In the moments when I feel like I do not belong or that we are not doing enough to decolonize inherently colonial institutions such as museums and universities, I try to pause and think not only about the absurdity and seeming infeasibility of the project we have set for ourselves, but also these moments when the intangibility of our research materializes in practice.
Centering on T.C. Cannon as narrator of the exhibition, and decentralizing my curatorial voice as the authority, was an intentional strategy I employed to activate Cannon’s Native perspective and to build empathy with the audience.
Can an institution not only virtually reconnect the objects with their communities, but also create reciprocal relationships that will benefit the objects and the communities (both Indigenous and museum audiences alike)
How might technology restore the connections between the tangible and the intangible that text-based art-historical practices and their often singular focus on the visual have damaged or elided?
Chip Colwell
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017; 336 pp.; 10 b/w illus.; ISBN 978-0226298993; Hardcover: $30.00
Reviewed by: Emily Moore, Assistant Professor of Art History, Colorado State University
Cécile R. Ganteaume
Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 2017; 192 pp.; 50 color illus.; ISBN: 978-1-5179-0330-5; Hardcover: $28.00
Reviewed by: Kristine K. Ronan, Visiting Assistant Professor, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Colleen Skidmore
Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2017; 376 pp.; 60 color illus.; 4 maps; ISBN: 9781772122985; Paperback: $34.95
Reviewed by: Katherine Mintie, Postdoctoral Scholar, DePauw University
Two of the most prominent Native-made objects in Jefferson’s original hall were a pair of male and female figures that Jefferson had received several years prior to Lewis and Clark’s shipments. Curiously, the figures had disappeared from the historical record with Jefferson’s death in 1826. It came as quite a surprise, then, that during my internship I reidentified two stone heads that today sit in the hall display cases and are what remain of Jefferson’s original statues.
University of Oklahoma Press
By Sascha T. Scott
Reviewed by Emily C. Burns
Undoubtedly students, scholars, and general enthusiasts marveled at the many renowned works of art featured in the traveling exhibition, Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection.