As I reflect on my rich and varied experiences this summer, I wonder how I can even define the beginning of my first Laidlaw experience. Did it begin the previous winter semester, when I (for whatever reason) decided to wear a bright pink fur jacket to the interview with my potential professor research-lead for the first time, and yet she wholeheartedly accepted my colorful fashion choices along with my passion for the project? Or maybe, my Laidlaw experience began during my second round interview where Amy and I stopped the formal questions to exchange a few words in Mandarin in between giggles. It would be easy to say that my Laidlaw experience  began on our team’s first Wednesday in the office - a well lit room on the third floor of Morrill Hall with unrivaled views of the Slope and West Campus. That office was reserved for the research team: myself, Skylar (another Laidlaw), as well as Minna and Nnena who are Nexus scholars also working on the project. For meetings with Professor Ratcliff, we’d migrate to the couches in the Science and Technology Studies lounge, keeping the lights off and allowing the morning sun to frame our ideas for the day. Some of my cohort members may say that it’s easiest to mark the beginning of our Laidlaw experience by our weekly Tuesday meetings. And that’s a very reasonable idea. All good things always begin with snacks. 

Anyone who knows me well (and now my cohort can also attest to this), knows that I’m very skeptical of group work and large friend groups. Don’t get me wrong, I can be very social and a textbook extrovert, but somewhere inside there’s a piece of me questioning everything. Sometimes this anxiety morphs into a standoffish or withdrawn attitude, and then I wonder why people seem to not like me (spoiler alert: it’s not that they don’t like me, it’s that I haven’t given them a chance to get to know me! And vice versa!). Now, I’m not sure what sort of magical pixie dust was in the air every time we got together, but when I was with my cohort it felt as if it took more work to be worried and withdrawn than to fall into our natural, comfortable, and fun rhythm. After one of our first Tuesday meetings, Summer drove me to TJ Maxx, helped me pick out a sizable ottoman for my new apartment, and then helped me move it in. Seeing her excitement and willingness to help a near-stranger (but, were any of us in our cohort really strangers?) is undoubtedly a marker of the beginning of my Laidlaw experience. 

I recently represented the Laidlaw Scholars program at an informal Cornell event where students passed through the various booths asking about research and international experiences; their anxieties about not having everything figured out was palpable. I love telling everyone - prospective scholars, professors, friends - that I came into Laidlaw accidentally. I did not have a grand plan to apply for every research opportunity, honestly, I didn’t even know who Professor Ratcliff was  or anything about the topic of her project before checking the Laidlaw webpage. While scrolling through the humanities section of projects, I saw Professor Ratcliff’s short pitch and thought, “Wow, this seems interesting enough. Maybe I could see myself being interested in this.” It was that simple! Maybe my Laidlaw experience again when I was curious enough to take a chance on an idea that I knew nothing about. 

While I’m not one to brag, the project I worked on with Professor Ratcliff is incredibly cool, and I’m reminded of that by the “oohs” and “aahs” that are undoubtedly uttered when I talk about what I worked on. We were called “The Museums and Empires Summer Lab,” and that name alone caused people to question a highly overlooked connection between the display of art and objects (museums) and political control (empires). Our work focused on the British East India Company, the museum created by the company, and the dispersal of these objects once the company was disbanded and the East India Company Museum was subsequently closed. There are a number of research routes that can be taken within each of these three main parts, which created an abundance of work but also allowed for unlimited intellectual questions. 

Professor Ratcliff, in true Laidlaw fashion, was extremely open to us developing our own interests within the project and encouraged us to feel confident in following leads where we found them. Often, our meetings began with us telling her what we were going to work on given the information that we found instead of her doling out uninspiring tasks. As an anthropology and archaeology major, I love archives and objects. I could scroll through online collections catalogs and pick apart how objects are described, retrace their lines of provenance, and create grand - yet historically accurate - visions of how they were used or worn for hours on end. After an archaeology class about global heritage, I’m also fascinated by how museums curate and present objects to advance certain agendas or versions of history. I happily volunteered to focus on the present lives of these former East India Company objects. Sure, I have a somewhat solid understanding of where these objects came from and how they were unethically acquired, but what does the inclusion or omission of these details in public-facing settings say about a museum’s objectives? If you think large national museum curators only draft unbiased, fluffy articles about objects on display… you’d be mistaken. 

