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In this fascinating study of Northwest Coast art, Jonathan Meuli has not only outlined a history of ideas associated with Northwest Coast art objects from pre-Contact time to the present day, but has also examined the ways in which the physical location and contexts in which the objects are produced has helped to determine their meanings. Locating his linear historical narrative within a wider exploration of ethnographic art ideas, which emphasizes links across cultures, Meuli examines the differing attitudes towards Northwest Coast material culture, particularly as these are embodied in oral mythic narratives, collection methods and architectural constructions.
The author goes on to explore a startling shift at midcentury in the perception of the tropical forest--from the jungle, a place that endangers human life, to the rain forest, a place that is itself endangered.
The first American national museum designed and run by indigenous peoples, the Smithsonian Institution?s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC opened in 2004. It represents both the United States as a singular nation and the myriad indigenous nations within its borders. Constructed with materials closely connected to Native communities across the continent, the museum contains more than 800,000 objects and three permanent galleries and routinely holds workshops and seminar series. This first comprehensive look at the National Museum of the American Indian encompasses a variety of perspectives, including those of Natives and non-Natives, museum employees, and outside scholars across disciplines such as cultural studies and criticism, art history, history, museum studies, anthropology, ethnic studies, and Native American studies. The contributors engage in critical dialogues about key aspects of the museum?s origin, exhibits, significance, and the relationship between Native Americans and other related museums.
In this concise, student-friendly look at the public appropriation of archaeology, Troy Lovata examines outright hoaxes, fanciful re-creations, artistic representations, commercial enterprises, and discredited replicas of the past.
Don Smith - or Lelooska, as he was usually called - was a prominent Native American artist and storyteller in the Pacific Northwest. Born in 1933 of �mixed blood� Cherokee heritage, he was adopted as an adult by the prestigious Kwakiutl Sewid clan and had relationships with elders from a wide range of tribal backgrounds. Initially producing curio items for sale to tourists and regalia for Oregon Indians, Lelooska emerged in the late 1950s as one of a handful of artists who proved crucial to the renaissance of Northwest Coast Indian art. He also developed into a supreme performer and educator, staging shows of dances, songs, and storytelling. During the peak years, from the 1970s to the early 1990s, the family shows with Lelooska as the centerpiece attracted as many as 30,000 people annually. In this book, historian and family friend Chris Friday shares and annotates interviews that he conducted with Lelooska, between 1993 and ending shortly before the artist's death, in 1996. This is the story of a man who reached, quite literally, a million or more people in his lifetime and whose life was at once exceptional and emblematic.
Although Franz Boas--one of the most influential anthropologists of the twentieth century--is best known for his voluminous writings on cultural, physical, and linguistic anthropology, he is also recognized for breaking new ground in the study of so-called primitive art. His writings on art have major historical value because they embody a profound change in art history. Nineteenth-century scholars assumed that all art lay on a continuum from primitive to advanced: artworks of all nonliterate peoples were therefore examples of early stages of development. But Boas’s case studies from his own fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest demonstrated different tenets: the variety of history, the influ...
Every two years the fall issue of the Met's quarterly Bulletin celebrates notable recent acquisitions and gifts to the collection. Highlights of Recent Acquisitions 2012–2014, which will be published in early November, include the promised gifts of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection; the lavishly illustrated manuscript known as the Mishneh Torah, by celebrated medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides; paintings by turn-of-the-century Symbolists Ferdinand Hodler and Vilhelm Hammershøi; a superb viola by Jacob Stainer, whose instruments were favored by the Bach and Mozart families; and a magnificent Roman porphyry vessel that is one of the finest to survive from Classical antiquity. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of the Met's collection.
During periods of close collaboration, championed by figures like John Ruskin and William Morris, architecture and craft were referred to as "the allied arts." By the mid-twentieth century, however, it was more common for the two disciplines to be considered distinct professional fields, with architecture having little to do with studio craft. The Allied Arts investigates the history of the complex relationship between craft and architecture by examining the intersection of these two areas in Canadian public buildings. Sandra Alfoldy explains the challenges facing the development of the field of public craft and documents the largely ignored public craft commissions of the post-war era in Ca...