Ken Teague

Biography

Ken Teague was the Museum Assistant (1975-1976) and Deputy Keeper of Anthropology for Asia (1976-2001) and Europe (1995-2001) at the Horniman Museum.

He obtained a B.Sc (Hons) in Anthropology at University College London in 1972 and a Diploma of the Museums Association in 1980. Dr Teague also obtained a PhD from the University of Hull in 1995.

Ken undertook several field collecting trips while at the Horniman, visiting Nepal, Mongolia, Cyprus, Turkey, Tibet, India, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland and Turkmenistan. Through his own collecting trips and acquisitions made on behalf of the museum he significantly increased the museum’s holdings of Nepalese artefacts, with the collection increasing from fifty in 1981 to over 500 objects in 1988. In the late nineties he turned his attention towards Central Asia and collected around 500 objects from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that had previously been under-represented.

He curated numerous permanent and temporary exhibitions at the Horniman, such as 'Mr. Horniman and the Tea Trade’, 'Mongolia' (1979), 'Last of the Bedouin', ‘Tents’ and 'Nomads'.

After his retirement he has been employed as a Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck University in Buddhist Art and Artefacts. Ken Teague is the author of many books and articles such as 'Metalcrafts of Central Asia' (1990) and 'Nomads. Nomadic Material Culture in the Asian Collections of the Horniman Museum' (2000).He has also served as a tutor and examiner for the Museums Association Diploma and as a member of the Ethnography advisory panel of the area museum service for South East England.

Brief biography

Deputy Keeper of Anthropology (1936-)

Connected to...

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

If you have any further information about objects in our collections or can suggest corrections to our information, please contact us: enquiry@horniman.ac.uk