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Natural History Museum Renovated Lobby Stores Treasures and Sorrows


Made of wood, iron, vegetable fibers and animal tendons, the model of 10 men rowing a canoe will captivate most viewers as a stunning object. But for Haa’yuups, head of the Takiishtakamlthat-h House of First Nation Huupa’chesat-h, on Vancouver Island, Canada, it also holds a mystical power. A magic canoe, it represents the ripples of invisible oars in the water – a sound that people in his community say they heard after they had purified themselves through fasting. eat and bathe.

When the Northwest Coast Hall at the American Museum of Natural History reopens to the public on May 13, after five years of a $19 million renovation, the divine canoe – which was previously not yet on display – will be one of more than 1,000 artifacts to be viewed. Hosted by Haa’yuups and Peter Whiteley, curator of North American ethnography at the museum, the redesigned exhibit presents the views of the 10 countries whose cultures are on display: with an emphasis on the mental and functional purposes of the objects for with the people who make them and incorporate testimonies from representative communities about the government’s repression of their culture.

The Northwest Coast Hall was the first gallery to open at the museum. Inaugurated in 1899 by Franz Boas, an anthropological giant who conducted extensive fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest, it represented cutting-edge thinking at the time. In other museums, especially the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Indigenous Peoples are considered to be “Barbarian” who needs to become “civilized”.

In contrast, Boas presents non-Western artifacts that are the fruit of various sophisticated civilizations. There is not only one culture, but everyone is progressive. He popularized the idea of ​​”cultural relativism,” in which societies exist as parallel universes, with beliefs and behaviors that are products of their environment. “It has a revolutionary quality,” says Whiteley. “Until then, ‘culture’ cannot be pluralized. Boas wanted to put people and objects in context. “

But yesterday’s revolution can be reversed. In the renovated hall, the contextual labeling of cultural artifacts has been amplified to portray the views and voices of the indigenous peoples and communities that created and used them. For example, in a presentation on Haida carving, there is a discussion of the Closing Ceremony of Funerals, held to free the soul of the deceased a year or more after death. An explanation for this was added with a bitter comment: “When missionaries came to our shores, they forced our Ancestors to adopt Western burial customs. Even so, many of our traditions around death, mourning, and remembrance have endured and are still practiced today. ”

Despite these curatorial interventions, some critics argue that the very idea of ​​storing the masterpieces of colonial societies in an anthropological museum is outdated. Haa’yuups is one of them. “I still believe that document belongs to us and it will never have real value in any context other than Our House,” he said.

Since 1998, the museum has returned 1,850 objects of particular importance to Native Americans, guided by the Native American Repatriation and Grave Protection Act of 1990. But communities are looking for more. In a statement this week, the museum said it was in discussions with representatives of Indigenous countries and “pursuing a limited repatriation process as we explore multiple ways to continue our relationship.” “.

Haa’yuups said he knows that large-scale replacement is unlikely to happen anytime soon, and so he accepted the museum’s invitation to participate in the renovation project. Consultants from nine First Nations were also joined.

“I wanted the treasures to be richly contextualized and treated as if the wealth of our people had been stolen,” explains Haa’yuups. “I wanted to see every bit of the background in the display cases filled with the words of the people who lived there. The most important thing we could do was to somehow describe the diversity of belief systems that exist on the Northwest Coast and emphasize the distinctiveness and similarity between them. “

Public institutions are increasingly responding to accusations of post-colonialism and racism. In January, the museum removed its front steps a bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt equestrian and flanked by a Native American and an African, both topless. In another gesture, it is in the planning stages to have in the rotunda a land acquisition placard acknowledging that its building is on land that once belonged to Lenape. (The Metropolitan Museum installed such a sign a year ago, after adding the first one full-time curator of Native American art, Patricia Marroquin Norby.)

The physical changes to the Northwest Coast Building, made in collaboration with wHY architect Kulapat Yantrasast, are more subtle. The transformation between eight corners and four corner galleries representing 10 countries has been opened. “It’s not a radical departure,” said Lauri Halderman, vice president of exhibitions. “That’s the detail.” Formerly bordered on three sides, the alcoves have been reconfigured with footpaths to facilitate visitor circulation and, on a conceptual level, reflect the spaciousness between these communities.

