For Securing a New Work of Art or an Artifact for a Museum
Indian Art vs. Artifact: Problem of Ambivalence
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May 1, 1989
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The construction of a new fly at this city'southward nigh popular museum, the Museum of Anthropology, and an exhibition opening shortly at its leading art museum highlight what is becoming a much-debated question throughout Canada: How are exhibiting institutions to care for both old and new works by American Indians?
The event has encompassed a multifariousness of related subjects. Indians in Canada who take been fighting in the courts to claim what they believe are territories and privileges wrongfully taken from them by the Government (roughly 150 country- and line-fishing-rights cases are pending in British Columbia lone) have begun to question whether sacred Indian objects ever vest in museums and art galleries. An try to ''repatriate'' works led non long ago to the transfer of native material from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to two Indian cultural centers.
Indians and others are arguing also that the way native material is displayed in museums should no longer exist determined exclusively past anthropologists and art historians but that Indians should accept more of a vocalisation in the portrayal of their own cultures. A call to boycott an exhibition of Indian art mounted for the Olympic Arts Festival last yr was prompted in part by concerns over this issue of representation. As Artist Not Indian
The debates focus principally on historical material and on new work done in a traditional vein, just they likewise affect gimmicky Indian artists who wish to be thought of first as painters or sculptors rather than as Indians.
At the heart of these discussions is a thing of terminology: how are the objects to be defined, as art or artifact or something else altogether? Their original formalism office tends to be obliterated when they, like African and other non-Western materials, are presented in art museums. ''The esthetic and the iconic meanings of a mask, for example, are yielded up fully by the object only in its intended spatial and temporal context of trip the light fantastic, music, odour, ritual and speech,'' stated Ruth B. Phillips, an art historian, in a recent issue of Muse, a journal published by the Canadian Museums Clan, that was devoted to Indian matters.
Even so the presence of Indian objects at ethnological and historical museums in North America has inevitably implied that these are not works of fine art, like European paintings and sculpture, only that they are artifacts of ''primitive'' peoples.
''Equally a practicing and exhibiting artist, I'1000 enraged and saddened by the thought that my work at the museum will be curated but as material civilisation and not equally a legitimate contemporary piece of work of art, and public perception of information technology will be labeled as ethnic,'' stated Robert Houle, an Indian of Saulteaux-Ojibwa descent, in Muse. In 1980, Mr. Houle resigned every bit curator of contemporary Indian art at the National Museum of Human being in Ottawa because of his dissatisfaction with the presentation of native objects. 'Living Museum Pieces'
''We are nonetheless living these cultures,'' he said. ''Only somehow we are not allowed to come into the 20th century. We are not immune to interpret our ain reality, the mode our communities respond to everyday life. We are regarded as living museum pieces.''
Now, notwithstanding, the Vancouver Art Gallery is preparing to mount ''Beyond History,'' its first exhibition of work by contemporary Indian artists, several of them painters and sculptors trained in fine art schools for whom Indian material is merely 1 source among many. The bear witness, which has been partly financed by the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs, is to open May 30 and be accompanied by talks and console discussions on such topics equally ''Art and Tradition'' and ''Revising History.''
Meanwhile, at the Museum of Anthropology, which is part of the University of British Columbia hither, several efforts are nether way to confront the various debates surrounding Indian material. Michael G. Ames, the museum's director, has been showing piece of work since 1976 by gimmicky Northwest Coast Indians every bit well as by others whose paintings or weavings or sculpture are inspired by Indian culture. Mr. Ames has thereby tried to endow his museum with certain attributes of an art gallery, to blur the distinction betwixt fine art and antiquity. Totem Poles every bit Sculptures
He has also invited Indians to organize exhibitions - Mr. Houle, for instance, is putting together a testify for 1991 entitled ''Sovereignty Over Subjectivity'' that will feature contemporary artists - and Mr. Ames has installed in the edifice'south grand, sky-lighted principal hall totems and other large-scale objects pretty much equally if they were sculptures, with only discreet labels providing historical information.
At the same time, the manager is overseeing the building of a $2.9 million wing to firm a donation of European ceramics. The presence of Walter Koerner's collection of Italian, Czechoslovak and High german earthenware shifts the character of the institution, Mr. Ames maintained, past placing under 1 roof works that might well have been exhibited in i of Canada's museums for European fine art alongside objects that have typically been designated every bit anthropological artifacts.
''Anthropologists have contextualized all over the place, and so it's time for something dissimilar,'' said Mr. Ames. ''We're encouraging people to look at the native fabric also for its esthetic backdrop.''
Yet but equally anthropologists and art historians remain undecided well-nigh how all-time to treat Indian material, Indians debate how to interpret their ain objects, even which of these objects should be considered sacred. What many of them do concur on is that the distinction between art and artifact is inappropriate, that it is a European-derived concept imposed on Indian material. Songs and Artworks
''I don't feel like an artist,'' said Ron Hamilton, an Indian originally from Vancouver Island who writes songs and makes giant painted screens, carvings, masks and jewelry connected with Northwest Coast Indian ceremonies. ''I'grand concerned with doing things - enacting ceremonies - that have been washed for a long, long time.''
Mr. Hamilton is organizing an exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology for 1994. ''I want to display objects in a real, natural setting, not on a pedestal.'' he said. ''But in the drinking glass and physical castles that nosotros call museums, objects become alienated things. I don't call up information technology'due south a pointed attempt to kill them off, but that's the outcome.''
Unlike Mr. Hamilton, Doreen Jensen, a Gitksan artist, says the robes, jewelry and masks she makes should be considered both as art and as ceremonial objects. ''Our people have grown up assertive that our culture was not good enough to exist considered art,'' she said. And and then for her, the arrival of the European ceramics ''is exciting because information technology is accepted as fine art and therefore it makes our material wait more like art, as well.''
''Obviously,'' said Mr. Ames, ''there is no understanding fifty-fifty among native peoples about how their objects should be treated. All we are trying to do at our museum is to confront the bug that have been floating around recently and, I promise, give dorsum to natives at to the lowest degree some authority over the presentation of their own culture.''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/01/arts/indian-art-vs-artifact-problem-of-ambiguity.html
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