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Ming Jia Chen

Arts Assessment

Dr. Gemma Mangione

11 November, 2019

Reading Response: Week 12

The articles this week center around best practices and the current state of museum

practices when dealing with two or more cultures between the content of exhibitions and its

stakeholders. I was personally struck by the amount of meticulous work done for the National

Museum of the American Indian in consulting various Native American peoples during the

planning and designing stage of the museum and into each following stage even after

completion of the museum. Amanda Cobb, in her piece “The National Museum of the

American Indian as Cultural Sovereignty” takes care to highlight how the ideology of self-

definition and creative freedom of each tribe who participated in the building of the museum

was rooted deeply in each aspect of its design (Cobb 491-502). Another aspect of her work

commends incorporating new techniques of museology and “adapting new and foreign

methods of collection, care and preservation to a very old [western ideal of museum

practices] (Cobb, 489). Cobb addresses and dispells critiques of the NMAI through reiterating

the importance of accepting new and non-western museological standards, emphasizing the

importance of culturally-sensitive means of display and communication which gives Native

American communities much more agency to showcase objects from their culture (Cobb 502-

503).

This aforementioned notion of accepting and incorporating new techniques of

respecting objects and culture within museums resonates with Chouinard and Cousins’

examination of multi-cultural exhibitions, differing in the stage of the exhibition. While Cobb

traces the current state of the NMAI from its conception, the latter article engages with past
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literature on primarily formative and summative evaluations of various different exhibitions

between 1991 and 2008 (Chouinard and Cousins 463). This piece shares commonalities to the

end comments for Evaluation in Context by Diamond et al., but further substantiates its

recommendations through examining trends within its literature review and further breaks

down concentric and intersecting dimensions of cultural context that should be taken into

account when conducting an evaluation.

After reviewing all three readings, I was particularly interested in the current literature

and research surrounding the subject of displaying Native American culture and its objects.

My own personal familiarity with this subject and additional research resulted in an

overwhelming amount of scholarship supplanted in the fervent support for cultural

repatriation and reconciliation. Jennifer Kramer’s work “Figurative Repatriation” deals with

the act of Native American self-definition. At face value, “Figurative Repatriation” appears to

demonstrate an instance of restitution and the return of cultural objects- the opposite action

seen in the NMAI case which still demonstrates growing Native American agency over their

heritage and objects. However, the work in actuality spends most of its time examining a

contemporary art trend given power by a new generation of Native American people,

practicing “figurative repatriation” through producing new works inspired by and celebrating

their heritage (Kramer 166). By occupying the contemporary art landscape with their own

stories and narratives of inspiration, these artists from the First Nations of the Northwest

Coast pay homage visually and thematically to their ancestry and make a civil statement to

bring power by claiming space within Museums that have historically shackled the works and

objects of Native American peoples (Kramer 175-176). This notion resonates back to Cobb’s

celebration of the NMAI and the four elements of guns, bibles, treaties and museums that had

physically and structurally committed violence onto Native communities (Cobb 286).
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In the vein of incorporating consultative processes into building museum exhibitions,

as recommended by Chouinard and Cousins, I was glad to have found Caitlin Gordon-

Walker’s piece “Beyond Inclusion,” which recognizes and recounts the establishment of

structures within Canadian museums in order to streamline and accommodate the voices of

multi-cultural peoples that lay claim to the cultures Canadian museums would encapsulate in

their collections. It recounts a history of revision and changes made to more encyclopedic

museums in Canada and the steps currently being taken in many museum practices to

incorporate consultants and Native American professionals who are better equipped to guide

and train staff in creating a culturally sensitive exhibition environment. It details an effort to

maintain and recreate more collaborative relationships between museum institutions and

these Native communities, which resonates with recommendations made by Chouinard and

Cousins.

In the spirit of creating and benefitting communities, Alphine Jefferson also discusses

the Haida Repatriation case in which the community involved take part in redesigning and

allocating museum space as an opportunity to reinvigorate their own cultural practices with

the intention of uniting its own community while also welcoming other audience members to

be more fully immersed in learning about the spirit of culturally significant objects, rather

than just simply viewing them (Jefferson 140). This may be a form that incorporates the idea

of taking back spaces within museums and yet also gives the opportunity to tell the story

behind an object in a way that it was intended to be seen.

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Works Cited:

Gordon-Walker, Caitlin. 2018. "BEYOND INCLUSION: Canadian and Indigenous

Sovereignties in Mainstream Museums." BC Studies, no. 199: 129,

http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-

com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/docview/2160304565?accountid=10226.

Jefferson, Alphine W. 2011. "Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum

Policies and Practices; Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous

Perspectives." The Public Historian 33, no. 3: 138-143,

http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-

com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/docview/897051138?accountid=10226.

Kramer, Jennifer. "Figurative Repatriation: First Nations 'Artist-Warriors' Recover, Reclaim,

and Return Cultural Property through Self-Definition." Journal of Material Culture,

vol. 9, no. 2, 07/01/2004, pp. 161,