'Two People-One Life': Collecting and the Marriage of Ronald M. and Catherine H. Berndt

After the deaths in the early 1990s of the eminent anthropologists of Aboriginal Australia, Ronald M. and Catherine H. Berndt, their substantial personal collection of Asian art and artefacts entered the public domain. An examination of the place of the collection in the Berndts' marriage reveals that it served both as a bonding mechanism and as a means of inquiry. In the latter sense, a nexus is identified between the couple's marriage, the Asian collection, and their anthropological research, which in turn contributes to our understanding of the personal impulses that drive and shape scientific inquiry.