Times of the Islands Winter 2016/17

astrolabe newsletter of the Turks & Caicos National Museum
DONALD KEITH
From top: Renovation transforms the Guinep House into the Turks &
Caicos National Museum.
The Science Building was built adjacent to the Guinep House to help
conserve and protect Museum assets.
Guinep House, one of the oldest, most prominent, and
sturdiest masonry buildings on Grand Turk’s Front Street,
converted it to exhibit space, contracted with Ships of
Discovery to design and build the exhibits, and had the
Molasses Reef Wreck collection shipped to Grand Turk
for installation. With much pomp and circumstance the
TCNM opened its doors to the public on November 26,
1991.
1992-1999: The road leads on
Grethe never intended for the National Museum to be
just “another roadside attraction” for the entertainment
of visitors. She knew that although the Guinep House
was an appropriate exhibit space, a national museum
has responsibilities and priorities far beyond its exhibits.
It must explore its cultural and historical assets, be prepared
to conserve and protect those assets against loss
or damage, disseminate the knowledge it collects, and
continue to do this in perpetuity.
To meet those responsibilities, she commissioned
construction of the Science Building adjacent to the
Guinep House. With its base of operations firmly established,
the Museum’s journey joined “a wider way, where
many paths and errands meet.” My Ships of Discovery colleagues
and I were drawn into terrestrial and underwater
archaeological field work, archival research projects in
museums and repositories all over the world, in-house
artifact conservation, oral history collection, and the
design and creation of new exhibits.
On trips to the Smithsonian and the American
Museum of Natural History, Grethe and I discovered forgotten
troves of world-class Native American artifacts
from the Turks & Caicos acquired by those museums a
century ago. Even more importantly for the native population
of the TCI, we discovered the story of the slave
ship Trouvadore, wrecked on East Caicos in 1841, and
its possible connection to the settlement of Bambarra on
Middle Caicos. This launched the Search for Trouvadore
Project 10 years later, which continues to this day.
We also became aware of research conducted by
bona fide archaeologists and historians whose work preceded
the establishment of the Museum. The published
works of Drs. Shaun Sullivan, Glen Freimuth, and William
Keegan, who surveyed and excavated Native American
sites throughout the Caicos Islands in the 1970s, revealed
that they were densely populated before the arrival of
Europeans. The archival research and fieldwork done by
Drs. Charlene Kozy and Paul Farnsworth on the Loyalist
Planters, who fled from the newly established United
States to the TCI following the War of Independence,
explained where the native population of the Caicos
Islands came from and that their ancestors built the
impressive plantation ruins that still dot the Islands
today.
Dissemination of the new knowledge we were gaining
was always just as important as the discoveries we were
making. Much of this knowledge has been shared in the
Astrolabe, a regular feature in Times of the Islands since
1997. If one were to bind all 76 issues into one book it
would comprise more than 700 pages! With the help of
70 www.timespub.tc