Collecting as Ordering or Scattering; Scattering as Destruction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very fine work. The conceptual framework is exemplary, the narrative fairly gripping, and the conclusions right on point. I am in the habit of writing extensive notes in my work as a peer reviewer. Frankly, there really is nothing to say here, other than to laud it as an extraordinary article!

Author Response

Thank you so much for your generous evaluation of my work. I see that you are asking me to make no changes.

Reviewer 2 Report

I like the theme of scattering and ordering. However, I'd like to see the article more explicitly cast as a piece on religion. This is, after all, the journal Religions and not a museum journal. How is 'scattering and ordering' reflective of religious principles/teachings/processes? Could the title be changed. Could you recast the abstract. As is, the piece seems more suited for a journal like Curator: the Museum Journal. However, I do think it wouldn't take too much work to shift the emphasis such that the thrust of the analysis seemed centered on religious themes as opposed to curation concerns. 

Author Response

Thank you for your advice. I will do my best to draw out the relevance to religion more emphatically.

Reviewer 3 Report

This article is a fantastic, persuasive, balanced and clear introduction to the tension between preservation and disruption in the process of collecting. It skillfully interweaves the case study of the displaced yogini sculptures to make a broader point about the complexity of questions surrounding colonial-era looting and collecting, contemporary museum exhibition strategies, and discussions about repatriation. In its accessibility and its thoughtful and layered engagement with these questions, this article will not only enrich the field, but will also be an excellent pedagogical addition to an undergraduate syllabus. Below are minor, specific comments that suggest ways of adding clarity to the connection between the overall argument and the case study; provide small suggestions for incorporating related scholarship; and that identify a few points that would benefit from a bit more elaboration.  The comments are organized using the line numbers from the formatted article.

 

Line 13:

“thirteen-some sculptures of yogini goddesses”: would it be possible to either give the exact number or explain why the exact number is unknown?

 

Lines 43-44: Sentence: “Equating them suddenly gave me a rich oxymoron that took me beyond the edges of the dominant culture I had grown up in.” Would it be possible to explain in a further sentence how this is oxymoronic? And how the case study of the yogini sculptures connected to this realization?

 

Line 46: In the first sentence of the paragraph, could the author define more directly and clearly how yoginis contained oppositional attributes and powers (both destruction and protection/ disease and cure) in order to introduce these concepts to the reader and connect the paragraph more clearly to the previous paragraph about the oxymoronic ideas of scattering/collecting?

 

Line 53: Suggestion that the author define Hypaethral temples

 

Line 56: As an alternative to the suggestion about Line 46, it might be helpful to move the paragraph that begins at line 56 “Yoginis embodied complementarities over binaries,” to a position prior to the previous paragraph because it more smoothly leads in from the paragraph that ends on line 45 about the “dominant culture I had grown up in.”

 

Lines 72-73: “Some scholarship assumed this destruction was the work of Muslim iconoclasts.” It would be helpful for the reader to place citations here.

 

Line 77-79: Could the author consider restructuring this sentence for clarity since it makes an important point: "Too many other, closer candidates emerged as more likely candidates than Muslims for the vandals who broke these stone yoginis: 

Some suggestions: “The evidence suggests that the most likely vandals who broke these stone yoginis were not Muslim iconoclasts, but earlier, much more frequent critics of yoginis.

“The evidence suggests that Muslim iconoclasts were not the most likely perpetrators of the vandalism against the stone yoginis.”

 

Lines 84-85: The word “escape” is used twice in one sentence

 

Line 92: Remove the word “were” : "where they were seem to have been"

 

107-108: despite the opening lines of the paragraph (“So too the binary construct of East and West failed to fit the story of these sculptures’ removal from India”), the end of the paragraph suggests that the process by which these sculptures were collected was very consistent with what Bernard Cohn has described as “the museological modality” that involved the assertion of European control over colonized spaces. Could the author include a sentence or two about how the “binary” does not operate here?

 

Line 110: The author describes the “differing receptions of the yoginis” in Paris – but are these examples of reception or fractured/careless/invasive conservation?

 

Line 115: “This produced the awkwardly long neck of the figure now displayed at the far right of the triple-yogini group in the Museé Guimet.” – would it be possible to add illustrations to the article? This sentence on Line 115-116 – seems to suggest that having images would be helpful in illustrating this visual point.

 

Lines 118-119: It would be helpful for the author to explain why these number of museums to which the yoginis traveled aren’t precisely known or can’t be given exactly: (currently “eight or more museums”)

 

Lines 132-140: On the comparison between the museum and the temple: it would be helpful to explain in 1-2 sentences what the “life” of the goddess sculptures would have been like had they stayed in South Asia. Even if they had “lost their function as such aids” a thousand years before, would they still have had an active presence that would have been different from the “hushed” spaces of the museum? It might also make sense to draw the work of Richard Davis (and Kavita Singh and Saloni Mathur, eds., No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying) into the body text of this discussion?

 

Lines 157-158: “and even the Taliban’s theatrical destruction of rock-cut Buddha figures in Bamiyan after it had been appropriated as a World Heritage site”: given the author’s opening paragraphs that counteract a narrative of “Muslim iconoclasts,” perhaps an alternative, second example that is less well-known and from outside of Afghanistan (and one that deals with more mobile objects) may be more valuable and illustrative here.

 

168-170: Adding one more sentence to elaborate upon this very interesting instance of contemporary female goddess worship (giving location and a few more details) would be valuable in illustrating this argument.

 

176-177: Would it be possible to add more information about those who may have perpetrated these recent iconoclastic acts against the yoginis in Lokhari?

 

179-182: “The metal sculptures of Nataraja from the South Indian villages of Pathur, Sivapuram, and Tiruvilakkuti were repatriated to an airless, unconsecrated Icon Center in the town of Tiruvarur where their  materials are under duress and where visitors cannot enter”

-perhaps helpful to cite Richard Davis’s narration of this repatriation in the text itself; also to explain in more detail how their metal materials are “under duress” due to the heat.

 

191- 201: A very powerful statement of the challenges of museum exhibitions engaging with histories of looting and collecting.

 

Line 210: a somewhat confusing passage: “collecting information mutually toward common knowledge”

 

Line 234: Naming the “Revealing Krishna” exhibition that Cleveland in the text of the article would be useful here (instead of only in the URL links in citations)

 

Lines 248-249: It would be helpful to include additional reasons for discussing these histories of collecting in museum exhibitions, beyond the public desire to hear them (particularly given that not all publics are monolithically supportive of critical approaches to museum curation and collecting)

 

Line 159: comma needed: "is, has been and will continue"

 

Fn. 21 – spelling Deepthi Murali

Author Response

Thank you for reading my essay so carefully and offering this detailed feedback. I will be happy to make all the suggested changes.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Well done.