in the World Cultures Gallery in 2005.
Using the Kopytoff's (1986) notion of the biography of objects as a framework, the research charts the changing meanings ascribed to the sculptures as they pass through multiple spheres of representation. Their museological careers illustrate the complex and uneasy ways in which Chinese objects have been classified in the West, and their appropriation by a soldier in the aftermath of a brutal war raises questions about restitution.
Her book-The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display - was published by Berghahn in June 2011.
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=TythacottLives
Objects from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion
Louise's latest research project aims to identify the biographical trajectories of key objects taken during the Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1856-1860) and the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) in China. The work will be based on archival research mainly in regimental museums in the UK.
Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches
With Kostas Arvanitis, Louise organised a major international conference on Museums and Restitution at The Manchester Museum in July 2010.
Over the past years, the issue of restitution has taken on a new complexion with different practices and processes emerging. This conference was the first of its kind to examine the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions address the subject. It brought together 107 museum professionals, policy makers, consultants, academics and postgraduate students from around the world (Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Nigeria, Norway, UK and USA). The 30 presented papers were structured around 8 themes: Power, Politics Authority; Reflections on returns; Digital, visual and knowledge repatriation; Local and national power relations; Second World War spoliation; The Parthenon Marbles; Africa and India; and North America. An article exploring the conference presentations and discussions was published by Maurice Davies, Deputy Director of the Museums Association, in the Museums Journal in September 2010' 'Opening up the debate', pp 22-27. Louise and Kostas are presently editing a book, Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New approaches (Ashgate, 2012), with a selection of the conference papers.
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/museology/museumsandrestitution/
Selected publications
Books
- Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches, edited with Kostas Arvanitis, Ashgate (forthcoming, 2012)
- The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display, Oxford: Berghahn, 2011. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=TythacottLives
- Surrealism and the Exotic, London: Routledge, 2003. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415276375/
Selected articles
- 'Classifying China: shifting interpretations of Buddhist bronzes in Liverpool Museum, 1867-1997' in K.Hill (ed) Museums and biographies, Woodbridge:Boydell and Brewer Ltd, 2012
- 'Curiosity', 'Antiquity', 'Art Treasure' and 'Commodity': Collecting Buddhist Deity Figures in mid-nineteenth Century England', in Journal of the Museum Ethnographers' Group 23, 2011, pp 56-71
- 'Race on display: the 'Melanian', 'Mongolian'and 'Caucasian' galleries at Liverpool Museum (1896-1929)', in Journal of Early Popular Visual Culture, Vol.9, No.2, London and New York: Routledge, May 2011, pp 131-142
- 'The Politics of Representation in Museums', in Bates and Niles Maack (eds) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd ed., New York: Taylor Francis, 2010. pp 4230-4241
- 'Sacred Island Deities', in Apollo, Vol CLXIX, No. 563, London: Press Holdings Ltd, pp 90-97, March 2009.
- 'From the Fetish to the Specimen: the Ridyard African Collection at Liverpool Museum 1895-1916' in Shelton, (ed), Collectors: Expressions of Self and Other, Horniman Museum, pp 157-179, 2001.
- 'Souvenirs of the Travelling Surrealists' in Hitchcock and Teague (eds) Souvenirs: The Material Culture of Tourism, Ashgate, pp 72-77, 2000
- 'A Convulsive Beauty: Surrealism, Oceania and African Art', Journal of the Museum Ethnographers' Group, No. 11, March 1999, pp 43-53, 2000.
- 'Khmer', The Millenium Encyclopeadia', Dorling Kindersley, 2000, pp 25-40
- 'The African Collection at Liverpool Museum', African Arts, Vol XXXI, Summer, No.3, University of California, pp18-35, 1998.
- 'Kinyozi: African Art Between the Boundaries' in Kinyozi: the Art of African Hairstyles, Catalogue and Occasional Papers Series I, The Green Centre for Non-Western Art and Culture at the Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery and Museums, Brighton, pp 9- 21, 1995
- 'The Theatre of the Incorporeal', in Benewick and Donald (eds) Belief in China: Art and Politics; Deities and Mortality, Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton, pp19-27, 1995.
