Work with the P.A. Browne Collection at The Academy of Natural Sciences
Semester: Spring 2025
Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork
Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling
Field Site: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
Field Supervisor: Jessica Lydon
Praxis Poster:
HART_Carey_Klopfenstein_Final
Further Context:
My dad snatched away the lollipop two-year-old me was licking gleefully when he realized it contained a scorpion at its center. He’d bought me the lollipop at the gift shop on the way out of one of our many visits to the Academy of Natural Science during my childhood. My earliest memories of learning to love museums take place at the Academy, like learning about Prehistory and doing mock Paleontological digs.
I never expected I would be returning to the Academy as an intern after all these years. In high school, I became passionate about social justice issues related to museums, in particular the repatriation of the remains of Indigenous Peoples and the representation of Indigenous peoples in museums. I chose Bryn Mawr College in part because of its Museum Studies program, and I declared an Anthropology major to fit with my career goal of working in a museum. Because of my childhood experience, I associated the Academy with dinosaurs and bugs rather than Anthropology. When Tiffany Stahl, the associate director for Praxis, suggested that I look into interning at the Academy for my Praxis internship, I didn’t expect to find any positions related to the treatment of Indigenous Peoples in museums.
To my surprise, the Academy had the perfect position for me. Despite no longer having any exhibits related to Anthropology, the Academy still has a collection from the nineteenth century that contains specimens of human hair collected by the scientist Peter Arrell Browne. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had requested a list of the groups of people whose hair was included in Browne’s collection to whom the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) apply. I compiled a list of all the terms that Browne used for Indigenous peoples in the United States. I also researched the terms that Browne used to find out what terms the descendants of the people whom these specimens were taken from prefer to be referred to in the modern day.
From this updated information, I created a data dictionary for the Academy. At the BIA’s request, I also calculated the number of hair samples and people that corresponded with each legacy term. I identified the date when each specimen was collected, as well as the contact information for the relevant federally recognized tribes and entities for each specimen, to enable the Academy to contact the descendants of the people the samples were taken from.
I also did research in the Academy’s archives to collect information about the life of Peter Arrell Browne, and also to find further information for other projects I have been working on. Peter Arrell Browne was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. He was a geologist who also studied animal and human hair. He was deeply racist, and he used his studies of human hair to support his argument that humans fall into three separate species. While views like this are frequently excused as products of their time, I’d like to note that this view was not universal in Browne’s day, and many of the academics that Browne argued against did not share it. Browne also worked with other prominent scientific racists of the time, such as Samuel G. Morton. Browne’s correspondence also revealed racism and cruelty on a personal level.
I found my experience interning at the Academy to be extremely valuable. It gave me crucial additional experience with archival research. I also found it fulfilling to be doing work that makes a positive change in an area I care deeply about. My motivation for working in museums in my career is to try to remedy the racial injustices that museums have perpetuated.I’m grateful for the opportunity to have learned through my experience and, through one small step in what will be a long process, make a positive impact.