The Longgu community time capsule: contemporary collecting in Solomon Islands for the Australian Museum. In From Field to Museum—Studies from Melanesia in Honour of Robin Torrence, ed. Jim Specht, Val Attenbrow, and Jim Allen
Abstract
The Longgu Community Time Capsule was a collaborative project to acquire a contemporary collection from the Longgu community in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands for the Australian Museum, Sydney. It built upon an earlier engagement of Longgu community representatives, Steward Bungana and Florence Watepura, with the Ian Hogbin collection from Longgu made in 1933. Bungana and Watepura reported back to their community and through the Longgu Community Time Capsule project, Longgu people formulated the subject and methodology for the creation of a contemporary collection. This paper describes aspects of their engagement with the Museum, its collections, and researchers, which formed the basis for making ceremonial feasting bowls for the Museum. Through interaction with the historical collection the Longgu decided that carving manifested cultural knowledge but carving skills were endangered. The project provided an example of the process of value production described by Howard Morphy in which museum collections are continually re-contextualised, re-examined, and made relevant in the present. The project also supported the view that museum collections are cultural resources that allow for distinctive collaborative methodologies for interrogating both the past and the present in a process described by Nicholas Thomas as the “museum as method.”
