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The field of Native American art history and our idea
of what comprises Indian art itself were molded largely by the policies of the museums and
institutions that established their ethnological collections in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Only now are we beginning to come to terms with what that era reveals
about the history of our cultural tastes and about the history of anthropology. This
collection of essays by art historians and anthropologists deals with the development of
Native American art history as a discipline rather than with particular art works or artists.
Asking how and why the field came into being, how it was shaped, and why it was defined and
modified as it was, the essays address some of the most important methodological and
theoretical issues currently under debate. Objects housed in the great natural history museums—collected and seen first as natural history specimens and later as "primitive art" - have long been considered to be normative Native American art, rather than as representative of a long and changing history, and collectors' biases against Euro-American influenced work, tourist items, and contemporary art have further distorted our understanding of the field. Such attitudes and practices have led to accusations that an imperialistic Native American art history not only developed, but also maintains, the fictions of a colonizer/colonized relationship. |
| This volume marks a new direction, focusing on the early anthropologists, museum curators, dealers, and collectors, and on the multiple levels of understanding and misunderstanding, appropriation and reappropriation, that characterized their transactions. The essays examine some of the major figures and events of the early years when Native American artworks were first collected, studied, and displayed. Each stands alone as an independent contribution to the history of an individual (such as Franz Boas or Lila Morris O'Neale), an art form, or an institution (such as the American Museum of Natural History or the Brooklyn Museum), yet together they form a strong work of reevaluation. The growth of a discipline and the numerous pitfalls and erroneous assumptions made in situations of intercultural contact are charted in this contribution to the growing literature on the historiography of art, anthropology, and collecting. | |
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