TREASURES FROM THE COLLECTION The Hawaiian Historical Society Collection contains prints taken from the 237 original glass-plate negatives of the ethnological collection of Dr. Eduard Christian Arning. Arning (1855-1936), a microbiologist/dermatologist born in England and trained in Germany, was invited to Hawaiʻi, and paid a salary, by the Hawaiian Board of Health in 1883 to study leprosy. During his three years in the Islands, Arning, an amateur ethnologist, collected over five hundred native cultural artefacts. The highly controversial collection, which included sacred objects such as a recently (1885) discovered wooden kiʻi of the Moʻo Akua Kihawahine, and human skulls, was allowed by Mōʻī Kalākaua to be taken to Germany by Arning. A sketch of the Kiʻi Kihawahine was made upon order of the Mōʻī by R. C. Barnfeld before the kiʻi left Hawaiʻi. While still in Honolulu, Arning put on an exhibition of a portion of his collection. He also photographed a large part of the collection—these photographs comprise the prints currently held by the HHS. The Barnfield Collection—in a survey done following WWII, a number of the items were found missing and are believed to be held in Leningrad—is today held by the Ethnologisches Museum of Berlin. The collection of Arningʻs glass-plate negatives is held by the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Hamburg. Click through to see all nine images
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 10:31:46 +0000
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