Both articles I found very interesting in their criticisms of the museum and not only how it represents objects, but what they place significance on and who they are even trying represent. For instance, in the article about Margaret Mead’s exhibit was very informative in that her exhibit, for the time, was aiming at modern forms of display reminiscent of the way we view art at the Museum of Modern Art. This way of displaying sits in great contrast to the dioramas that try and provide many things to look at by placing it in a context, while this type of display does not allow any distractions from the object itself.
Also interesting, the North Coast Kwakuitl tribe described in the next article, does not even realty exist, even though there is a huge exhibition originally created by Boas for the purpose of displaying their relationship to the potlatch. The Kawatuitl tribe only exists because the white men who colonized their areas group all the tribes in the area together, thus calling them Kawatuitl, close to the name of the language all these tribes speak. It’s interesting how much language plays a role in the distinguishing of groups. For those in the western world, language is the most important thing; it’s what makes us human and the rest non-human. Through this lens, it is understandable that anthropologists went to these regions and assumed that everyone was part of the same group due to their common language; this assumption extending all the way to the museum where this made-up group is put on display.