American Indian Culture and Research Journal

White Americans are inclined to forget how deeply imprinted is the influence of the Indian on our life and culture. Indian names and traditions have been absorbed into our language and folklore. It is interesting to be reminded that the dress and the materials they used also have provided ideas that are still being turned to account in giving distinction to American fashion trends. —Rochester Democrat Chronicle The exhibition has been a really brilliant success. About 2,000 students from public and private schools have been taken through the show by our staff or their teachers. Costume design students from the Maryland Institute have made sketches of the show. Adults as well as children have been enthusiastic. The receptionist tells me that more persons have asked for booklets or postcards of your exhibition than have made inquiries about any other exhibit held here. She estimates that a total of 25,000 people have seen the Indian show. It is high spot of the year. —Belle Boas For approximately twenty-five years I have been researching how museologists, especially anthropologists, have affected Southwest Native American art through their perceptions of, and interpretive paradigms about, Native peoples. Some theoretical issues I have been interested in are: (1) how and why museologists attempted to relabel and reevaluate ethnographic specimens as ethnic and fine art, (2) how they developed markets for and encouraged commodification of art, (3) how they created or tried to manipulate class-specific concepts of taste through displays, lectures, and outreach programs, and (4) the message museologists wanted to convey about quality to the Euro-American public as part of the continuous debates over crafts and material culture versus fine art, prestige, and status. American Indian studies scholars must address the theoretical and behavioral intersections of race, class, gender, and culture in the context of a multicultural United States and do so in ways that conceptualize America as a complex and dynamic culture that has experienced many fads and longer-term polar-value changes over time. We must also document how anthropologists and museologists have tried to fight stereotypes through manipulating and revaluing visual representations, and do so within the parameters of how cultural definitions have fluctuated through time and by place (to prevent presentism). Scholars must also attempt to understand how Native feelings and philosophies about these activities and collection and exhibition techniques have changed since the 1870s, again controlling for time and place and culture. When researching this complex and multifaceted topic, I have been theoretically concerned with both institutional and individual initiatives and the importance of setting, place, and social landscape over time