Description
Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums by art historian and a former director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology Ruth B. Phillips discusses the politics of Canadian museums and the impact of Indigenous curatorial voices and Aboriginal art issues from 1967 to the present. The book begins with a chapter about The Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67; and moves on to discuss The Spirit Sings exhibition hosted by the Glenbow Museum during the Calgary Olympics. In the section about inclusion and exclusion one chapter is devoted to the issue of museums displaying sacred and sensitive materials such as Onkwehonwe (Six Nations Haudenosaunee) Medicine Masks. Chapter seven is devoted to The Global Travels of a Mi'kmaq Coat: Colonial Legacies, Repatriation, and the New Cosmopolitanism. Examples of changing roles of Aboriginal curators in museums can be seen in chapter 8, First Nations Artists, the National Museums, and the Columbus Quincentennial (1992); chapter 9, Cancelling White Noise: Gerald McMaster's Savage Graces (1994); Threads of the Land at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (1995); and chapter 12, Inside-Out and Outside-In: Re-presenting Native North America at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the National Museum of the American Indian (2003û2004). The final section examines From Harmony to Antiphony: The Indigenous Presence in a (Future) Portrait Gallery of Canada; Modes of Inclusion: Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario; The Digital (R)Evolution of Museum-Based Research; and Learning to Feed off Controversies: Meeting the Challenges of Translation and Recovery in Canadian Museums. This volume in the McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History features numerous colour and black & white photographs, a bibliography, and extensive index. Highly recommended.