Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home (JWRMH), located in Indianapolis, Indiana, is best known for interpreting the life of the famous Hoosier poet who resided at the home for the latter part of his life. The JWRMH has the opportunity to more fully incorporate the domestic staff – Katie Kindell, Dennis Ewing, and Nannie Ewing – who worked at 528 Lockerbie Street during Riley’s residence, into the story told today at the home. The JWRMH has preserved Katie Kindell’s room on the second floor of the home and the butler’s pantry next to the kitchen, places in which interpretation about the domestic staff have long been presented to visitors. Yet archival research shows that there is much more to the lives of the domestic staff than what is currently presented at the house. While Katie Kindell, the only white domestic staff member at the home, has been fairly well documented, much less was known about the home’s two Black domestic staff, Dennis Ewing and Nannie Ewing. Since Dennis Ewing and Nannie Ewing were married, a story about them being married to each other while they worked at the home has long been perpetuated. This study of the documentary record, however, has revealed that their marriage to each other occurred long after they left their employment at 528 Lockerbie Street. This study explores where this myth might have originated, why it has been perpetuated, and how Dennis Ewing and Nannie Ewing’s work and marriage history situates them into the larger story of Black Indianapolis in the early twentieth century. Additionally, exploring the ways in which architecture during the nineteenth and twentieth century isolated the domestic staff and the ways in which this has been reproduced in the site’s interpretive strategies reveals how the lives and stories of the domestic staff have been devalued. This study demonstrates that there is a great opportunity for historic institutions to expand their interpretive narratives and hopes to inspire them to be curious about all the people whose lives shaped their sites.

This dissertation traces the life and afterlife of the short-lived, dismembered (and for several decades, disremembered) collection housed at the East India Company headquarters at Leadenhall Street in London—the India Museum. While much has been written on the amassing of objects and the building of colonial collections, little attention has been paid to the obverse act—dissolution. This study delves into the furor surrounding the India Museum’s fragmentation, examines its recharacterization during politically expedient moments, traces its legacies at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, and explores parallels between colonial and contemporary (mis)interpretations of the collection. Centering this dissertation on the afterlife rather than simply the inception of the India Museum reveals that the collection retained its identity as a unified body in the British imagination decades after its dispersal. Questioning at what point a museum ceases to exist and how dissolved collections continue to circulate, this dissertation seeks to challenge conventional understandings of museum histories and proposes a longue durée approach for interpreting and engaging with these narratives. The opening chapter, Expanding the Narrative, offers a new perspective on the institution by foregrounding visual representations and incorporating historically overlooked accounts. This inclusive, image-centric approach aims to contribute a previously unconsidered angle to scholarship on the Museum. The second chapter, “All the Queen’s Horses and All the Queen’s Men”: The Dispersal of the India Museum, examines the critical yet under-theorized moment of the Museum’s dissolution. It applies an analytical lens to the collection’s fragmentation, explores the varying motivations behind the distribution of objects, and contextualizes the dissolution within the broader milieu of nineteenth-century collections in Britain. The third chapter, From “Hugger-Mugger” to “Tangible Monument”: Collective Memory and the India Museum, suggests that the India Museum retained its identity as a distinct entity decades after its absorption into South Kensington. This study demonstrates how the notoriously heterogeneous East India Company collection was reimagined in the early twentieth century as far more comprehensive and stable than it had ever been in its lifetime, and was ultimately reframed as being of critical import to the imperial project. The final chapter, Lingering Legacies: The India Museum Collection Today, examines the present-day manifestations of the dispersed collection, primarily at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. It evaluates how effectively these institutions engage with the colonial context of their acquisitions and explores the collection’s framing in physical and digital spaces, including through consideration of discrepancies between gallery narratives and digital representations. The epilogue, The Specter of Empire, reflects on the evolving diplomatic, legal, and ethical positions surrounding the repatriation of Indian antiquities. The charged nature of returning objects from the India Museum collection is discussed in light of the continual reformulations of the colonial past in the former metropole and colony. Against the backdrop of imperial amnesia, rising nationalist sentiment, and the reevaluation of the colonial past in Britain and India, this dissertation highlights the necessity for academically grounded examinations of colonial-era collecting practices. This study suggests that only through a comprehensive understanding of institutional histories and complex object biographies can the circulation, interpretation, and potential restitution of these contested artifacts be effectively navigated in the present day.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka döva museibesökares upplevelser av museiserviser inom tillgänglighetsområdet. Vi undersökte vilka tjänster museer (inom Stockholm) erbjuder för sina döva besökare. Forskningen koncentrerades på att skapa en bättre förståelse för döva individer, samt att undersöka orsakerna till deras problem och hitta lösningar på problemet. Denna studie har tillämpat en forskningsdesign med flera metoder. Detta innebär att både de kvalitativa och kvantitativa metoderna har använts. Sju intervjuer genomfördes (fysiskt, e-post och via Zoom). Några döva lärare som arbetar vid universitetet intervjuades. Ett fåtal museichefer och personal har intervjuats för att få information om de tjänster museerna erbjuder. Dessutom har vi med hjälp av en anonym enkätundersökning (på Google Form) som skickas via sociala medier till olika dövföreningar fått veta om deras problem. Resultaten av undersökningen skapades med hjälp av Excel XLSX. För att få en bättre bild av deras problem observeras fem museer i Stockholm. Vikten av tekniska verktyg för att göra museet mer tillgängligt ingår också i forskningen. Mot bakgrund av de resultat som erhållits i denna studie kan man säga att studierna bör utökas för att göra museerna mer tillgängliga genom att agera mer gästvänliga utan att vara etnocentriska, så att de döva individer som besöker museerna i Stockholm får en mer minnesvärd upplevelse. / The purpose of this study is to investigate deaf museum visitors' experiences of museum services in the field of accessibility. We investigated what services museums (within Stockholm) offer for their deaf visitors. The research concentrated on creating a better understanding of deaf individuals, as well as investigating the causes of their problems and finding solutions to the problem. This study has applied a research design with multiple methods. This means that both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used. Seven interviews were conducted (physically, email and via Zoom). Some deaf teachers working at the university were interviewed. A few museum managers and staff have been interviewed to get information about the services the museums offer. In addition, with the help of an anonymous survey (on Google Form) that is sent via social media to various deaf associations, we have learned about their problems. The results of the survey were created using Excel XLSX. In order to get a better picture of the deaf's problems, five museums in Stockholm are observed. The importance of technical tools to make the museum more accessible is also included in the research. In light of the results obtained in this study, it can be said that studies should be extended to make the museums more accessible by acting more hospitable without being ethnocentric, so that the deaf individuals who visit the museums in Stockholm have a more memorable experience.

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The purpose of this study is to conduct a thematic linguistic analysis of survey responses to museum-quality images depicting various Native American and white settler encounters. The survey asked participants to provide written responses (fill in the blank prompts) to a selection of twelve images composed of photographs and paintings representing one or more of three overarching themes: violence, immersion, and goodwill/collaboration. The research focused on four demographic groups: Latter-day Saints, Native Americans, museum employees, and total participants. Each response was individually analyzed by hand and assigned appropriate classification tags based on the types of words their responses contained including one or more of the following categories: positive, negative, neutral, pushed fear/propaganda, guilt, curiosity, questioning image/artist, questioning accuracy, loaded, wanting more information, and connection/empathy. After the initial analysis, I created word frequency corpuses to calculate word frequency for each image and group. The differing word frequency corpuses showed that high frequency 3 words did not change much among gender, age, or location but a large variation did exist among terms used less than five times. The identification markers that showed the most variance between interpretations of the artwork were museum employees and Native Americans.

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