The Historical Evolution of Commercial Art Collecting Rainer F. Buschmann, California State University Channel Islands Corporate art collecting, including Oceanic material culture, went through several stages that included commercialization, investment, philanthropy, and, finally, a concern for human resources. The commercial investment in ethnographic collecting is almost as old as the activity itself. For instance, as numerous collections returned from James Cook’s three voyages, many artifacts ended up in the enterprising hands of dealer/collectors who would then market the objects to interested clients. By the nineteenth century, especially in connection with natural-history specimens, dedicated dealers emerged in major Euro-American cities. As the rare “cabinets of curiosities” gave way to more specialized museum collections, the demand for exotic natural history or ethnographic specimens increased (Coote et al., 2017; Barrow, 2000). In the nineteenth-century Pacific, a new experiment combined commercial and scientific inquiry. The J.C. Godeffroy & Son company, created by French Huguenot refugees in the northern German city of Hamburg, had successfully switched from its beginnings in the Atlantic to making money from coconut oil and copra in the Pacific. The founder of the company, Johann Cesar Godeffroy VI, opened a curated museum in Hamburg specializing in natural history and ethnography from the Pacific. To support this endeavor, Godeffroy contracted professional collectors, such as Johann Stanislaus Kubary and Richard Parkinson, to return specimens to Hamburg. To market duplicate objects, the museum curators created catalogs to sell items to individuals and institutions throughout Europe. But the economic downturn following German unification in 1871 was not kind to the Godeffroy company. By the 1880s, company officials had to liquidate the museum collection well below the expected price (Penny 2000). Other companies followed Godeffroy’s lead—most prominently, Hernsheim & Co. operating in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Marshall Islands. When this company expanded into the western regions of the Bismarck Archipelago in the 1890s, they obtained, besides the desired copra and marine resources, large numbers of indigenous artifacts, which they initially sold to passing tourists. When company head Max Thiel became cognizant that exporting objects to Germany would increase his profit margin, he put together a large cache of ethnographica and shipped it to Europe. However, once these artifacts reached their destination, Thiel received an unwelcome response from ethnographic museum officials appalled at the lack of proper provenance accompanying the objects—few carried indigenous names and even less had detailed explanation chronicling their use—and there were many duplicate and redundant pieces. Felix von Luschan, who curated the African and Oceanic collection at the Berlin Royal Ethnographic Museum, even accused Thiel of having denuded entire islands of their artifacts. The head of the Hernsheim company experienced firsthand that ethnographica made for fickle business and pushed his collection activities into other regions, such as the procurement of German state decorations. Thiel reached a more satisfying commercial agreement when he left the Pacific in 1910. Emil Timm, Thiel’s successor, was to keep collecting exceptional examples of material culture that included much-desired pieces from the Baining and the Sulka in New Britain. Once the artifacts reached Hamburg, the director of the local ethnographic museum received first choice of the objects and took over financial negotiation with other directors or traders, much to Thiel’s relief. However, the First World War and the associated loss of German colonies brought this arrangement to an end (Buschmann 2009; forthcoming). 86
Michael Hamson Oceanic Art
