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Acknowledgments
Annie E. Coombes
Description: Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late...
Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England
~A project of this kind can only be accomplished with the help and encouragement of many friends and individuals. To some I owe a special thanks. Ihsahan el Fahdel and her daughters Imman and Hannan shared their home and their friendship with me. I am especially indebted to them and to the staff and students at both Shendi and Kassala Secondary Schools for...
Author
Annie E. Coombes
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 1994 by Annie E.S. Coombes
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22481
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Acknowledgments
A project of this kind can only be accomplished with the help and encouragement of many friends and individuals. To some I owe a special thanks. Ihsahan el Fahdel and her daughters Imman and Hannan shared their home and their friendship with me. I am especially indebted to them and to the staff and students at both Shendi and Kassala Secondary Schools for Girls in the Sudan. More than anyone else, their friendship and generosity has helped shape the direction of this book. Thanks to Dea Birkett who has always been on hand with valuable information and criticism. Her laughter has helped me through some sticky moments. Thanks also to my colleague at Birkbeck, Avtar Brah, for her careful reading of some of this material and her constant encouragement and commitment, and to other colleagues at Birkbeck for criticism and discussion: John Kraniauskas, Laura Marcus and Will Vaughan. To John Picton who, many years ago, without asking too many questions, let an interloper sit in on his MA in African Art, many thanks. To John MacKenzie for sharing his knowledge of British imperialism in Africa and his collection of exhibition ephemera, thanks also. Other friends have provided support, commentaries and references when they were most needed, especially Adrian Rifkin, Anna Davin, Alex Potts, Nélia Dias, Steve Edwards, Joseph Adande, Lola Young, Jane Beckett, Deborah Cherry, Karin Barber, Rob Nixon, Anne McClintock and Neil Lazarus. Pitika Ntulis’ courage and generosity has been a source of inspiration. Thanks also to my students over the years at Portsmouth University, Middlesex University and Birkbeck College for their patience, persistence and enthusiasm. And thanks to Nancy Jachec for taking many of the final photographs.
While writing this book I have had the good fortune to be able to share work in progress with colleagues working in many other disciplines. It has always been an enriching experience and I am grateful to those individuals who gave me this opportunity: Lisa Tickner, Jean Jamin, János Riesz, Raphael Samuel, Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iverson, and Steven Mansbach.
The research for this book was aided enormously by the consideration and professionalism of many librarians and curators. Many thanks for their patience, efficiency and goodwill to the staff and archivists of the British Museum, the Bodleian, Cambridge University Library, the Royal Commonwealth Society Library and the library at the School of Oriental and African Studies. I especially want to thank Rosemary Seton, archivist at S.O.A.S., Elizabeth Aquilina at the Hammersmith and Fulham local history library, Elizabeth Edwards at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Lynne Williamson, who was the archivist there at the time I completed much of the research on the collections, and who tirelessly indulged my requests for documents and introduced me to new friends. For the assistance of Yvonne Schumann at the Merseyside County Museum in Liverpool and David Allen at the Horniman Free Museum I am also thankful. Rosemary Keen, archivist at the Church Missionary Society, has been a fount of information and has patiently sought out obscure missionary literature for me on frequent occasions, many thanks. Thanks also to John Mack at the Museum of Mankind for advice and support in the early days of this research.
I am grateful to the J. Paul Getty Foundation for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities for one year, which gave me time away from a busy teaching schedule to write and think.
Thanks also to my editors at Yale University Press, Gillian Malpass and Miranda Harrison, for their patience, perseverence and professionalism.
Two people deserve a very special mention. Frank Mort took time out of his own book to read mine in the final stages. His careful critical commentary was invaluable. Michael Orwicz has been a constant source of emotional and intellectual support and stimulation from the very beginnings of this project. Many thanks.
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