Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This paper is based on ongoing post-doctoral research that has been describing and analyzing the different systems value of the Souza Lima collection belonging to the Museu Histórico Nacional (MHN). It is a collection of Catholic ivory sculptures made in the Portuguese Possessions in Asia. It consists in 572 Christian images made in Goa, Ceylon, Philippines, and China. A collection of this size and uniqueness allows us to develop a series of historical, cultural, and ethical questions that can be enhanced by a research that seeks to analyze these objects as merchandise and as museological objects. We have been describing: 1) the different contexts of production and circulation of these sculptures as merchandises linked to the slave trade and the Carreira das Índias; 2) Its insertion in the market of antiquities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period in which large collections of Eastern Lusitanian or Hispanic ivories were built; 3) the process of musealization, cataloging and exhibition of the Souza Lima Collection, meaning the ethical issues involving the exhibition of objects like these that are linked to the slave market and the European Colonialism.