- 'Eastern Asia', the Kingfisher Book of Mythology, Larousse plc, London, 1995, pp 100-125.
- Colonel Green's Burma: peoples and textiles of the 1920s, The Royal Pavilion Review, No.1, 1993, pp 3-7.
- 'Chinese robes in the ethnography gallery', The Royal Pavilion Review, No.2, 1992, pp 10-12.
- 'The Ernest Box collection of Chinese deities in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, The Royal Pavilion Review, No.2, 1991, pp 8-10.
Recent talks and conference papers
- 'Loot from China's 'Summer Palace' in auctions, exhibitions and museums' Paper presented at the Museology Research Forum, 26 January 2012, University of Manchester
- 'Travels and Collections in mid-nineteenth century China', paper presented at the Travel in the Nineteenth Century: Narratives, Histories and Collections conference, 13-15 July 2011, University of Lincoln.
- 'Representing China at the Great Exhibition of 1851' paper presented at the Representing China:From the Jesuits to Zhang Yimou conference, University of Manchester, 18th - 20th May 2011
- 'The power of taste: the dispersal of the Berkeley Smith collection of Chinese ceramics at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum (1921-1960)', paper presented at the Museums and Galleries History Group conference: Museums and the Market, 10-11th September 2010, Leeds City Museum
- 'Recovering object meanings: the biographies of a set of Buddhist deity figures from China', Social Anthropology seminar, University of Manchester, 8th March 2010
- 'Race on Display: The 'Melanian', 'Mongolian' and 'Caucasian' Galleries at Liverpool Museum, 1896-1929', Visual Empires conference, 3-5 July 2009, University of Sheffield.
- 'Curiosity, Antiquity and Ethnology: Collecting Buddhist Deity Figures in Mid-nineteenth Century England, Museums Ethnographers Group conference: Amateur Passions/Professional Practice: Ethnography Collectors and Collections, 2-3 April 2009, University of Bristol.
- 'From Sacred to Profane: Transformations of Buddhist Images in the West', Material Worlds conference, 15-17 December 2008, University of Leicester.
- 'Buddhism, Imperialism and Display: The Lives of Chinese objects in British exhibitions', Manchester Museum, Showcase seminar, 5th November 2008, University of Manchester.
- 'Debating restitution: Liverpool or China?', seminar/workshop, 14th March 2008, Museum Studies, Department of Cultural Technology & Communication, University of the Aegean, Greece.
- 'In Search of the Goddess of Compassion', seminar, Ningbo Museum, China, 30th March 2007.
MA courses
Louise teaches mainly on the MA in Art Gallery & Museum Studies, in particular:
- The Museum and its Contexts
- Museums, Anthropology and Material Culture
- Objects and Exhibitions
- Museum Policy and Practice
- Museum and Gallery Curating
Undergraduate courses
- Museums and Museology
- Representing China: 'Museums, Collections, Colonialism and Art'
Louise also contributes to Art History and Visual Studies courses on The Afterlife of Objects and Cities.
Current and past PhD students
- Emma Poulter (completed 2008) The West African Collections at Manchester Museum
- Maria Sklirou (completed 2009) The Issue of Access in Greek Museums
- Alan Arcadia (completed 2009) An Intimate Destruction: Desire, Death and the Self in Buddhism, Surrealism and Georges Bataille
- Ann French (since 2005) Archaeologists as Collectors: the Greek Embroidery Collecting of R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B Wace
- Hee Jung Lee (since 2010) Exploring visual modernity and national identity in modern China: Fu Baoshi's self-awareness and critical response during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945) (with Anne Farrer at Sotheby's Institute of Art)
- Deborah Leftwich (since 2010) Biographies of Ga'u: Transmutations of Meanings from their Origins in Tibet to their Resting Places in British Museums
Louise would welcome research students in the field of anthropology and museums; Surrealism and anthropology; or Chinese/Buddhist art.