Map of Family

Think of a book passed down through a family. It is not just an object, it is not only the knowledge contained within it, it is also all the places that book has been, and the care and time to share knowledge with family. It may contain traces of the earlier readers, pencil marks, highlights and dog-eared corners. How does an object travel through a family? What kinds of knowledge are contained within? People exchanging knowledge about African civilisations, for example? Or of their own histories of loss? Think about histories that may have been erased, or suppressed. When collecting items from communities, how can we reveal histories of the family embedded in objects?

• Bring provenance to the fore, who were these objects inherited or bought from?
• Reveal the journeys objects made. Where did they come from and move to? In what ways does the movement of object reveal more about the forced migration of people?
• Create a timeline/s to reflect changing hands points in the object journey.

But, how to reflect the family relationships? One way might be to use social network mapping tools such as Gephi. EXAMPLE: http://histecon.fas.harvard.edu/innerlife/connections-basic.html

This advert: http://informationwanted.org/items/show/3202 -- would be a useful addition to a display on minstrelsy. (https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/blackface-birth-american-stereotype ) It emphasizes the proximity between minstrel shows and slavery. This successful and (wealthy?) African-American man was still looking for his father. the LIbrary of Congress holds some records relating to the minstrel group: https://www.loc.gov/item/2014637022/

This advert is about family reunited after fugitivity: http://informationwanted.org/items/show/3416 Emmeline Skipworth's husband, Joseph Skipworth is mentioned in Washington Gardner's History of Calhoun County, Michigan; a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests (Chicago, New York,: The Lewis publishing company, 1913), p. 86 as a fugitive slave