The five British institutions we analyzed are the British Museum, the British Library, Kew Gardens, Natural History Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Each of these institutions house objects and archives related to scientific accounts made by East India Company actors, personal diary entries, cultural artifacts and ephemera from the areas where the collectors traveled, and scientific specimens from East Indian colonies. With this large volume of objects to sort through, myself and my fellow research assistants came together and developed a plan to divide and conquer (pun intended). I chose to focus on the present-day lives of the objects in these institutions; uncovering the ways in which they are displayed now (versus how they got to the various museums, which Skylar and Nnena focused on; or, cataloging archives and databases of interest, as Minna did). In order to develop a well-rounded understanding of the similarities and differences in collections education, I approached each institution from a purely visitor perspective. My question was, if I were someone who had no other knowledge of East India Company collections practices or access to institutional research databases, what would my impression of this museum’s relationship with colonial collecting be? While these institutions all house objects from this same time period and are equally as popular and important in British cultural and scientific research and preservation, each took a very different approach to informing visitors of the history of the objects. 

Beginning with the British Library, I found that there are overwhelmingly extensive records with limited curatorial efforts. However,  there are specific “enquiry teams” available if visitors are interested in EIC history, but no publicized efforts to use vast collections for public education on EIC/British colonialism. Overall, in my opinion, the British Library has historical materials and specialists available to curate them but chooses not to be completely transparent with the ethics of object accessibility and curation. Next, the British Museum is rather unique (especially given its name), since relatively few British Museum galleries actually contain British objects in comparison with MENA/East Asian collection numbers. The organization of “Oriental” objects within BM galleries can be viewed as a strong indicator of British geopolitical and post-colonial understandings of “the East.” Some historical curators are highlighted on the website through short, subjectively glorified accounts of their contributions; however, there is an extreme lack of acknowledgement regarding India Museum/EIC/colonialism connections. Another interesting decision is that the British Museum has developed a few new programs commissioning artists to create new works. While it may be argued that this is a viable solution to collecting objects from other regions of the world; we must take care to not provide these institutions with too much leeway to create new histories as a way to avoid rectifying past mistakes. 

Further, while the Natural History Museum provides limited public information on collection acquisitions and use related to the EIC, general overtones and language push visitors to focus on the “good” in current projects. The Natural History Museum’s position as a more research-oriented institution creates distinct positionality with politics/histories of colonialism and the use of historic collections, and it houses over 200 objects, databases, videos, etc. related to the India Museum with an additional 12,000+ related to the India Company (EIC). Although, in terms of more scientific (versus cultural) institutions, Kew Garden’s approach greatly outshines the Natural History Museum’s approach. Unlike the aforementioned institutions, Kew Gardens offers clear and easily accessible information regarding the timeline of museum development and when key collections (including some from the East India Company) were acquired. Current curators frequently write articles about historical collections as they relate to colonialism and East India Company donors’ pasts, as well as mentioning these connections in articles that aren’t directly related to this topic. However, there are no central collections databases available to the public; unable to determine how many objects with East India Company ties are integrated into collections—nothing is perfect. Last but not least, the Victoria and Albert Museum has the most comprehensive, ethical, and transparent approach to acknowledging these colonial ties in visitor engagement. The Victoria and Albert Museum was created to be “a schoolroom for everyone,” and this original mission is still present when analyzing collection acquisition transparency. There are approximately 12,600 objects tagged in the public-facing collections database with provenance tracing back to the India Museum, and an additional 3,700 are directly related to the formation, developments, and activities of East India Company. Plus, the database is subjectively more user-friendly when considering where objects in the collection came from and/or how they were acquired. 

Further directions of this research may include using collections databases to track specific objects and/or named East India Company actors’ collections through various locations and institutions over time, tracking and analysis of organizations with partisan concerns’ references to museum collections/objects or monetary sponsorship of exhibits, and  a survey of public opinion related to India Museum, East India Company collections practices, and colonialism/postcolonialism after exposure to same objects and museum-written articles. Maybe I’ll have time to think more about these once I’m on a plane embarking on my second Laidlaw experience…