The real thing? Souvenir objects in the West African collections at the Manchester Museum

Abstract

The significance of the ‘souvenir object’ has been the subject of increasing scholarly interest since Nelson HH Graburn’s seminal work on tourist art, published in 1976. The production of the souvenir has been shown to be shaped by expectations and desires on the part of both the consumer and the producer, with the form of the souvenir object embodying these negotiated meanings. In this article, the author examines how the production of ‘made-for-sale’ objects shaped networks of meaning, understanding and memory within and between the locales of West Africa and the north-west of England during the 20th century. She considers how the demand for objects, set in motion by Europeans visiting, living or working in West Africa at this time, is reflected through the West African collections at the Manchester Museum. Via a series of case studies looking at functional as well as non-functional souvenir objects in the collection, she examines the biographies of made-for-sale objects and the traces of memory they manifest. In so doing, she adds to the body of research recontextualizing souvenir objects in museum collections.