Social and Material Connections: Otis T. Mason’s European Grand Tour and Collections Exchanges

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a method of collections building within the practice of natural history, the exchange of duplicate specimens was carried out by anthropology curators and collectors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper examines exchanges resulting from a three-month tour of European museums by Smithsonian Institution Curator of Ethnology Otis T. Mason in 1889. Framed by the idea of a network of social and institutional ties, we evaluate the role of specimen exchange in the development of anthropology and museums on an international scale.