Philippines collection

A large part of this collection consists of objects exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, USA, in 1904. The bulk of the Philippines collection from the Saint Louis Exposition was originally purchased and presented to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York by Morris K. Jesup in 1905. At the time, Liverpool Museum (now World Museum) was eager to collect Philippine material because the Philippines was not represented in its collection. Therefore, that same year, arrangements were made for an exchange between AMNH and the Liverpool Museum, and these objects formally entered the collection in 1908. 

For reference see ‘The Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 and some Philippine artefacts at Liverpool museum’, by Mary Jane Calderon-Hayhow, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, Vol. 22, No. 2 (June 1994), pp. 73-79, University of San Carlos Publications. 

Sadly, some of the objects acquired from the St Louis Exposition were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941. After the war, the museum tried to replace some lost items by acquiring collections from private collectors such as William Welchman (1866–1954) or other museums that were rationalising their holdings at that time, such as the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in London. 

Our Philippines collection is also accessible on the Mapping Philippine Material Culture website, which is part of a digital Humanities Archival project led by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.