Early Years of Native American Art History

by Berlo, Janet Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780774804332
• ISBN10: 0774804335
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-09-01
• Publisher: UCP

Summary

The field of Native American art history (NAAH) and our idea of what comprises Indian art itself were molded largely by the policies of the museums and institutions that established their ethnological collections in the second half of the 19th century. Only now are we beginning to come to terms with what that era reveals about the history of our cultural tastes and about the history of anthropology. This collection of essays by art historians and anthropologists deals with the development of NAAH as a discipline rather than with particular art works or artists. The essays: ask how and why the field came into being, how it was shaped, and why it was defined and modified as it was. Illustrated.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: The Formative Years of Native American Art History	p. 1
Franz Boas, John Swanton, and the New Haida Sculpture at the American Museum of Natural History	p. 22
New Questions for "Old Things": The Brooklyn Museum's Zuni Collection	p. 62
Louisa Keyser and the Cohns: Mythmaking and Basket Making in the American West	p. 88
"The Artist Himself": The Salish Basketry Monograph and the Beginnings of a Boasian Paradigm	p. 134
Lila Morris O'Neale: Ethnoaesthetics and the Yurok-Karok Basket Weavers of Northwestern California	p. 162
Marketing the Affinity of the Primitive and the Modern: Rene d'Harnoncourt and "Indian Art of the United States"	p. 191
Contributors	p. 237
Index	p. 239
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