Curator, Oceania, British Museum
Polly Bence has worked in the curatorial team in the Oceanic section of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, at the British Museum since 2011. Over the last five years as the Project Curator, Oceanic collections, she has been preparing the Oceanic collection for a move into the World Conservation and Exhibition Centre – a new onsite collections store facility in Bloomsbury. Previous roles include Project Curator for the British Museum exhibitions The Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa (2010) and Baskets and Belonging: Indigenous Australian Histories (2011) and she has also worked at National Museums Scotland (2010-2011) on the Royal Museum Project permanent re-display.
2018, ‘The ties that bind: The production, collection and interconnections of coconut fibre armour from Kiribati’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, No.31
Dr. Alison Clark is a Research Associate at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. She currently works on the ERC funded Pacific Presences project. Both her masters (2007) and PhD (2013) theses on the Indigenous Australian collections of the British Museum drew on the work of Anthony Forge. Her current research is focused on Kiribati, where she is interested in the contemporary resonance of historic museum collections, and the revival of certain cultural practices. She has previously worked on projects at the British Museum and the October Gallery in London.
Key publications:
2017, with Nicholas Thomas, ‘Style and Meaning: Essays on the anthropology of art’ (Leiden: Sidestone Press).
2014, ‘What Happens Next? Sustaining Relationships Beyond the Life of a Research Project’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, No.27.
2013, ‘Eliciting a History, Reflections on a Photograph Album’, in Adams, Burt, Bonshek, Bolton and Thomas (eds.) Melanesia Art and Encounter 2013 pp.64-66
