AMNH's other life

If anyone's free tonight, apparently the museum has a regular dance party (!?) you can go to....

http://nymag.com/listings/nightlife/the-very-best/

A(a)rt

The Ames reading for today and its examination of the reciprocal processes of cultural cross-influencing between Northwest Coast native cultures and museum anthropologists was particularly compelling. I was reminded of Amber's response to my comments during last week's class, where I somewhat incompletely asserted that an indigenous culture's entire universe is torn open with the arrival of European explorers, and she countered that the effect was not dissimilar or insignificant to the explorers' worldviews either. Like Amber said, the Kwakiutl had as significant an impact on the ideas, practices, and values of the anthropologists with whom they interacted as did the opposite: as more was learned about the Northwest Coast cultures, at first anthropological and later artistic and cultural ideas about what "art" is and who makes it were altered. The Kwakiutl and other cultures had the effect, essentially, of transforming and enhancing what the Western world will call "fine art". This, of course, then had a profound effect on the Aboriginal cultures by recasting their traditional craft practices as capital-"a" Art, worthy of display in white museums, and then this in turn influenced the way white curators, anthropologists, and other museum-types interacted with and approached Native art in museological terms. I suppose this relationship, and by extension, probably all cross-cultural relationships, are kind of dialectical in nature, in that they are constantly reiterating one another once contact, coexistence, and integration are established.

The reading about anthropologists’ influence on Northwest Coastal art was very interesting. Although the infiltration of western ideas is practically inevitable in this every-shrinking world, the anthropologists described in this reading failed to perform the duties of the scientist, maintaining objectivity. The fact that this art was once considered traditional Indian art and then westerners deemed it “high art” shows this problem of categorization. Depending on who is looking at an object, that object may be labeled number of things. So, depending on whose eyes are doing the observing, the answer may differ.
The hierarchy of the senses described in the “Sensible Objects” reading is also something that I find very interesting. Not only do we have to create hierarchies of everything outside of ourselves, but we have decided that certain senses are more important than others. This is similar to the way we have created a hierarchy among our organs, the brain and the heart being the most important. These linear, top-down ways of processing knowledge do not leave room for other things. The hierarchical organization of the human body, for example, has created a very confused and inaccurate view of the human, which is really a whole complex system of different modules that all function together; some of these systems are not even considered “human” because they are microbes. Also, the fact that different cultures use their senses in different ways shows that a scientists cannot possibly accurately analyze someone else’s way of life when, on a base level, they perceive and process knowledge differently.

The Introduction from "Sensible Objects" made an interesting point that different cultures have different ways to organize and even experience sensory perception. I think this is true and that last week's museum visit helped illustrate the impact of senses in how we perceive, since the Asian peoples hall incorporated sound into the displays. While it may not change how we culturally perceive the sense of hearing, I think incorporating other sensory experiences help the displays feel less static and more engaging.

The Ames article was interesting in thinking of museums acting as galleries, and the influence that anthropologists and curators have on the commercial value of contemporary pieces. The article also made me think of Brian Jungen, an artist who did a large series of pieces that look like native masks but are actually made out of sneakers.

response to " indigenous peoples, changing social political landscapes .."

In response to the note made by Neel and Salzano that "there is no indian group completely untouched by the discovery of america and subsequent contact, direct or indirect, with the western world" , i believe this could be discussed from another point of view . Yes , these societies one way or another had been exposed to some kind of wester influence , but does this really affect societies that live in primitive cultures and in isolated places in the amazon ?. One could argue that people evolve in accordance to the environment they are exposed to. Western influences would be useless to societies that deal with hunting and survival against amazonian nature. Isolated societies are valuable and 100% useful to human biological development research , which makes this variable irrelevant.

3/9 response

Although Boas and the others named in "How Anthropologists Fabricate Cultures" probably meant well when they decided to try and preserve native artwork in the way that they did, most of us can probably agree that it went a little wrong. I'm sure they didn't realize how much they would end up effecting the very things they wanted to save - but there is no doubt that they did. The idea seems quite an obvious one; by highlighting certain aspects of a culture and picking and choosing what parts of it to display, one can manipulate what is understood by others as important. I never realized, though, the full extent of how this affects the place the displayed objects are from. That Native Americans are now using Boas book as a base for their art, and basing what's good or not from his descriptions, is kind of disturbing. It can't be denied that it's affected their art, anyway. I also found the discussion of primitive vs fine art interesting - what actually makes something fine art? And why shouldn't the Northwest Coaster's art be considered fine as much as any other cultures?

Response for 3/9

The question of if anthropologists help to fabricate the culture they study interested me even before I read the texts by Michael Ames. I wondered, especially after going to the AMNH and seeing the culture halls, if by choosing certain items and displaying them in a particular manner if anthropologists and museum curators were able to promote a certain view of a culture. This issue is explored in Ames’s chapter titled “How Anthropologists Help to Fabricate the Cultures They Study.” In the case of Northwest Coast Indian art anthologists such as Franz Boas helped to promote this particular art form and because of this the art began to become popular and was assimilated more into mainstream society and became an acceptable form of art. Museums, art galleries, and curators began arranging exhibitions and providing commissions for native artists in order for them to create more work. This promotion has created a demand for Northwest Coast Indian art and is the reason for its proliferation in recent years. Therefore anthropologists helped to manufacture the objects they study. Their research and curatorial activities directly contributed to the development of the things they were studying. This is just one example of how anthropologist are able to fabricate the cultures they study, but I feel as though this can be the case for many other forms of anthropology.

Response to "entangled objects"

While going through Thomas reading, a question about ethics and morality came into my mind. Over the time we have changed, shaped and arrange our concept of ethics and morality based on our style of living, priorities and concerns. This is manifested on cooks voyage and the methods used in his expeditions to collect things. “The type of practical project which the voyages represented was not an interventionist one in any immediate sense; although various goods and supplies were demanded, there was no attempt to reshape local social relations, no attempt to draw on organized labor in any significant or extended manner. What was demanded of indigenous populations was thus limited, and a combination of ethical precepts and practical constrains largely precluded exploratory ships from forcing unwilling people to work or surrender goods”. Inevitably for me there is a doubt to believe this was as black and white as they describe it to be. I question the mindset that these explorers came in with into these cultures; did they respect their space and customs? Did they take the time and dedication to intervene into their society?. After a long journey I doubt they would go back without something they consider valuable and essential for their investigation. Morality and ethics at the time for these kinds of expeditions weren’t as strict and hardly judge on. There was no evidence but the word of mouth of these explorers about what was being done and how it was being done.