Provenance Research Seminar: National Trust & the Clive Collection

The histories of museums, heritage bodies and their practices frame how collections are formed, classified and displayed; these are inseparable from the provenance of the objects they hold. Dr Hodgkinson and Dr Tuli Partridge will trace the history of the National Trust, identifying the various influences, objectives and motivations which informed the 1980s creation of the Clive Collection and Museum, and subsequent engagement with it. It will be argued that the absence of institutional and collections histories act as a barrier to comprehending an object’s provenance. Furthermore, they are crucial for revealing the established institutional practices and assumptions that prevent new understandings of collection objects from being embedded. While this talk is specific to a particular institution and collection, it will have resonance for the wider heritage sector.


Speaker Biographies

Dr Rebekah Hodgkinson is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in preservation and legacy in modern Britain. Rebekah completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford as an AHRC collaborative doctoral award, in partnership with the National Trust. She is preparing a monograph drawing on her thesis, which examines the institutional history of the National Trust, exploring how imperialism shaped its representation of the past from its founding, with particular attention to South Asian and North American contexts. Rebekah has contributed to various research and reinterpretation projects, including at the National Trust, V&A, Pitt Rivers Museum, and the University of Cambridge Museums.

Dr Rhea Tuli Partridge (née Tuli) is a heritage researcher with specialism in South Asia. She completed an AHRC doctoral award at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the National Trust focusing on the Clive Collection. In addition to examining the construction and consumption of the Collection, her work explored the many diverse and shifting meanings of its objects throughout their diverging and overlapping life histories in South Asia and Britain. Rhea also has research and curatorial experience across UK institutions and platforms including Kettle’s Yard, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and ‘Queer’ Asia.