“They are all fishing cultures that depend on the same economy,” says Whiteley. “It is unlike any other culture anywhere. Because of the abundance of fish, it is a fixed farming method”. (Typically, sedentary cultures are agricultural, and communities dependent on hunting and fishing will migrate to track down their prey.)

The different countries are interconnected by complex trade patterns. The exhibitor in the Northwest Coast Hall is a 63-foot canoe, which was returned to this gallery, suspended from the ceiling, after being displayed elsewhere in the museum for more than 70 years. Carved from a single red cedar log circa 1878, it is the largest Pacific Northwest canoe in existence. Its hybrid origin is still disputed. The Haida people, whose land is surrounded by cedar forests, probably shaped it and decorated the bows and sterns with designs of an eagle and a killer whale. The Heiltsuks later acquired the craft, presumably as a dowry, and there it was decorated with images of sea wolves and carved benches. One of the earliest pieces to enter the collection, in 1883 the canoe was embellished for exhibition in 1910 with figures representing the Tlingits en route to a pot-molding ceremony. Colorful, yes, but wrong natives. In 2007, they were removed.

Looming majesty in the hall are wooden, carved and sometimes painted top pillars, most of which were brought into the gallery during a previous renovation in 1910. A total of 67 monumental carvings, includes pillars and other sculptures, ranging in height from 3 to 17 feet. The gallery also boasts shawls, woven baskets, ceremonial dishes, curtains and ceremonial tables.

A changing exhibition will present contemporary creations that extend artistic traditions; In the first demo, sneakers, skateboards and basketballs were among the featured subjects. “There are very different ways to be an artist in the modern world, and we thought we should show some applied arts,” says Halderman.

In the process of continuous discovery, representatives of Indigenous cultures examined items recovered from the museum’s vaults and found exceptional treasures that had never before been shown to the public. To display them, the display cabinets were redesigned, as the old ones were very shallow they worked best for holding fish hooks. (Boas are part of the hook.) Along with the “magic boat,” a former hidden beauty is a finely woven conical hat from the late 18th or early 19th centuries representing men and women. he style semiabstract on the boat is whaling.

One artifact on display at the Northwest Coast Hall is a beaver’s bow, a replica of the original, which was repatriated in 1999 after a delegation of tribal elders recognized it in the a group of objects that the museum keeps. Garfield George, head of Deishú Hit, or Beaver Trail End House, of the Crows, Deisheetaan clan of Angoon, in Alaska, was one of the visitors to Tlingit at the time of that discovery.

In October 1882, the United States Navy bombarded Angoon in an act of punishment. “They gathered all the canoes together and chopped them up and burned them,” said George. But one canoe, probably sailing at the time, survived. “It’s called ‘The canoe that saved us,'” he continued. Before winter fully began, sailors using that canoe were able to gather wood to build houses and build new boats. George said: ‘Then the shell of the canoe cracked and they cremated it like a human. “But they never mentioned what happened to the prow.”

No one knows if it still exists. But it has been captured in photographs that are centuries old.

When they discovered its peculiar shape, the elders fell silent in awe. Since it moved back to Alaska, at dedication ceremonies for a new or remodeled home, the prows are all on display. “We bring it out at every potlatch,” says George. “It’s on a post and it’s facing our guests. It’s one of the first things people see when they walk in. We said, ‘Our beavers will hold your lifeboat, as you get through what you’re going through.’

In a ceremony on May 4, representatives of different countries, in traditional dress, came to consecrate the Northwest Coast Hall. For some, it was a bittersweet task. In the eyes of those with animistic religious beliefs that give strength and spirituality to rocks and trees as well as people and beasts, keeping cultural artifacts in a museum is like detained.

Haa’yuups compares it to an exhibition of orcas in a marine theme park. “We don’t need killer whales in captivity and we don’t need to display dancing and rattlesnakes in museums,” he said.

But he admits that the legacy of Boas and his successors is a complicated one. “Without a doubt, he was one of the great thinkers who got people to where they are today,” he said. “Boas in the installation of the exhibition were specific and resolute people against racism. He suggested that different cultural groups can feel the same emotions and experience what other cultures experience. However, he thinks it is possible to steal items from the Northwest Coast and take them to the exhibition. He is a wonderful man and I have great respect for him. But he did the wrong thing. He is human. I want to look at that positively.”



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