Human Remains Collections

La conocida como Expedición del Pacífico (1862-1866) fue la última de las grandes expediciones transoceánicas organizadas por España en el siglo XIX y está bien documentada gracias a los estudios de varios historiadores. Menos se ha trabajado sobre las vicisitudes posteriores a su llegada a España de los restos humanos y las colecciones etnográficas recopiladas durante el viaje. Además de otros restos óseos, fundamentalmente cráneos, se trajeron a España una serie de momias que fueron extraídas, junto con sus ajuares mortuorios, del sitio arqueológico de Chiu-Chiu (Bolivia, hoy Chile) por Manuel Almagro en 1864. El artículo se dedica a reconstruir en lo posible la historia de estas colecciones por distintos museos y los estudios que se llevaron a cabo a partir de ellas.

Studies of the National Portrait Gallery have analysed its history as an institution, as an architectural space, or as instrumental in the development of portraiture (1). Lara Perry focuses on the role of women 'in' the National Portrait Gallery during the nineteenth century as: the subject of portraits; artists; the sellers or donors of portraits; the informal contributors to the social life of the Gallery; and, finally, the visitors, sometimes unruly, of its collection. This contributes to our understanding of portraiture, and the history of women, as objects and subjects of representations used to forge the ideas of the nation. The book is most successful in analysing the complicated negotiations across ideologies of gender, class, history, and national identity, revealed by the trustees' decisions about what portraits to include or exclude from the collection, and how to display them. Women could be at once elevated to the status of celebrated individuals, and 'put in their place' by being represented as exemplary; fulfilling roles consistent with dominant modes of nineteenth-century femininity. At times, however, women and their representations could resist the control of the Gallery and become difficult to incorporate in its narrative.

Contents: Introduction: The nation's beauties: women in the nineteenth-century museum Women, the National, and the Portrait Gallery Victoria and her predecessors Sentimental histories Beauty The arts of women Conclusion: The varieties of the public woman Appendix 1: The trustees of the National Portrait Gallery Appendix 2: List of women's portraits acquired by the National Portrait Gallery between 1856 and 1900 Notes Bibliography, Index.