Museum Curator

Fiona Kerlogue, Curator of Asian and European collections, Anthropology Department, Horniman Museum, London

I work at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London, as Deputy Keeper of Anthropology, responsible for the Asian and European collections. My job involves working with the existing collections, developing them by making new acquisitions, and making them available to visitors and others through research, presenting papers at seminars and conferences, publication and curating exhibitions.

The Horniman Museum's anthropology collections were designed to represent the peoples and cultures of the world, primarily to the people of London, to whom Frederick Horniman gave the Museum in 1901. My anthropological training is therefore an essential prerequisite, in providing me with the tools with which both to explore and to develop the collections, and to engage with the very complex issues surrounding them. Nowadays museums are seen very much as sites of inter-cultural encounter rather than storehouses of dusty old objects. People from the source communities are some of our most enthusiastic users, and we collaborate as much as is possible in interpreting the objects in the collection. Most see the items not as possessions which should be returned but as tokens of a reciprocal relationship. We do not acquire items of special cultural heritage status.

Before I came to the Horniman I studied and then taught at the University of Hull, in the South-East Asian Studies department (now transferred to the University of Leeds). My doctoral research was in material culture in Sumatra, where I had worked for two years, and included a period of fieldwork in a Malay village there. I learnt about the curatorial side of museum work at the South-East Asia Museum at the University of Hull. My training in anthropological fieldwork was invaluable. I undertake fieldwork for the museum, both to research items already in the collections and to acquire and document new ones. I also studied film and have taught visual anthropology. Making films to document the production and use of items in the collection and to add another level of interpretation to exhibitions is also part of my job.

I consider that I am very lucky to have the job that I do, and do not plan to change it.

Fiona Kerlogue

Photograph shows Fiona Kerlogue and Ibu Asia during Fiona's fieldwork in Jambi, Sumatra.