“THIS KNOWLEDGE BEARS WITH IT CERTAIN RESPONSIBILITIES TO GOD AND OUR FELLOW MEN”: MISSIONARY MOTIVATIONS, COLLECTING BEHAVIOR, AND THE J.H. WENBERG COLLECTION AT THE MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM

Abstract

Missionaries have contributed greatly to the ethnographic collections of museums, yet the connection between ethnographic objects and the Christian project that prompted their collection is often lost in the museum record. This thesis aims to reconcile a collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum (Accession Number 24531) with the evangelization work of its collectors, Joseph Hugo and Edna Wenberg. From 1902 to 1920, J.H. Wenberg served as a colporteur and missionary across South America; during that time, he developed a passionate interest in the Aymara of Bolivia and became an advocate for Indigenous people within the Methodist Church. This thesis combines object analysis with information from archival letters and records to gain a better understanding of the Wenbergs’ motivations for collecting, and how the objects in the museum collection were used in support of their Christian mission. This study contributes to the existing body of research on museum missionary collections, as well as anthropological research on Christianity as both a globalizing force and a factor embedded in specific localities.