The Canary Museum: from transnational trade of human remains to the visual representations of race (1879-1900)

Abstract

“El Museo Canario” (Canary Museum) was founded in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1879. It holds an impressive collection of the pre-Hispanic past of the Canaries. El Museo Canario built an important transnational network of exchange. This was facilitated by the widespread interest in the human remains of the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Canaries. His founder Gregorio Chil, and the Museum Board, were interested in building a regional race to represent the trans-historical essence of the archipelago’s population. This was scientifically grounded on different racial classification projects with colonial connotations. Speculation on the possible links between the archipelago’s extinct race, the Amazigh (Berbers), and hypothetical primitive European populations became popular. These debates had a material side: racial similarities and differences were exhibited, visualized, illustrated, and thus demonstrated. Lithographs of human remains circulated in Europe and beyond. These supposedly objective representations of race were published in authoritative books and scientific articles. In addition, individuals were drawn and photographed, often with the idea of showing the continuity between the aboriginal population and the current inhabitants of the archipelago. Visual representations of the dead (skulls, mummies) entered a sort of dialectic relationship with representations of the living.