Tesis Magíster
A handmade replica of Hoa Hakananai’a for the British Museum: Exploring the impact on visitors of using replicas in heritage displays and the different appreciations depending on their creation technique and in context of a repatriation request
Autor
Cabrera Gallardo, Yasna Fabiola
Institución
Resumen
Replicas in heritage displays can be recognised, on the one hand, as beneficial because they enable visitors to see objects from different parts of the world, with no need to take them out of context. On the other hand, reproductions can be seen as something unfavourable, because the public cannot be in contact with the original object, with all the history that it contains and all the epochs it has experienced. By contrasting visitors’ experience of the Moai Hoa Hakananai’a in the British Museum (original Moai), with the one of the Dublin-Moai in the Clontarf Promenade (replica), this research attempts to explore the relevance for heritage visitors to see a replica on display as a replacement of an original object.
This research was conducted in the context of the repatriation request that Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the Chilean Government presented to the British Museum, to have the Moai Hoa Hakananai’a back, and the replica-exchange that Chile proposed. Due to that, it was examined whether two different factors could make people appreciate replicas differently. Firstly, it was investigated whether the existence of a repatriation request over the original object could make visitors more likely to accept a replica as a replacement, to enable the Moai Hoa Hakananai’a to go back to the island. Secondly, it was explored whether people’s opinion towards replicas changes depending on the manufacturing quality of reproduction (handmade or 3D-printed).
To investigate the different approaches of visitors’ experience and replicas, it was used questionnaires, conducted at the British Museum and the Clontarf Promenade (N=102). The analysis indicated that the relevance of seeing a replica on display is a contextual phenomenon, which depends on the originality quality of the object that the public is viewing. In general, people accepted the repatriation and the replica-exchange as long as this allows the original Moai to go back to Rapa Nui. Besides, a large majority preferred to see a handmade replica on display instead of a 3D-printed reproduction.