Annotating Colonialism Recent Exhibit Interventions in Historic Cultural (Mis)Representation at the American Museum of Natural History
Main Article Content
Abstract
This exhibition review essay compares three recent interventions into historic cultural representations at the American Museum of Natural History: the Digital Totem that was placed in the Northwest Coast Hall in 2016 to partially modernize its content, the 2018 reconsideration of the Old New York Diorama, which attempts to correct its stereotypical representations of Native North American peoples, and the 2019 exhibition Addressing the Statue providing context for the Theodore Roosevelt statue. Paying attention to visual and textual strategies, I characterize these three interventions as temporary annotations to what have been remarkably static, long-term cultural representations. I argue that, through these annotations, the museum acknowledges the misrepresentations but does not resolve them. The case studies show varying degrees of critical historical reflection expressing the complexities of negotiating different approaches and agendas to engaging with the museum’s past. I also comment on the pervasiveness of a digital aesthetics in all three projects, even though only the Digital Totem was produced as a digital, interactive intervention into the museum space. The invocation of a digital design vocabulary enhances the impression of annotation.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with Museum Anthropology Review (MAR) agree to the following terms: 1. As outlined in the journal’s Consent to Publish Agreement, authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. 2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. 3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in their home institutional repositories or on their personal website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. 4. While MAR adopts the above strategies in line with best practices common to the open access journal community, it urges authors to promote use of this journal (in lieu of subsequent duplicate publication of unaltered papers) and to acknowledge the unpaid investments made during the publication process by peer-reviewers, editors, copy editors, programmers, layout editors and others involved in supporting the work of the journal. More information may be found in the journal’s Consent to Publish Agreement which must be signed and delivered to the editorial office prior to publication.
References
American Museum of Natural History. 1989. “Annual Report, 1988–1989.” Accessed September 12, 2020. http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/6303.
———. 2017. “American Museum of Natural History Begins Major Project to Restore and Update Northwest Coast Hall.” Accessed September 12, 2020. https://www.amnh.org/about/press-center/american-museum-of-natural-history-begins-major-project-to-restore-and-update-historic-northwest-coast-hall.
———. 2018. Behind the Updates to Old New York Diorama. Accessed September 12, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=190&v=ndj59hGuSSY&feature=emb_logo.
———. 2019. “Announcing 150th Anniversary Celebration | AMNH.” Accessed September 12, 2020. https://www.amnh.org/about/press-center/150-anniversary-announcement.
———. 2020. “Roosevelt Equestrian Statue Removal: Press Release | AMNH.” Accessed September 12, 2020. https://www.amnh.org/about/press-center/amnh-requests-statue-removal.
———. n.d. “Digital Totem | AMNH.” American Museum of Natural History website. Accessed September 16, 2020. https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/northwest-coast/digital-totem.
Ames, Michael M. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Bal, Mieke. 1996. “Telling, Showing, Showing Off.” In Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis, 13–56. New York: Routledge.
Boas, Franz. 1907. “Some Principles of Museum Administration.” Science 25 (650): 921–33.
Clifford, James. 1985. “Objects and Selves–An Afterword.” In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, edited by George W. Stocking, 236–46. History of Anthropology, v. 3. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press.
———. 1988. The Predicament of Culture : Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Decolonize This Place. 2016. “Indigenous People’s Day, 2016, Declaration.” https://decolonizethisplace.org/monh.
Economou, Maria. 2008. “A World of Interactive Exhibits.” In Museum Informatics: People, Information, and Technology in Museums, edited by Paul F. Marty and Katherine Burton Jones, 137–56. Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science 2. New York: Routledge.
Geismar, Haidy. 2018. Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age. London: UCL Press.
Glass, Aaron. 2009. “Frozen Poses: Hamat’sa Dioramas, Recursive Representation, and the Making of a Kwakwaka’wakw Icon.” In Photography, Anthropology, and History: Expanding the Frame, edited by Christopher A. Morton and Elizabeth Edwards, 89–116. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Griffiths, Alison. 2002. “Life Groups and the Modern Museum Spectator.” In Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture, 3–45. New York: Columbia University Press.
Haraway, Donna. 1984. “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936.” Social Text 11: 20–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/466593.
Harding, Susan, and Emily Martin. 2016. “Anthropology Now and Then in the American Museum of Natural History.” Anthropology Now 8 (3): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2016.1242906.
Hinsley, Curtis M. 1994. The Smithsonian and the American Indian: Making a Moral Anthropology in Victorian America. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Jacknis, Ira. 1985. “Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology.” In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, edited by George W. Stocking, 75–111. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
———. 2004. “‘A Magic Place’– The Northwest Coast Indian Hall at the American Museum of Natural History.” In Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions, edited by Marie Mauzé, Michael Eugene Harkin, and Sergei Kan, 221–50. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
———. 2015. “In the Field/En Plein Air: The Art of Anthropological Display at the American Museum of Natural History, 1905–30.” In The Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives, edited by Joshua A. Bell, Erin L. Hasinoff, and Peter N. Miller, 119–73. New York: Bard Graduate Center.
Jonaitis, Aldona, and Aaron Glass. 2010. The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Karp, Ivan, and Steven Lavine, eds. 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Lonetree, Amy. 2012. Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Luke, Timothy W. 2002. Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Martin, Emily, and Susan Harding. 2017. “Anthropology Now and Then in the American Museum of Natural History: An Alternative Museum.” Anthropology Now 9 (2): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2017.1340758.
Mathisen, Silje Opdahl. 2017. “Still Standing: On the Use of Dioramas and Mannequins in Sámi Exhibitions.” Journal Nordic Museology / Nordisk Museologi 1 (January): 58–72.
Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers. 2018. “Report to the City of New York January 2018.”
Mignolo, Walter. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs : Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mithlo, Nancy Marie. 2004. “‘Red Man’s Burden’: The Politics of Inclusion in Museum Settings.” American Indian Quarterly 28 (3–4): 743–63.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo. 2008. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Phillips, Ruth B. and Christopher Burghard Steiner, eds. 1999. Unpacking Culture Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Price, Sally. 1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rader, Karen A., and Victoria E. M. Cain. 2014. “The Drama of the Diorama, 1910–1935.” In Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century, 51–90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rand, Judy. 2016. “Less Is More. And More Is Less.” Exhibition 36 (1): 36–41.
Sachedina, Amal. 2011. “The Nature of Difference: Forging Arab Asia at the American Museum of Natural History.” Museum Anthropology 34 (2): 142–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1379.2011.01114.x.
Schildkrout, Enid. 1988. “Art as Evidence: A Brief History of the American Museum of Natural History African Collection.” In Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections, edited by Susan Vogel, 153–60. New York: Center for African Art.
Schildkrout, Enid, and Jacklyn Grace Lacey. 2017. “Shifting Perspectives: The Man in Africa Hall at the American Museum of Natural History at 50.” Anthropology Now 9 (2): 14–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2017.1340761.
Schudson, Michael. 1997. “Cultural Studies and the Social Construction of ‘Social Construction’: Notes on ‘Teddy Bear Patriarchy.’” In From Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives, edited by Elizabeth Long, 379–98. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Scott, Monique. 2007. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum: Envisioning African Origins. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203937488.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (1999) 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 2nd ed. London: Zed Books.
Stocking, George W., ed. 1985. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Tuck, Eve, and K Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): 1–40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630.
Vogel, Susan, ed. 1988. Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections. New York: Center for African Art.
Wonders, Karen. 1993. Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History. Dissertation: Uppsala University.