An exhibition at the
Atkinson Art Gallery and Library sheds light on the somewhat mysterious
19th-century scholar and collector Anne Goodison.
Quartzite fragment with the
hieroglyphic name of the sun god Aten, from a statue of Akhenaten or Nefertiti
(ca 1350 BCE), picked up by Anne Goodison at Akhenaten’s city of Tell el-Amarna
in January 1891 (all photos courtesy Atkinson Art Gallery and Library)
For Victorian women with
access to education and funds, Egypt could serve as a source of adventure and
even escape from a restricting society. Women such as Marianne Brocklehurst,
Annie Barlow, and Amelia Edwards journeyed to the desert, often more than once,
not simply as wide-eyed tourists but as dedicated collectors and scholars whose
knowledge could rival that of some of their male peers. Their visits built
their legacies: Barlow, for one, is recognized as the mother of the Bolton
Museum’s Egyptian collection; Edwards co-founded the Egyptian Exploration Fund,
now known as the Egypt Exploration Society, to promote fieldwork in Egypt.
One other notable woman
bitten by the Egyptology bug was Anne Goodison, whose collecting habits serve
as a focal point for an exhibition at the Atkinson Art Gallery and Library in
England. Goodison visited Egypt in 1887, when she was in her 40s, and then
again in 1897. Over the course of her travels, she amassed nearly 1,000 objects
in her collection — from jewelry to wooden coffin lids to ritual statuettes —
which she kept private until her death in 1906. Adventures in Egypt – Mrs
Goodison & Other Travellers presents her trove supplemented by loans from
major museums including the British Museum and the Brooklyn Museum that place
her within the broader, complicated history of collecting Egyptian objects
under British imperialism.
Born Anne Padley in 1845,
Goodison married a civil engineer whose career allowed the pair to retire early
in the Lake District. (Their neighbor, significantly, was the critic John
Ruskin, who would often welcome them over to tea.) Very little is known about
Anne Goodison: no diaries have surfaced, and no identifiable photographs or
portraits of her have survived. What she did leave behind was her collection of
Egyptian objects, which are often labelled by her handwritten notes. Her
careful records speak to her strong desire to deepen her knowledge and
appreciation of ancient Egyptian culture.
“She was more than just a
lady who lunched and liked Egypt,” curator and archaeologist Tom Hardwick told
Hyperallergic. “She was campaigning for excavations, and she showed her
druthers by learning hieroglyphs and corresponding with scholars.
“She was doing her own
research at a time when women were barred by law and social pressure from
having professional careers, in many cases,” he continued. “She was trying very
hard to earn and justify her credibility as someone with a serious interest in
Egypt.”
Egyptomania had long
gripped Western Europeans by Goodison’s lifetime, following Napoleon’s failed
military campaign that ended in 1801. It’s uncertain what specifically sparked
this Victorian individual’s interest in Egypt, although Hardwick notes that she
was certainly fascinated with the work of Edwards and her popular travelogue, A
Thousand Miles Up the Nile. Trips to Egypt were also easily arranged then,
thanks to the British travel agent Thomas Cook, who provided holiday packages
that took British visitors from site to site. Relatively well-off, Goodison
chose to hire her own dahabeya to travel under her own sail and move at her own
speed.
By her first visit, British
forces had occupied the country for nearly five years. The Atkinson’s
exhibition strives to showcase Goodison’s collection in the context of this
involved history of war, politics, and imperialists’ powers. One section, for
instance, explores how British influence over Egypt was administered under
officials such as Lords Cromer and Kitchener……
https://hyperallergic.com/428090/egyptian-art-anne-goodison-exhibition/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feb%2028%202018%20Daily%20-%20The%20Hushed%20Brilliance%20of%20James%20Castles%20Mysterious%20Drawings&utm_content=Feb%2028%202018%20Daily%20-%20The%20Hushed%20Brilliance%20of%20James%20Castles%20Mysterious%20Drawings+CID_d1d1f61d3da9271c1c393db2dff4c132&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=The%20Egyptian%20Artifacts%20of%20a%20Little-Known%20Victorian-Era%20Woman%20Collector
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