This morning’s reflection is about an issue I was deeply immersed in during my 10 years at the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation: institutional racism toward Native art.
Walk into a major art museum in the United States and you will likely find an “American” gallery. Whose art is on display there? Americans, right? But wait, which Americans? Lanape, Lakota, Tlingit? Probably not. Our Native artists are rarely exhibited in the “American” Gallery. Often, their work is found in an ethnographic gallery. Maybe even a transnational ethnographic gallery. Why?
Let’s go a step further. If you want to go to university and study Native art, will you find it in art history classes? Probably not, unless you attend the Institute of American Indian Arts. More likely, you will find it in anthropology and Native studies classes. And those curators of those ethnographic galleries? They typically have PhDs in anthropology, not art history. And how many are actually Native?
And what about the critics and gallerists, who are so important to the art world? I remember a comment from a well-meaning San Francisco gallerist when referring to Native art. He said it was still stuck in the “identity art” phase. When is art not about identity? I guess when it is by a white artist in a white world
The good news is art museums are starting to adjust. Let me give you an example.
A few years ago, the Portland Art Museum’s Native Gallery Curator took issue with the Museum Director over an exhibition of donated early 20th Century Edward Curtis photographs. The exhibition was planned as a paean to the wealthy donors. The curator, a Chumash woman, voiced a common Native objection to Curtis’s posed, period-stereotypical images of the “disappearing” American Indian. Chastened by the realization that the images could be considered racist, the Museum Director agreed to exhibit the Curtis images in conjunction with the art of three contemporary Native artists, Wendy Red Star, Zig Jackson, and Will Wilson. A coup for them, and the curator.
And, if Curtis photographed your ancestor, you put aside your distaste for him, and treasured the image, as well as the Native artists being exhibited.
The thing is, museum directors have to cater to their public, and their donors, while gallerists have to cater to their patrons. And sometimes, it is those well-meaning donors and patrons, who profess a love for Native art, and want it segregated for their appreciation. Is that ghettoizing Native art? Native artists can be split on this. Some want to get out of the ethnographic space. Some want to stay in it. But there’s a third choice. There is tremendous power in Native artists exhibiting together, in a dedicated space, such as Portland’s Center for Native Arts and Cultures.
Locally, go to the Lightcatcher, and walk the Many Wests exhibition, where several Native artists are included. Look at the piece by Wendy Red Star. Then look up her website and look at her art. It’s complex, and makes a point, as good art should. It is a celebration of being Absaroka—Crow to you—and as a guest in Indian Country, I greatly appreciate that. Thank you.
