New York (United States). A wind of change is blowing through the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. Its monumental entrance facing Central Park is no longer guarded by the statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt, his benefactor, which showed him on horseback dominating an African and a Native American. The long-maligned sculpture was removed earlier this year after intense controversy fueled by the escalation of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer of 2020. Inside, a renovated gallery dedicated to Native American cultures from Pacific Northwest also wants to reorient the discourse of the museum towards more “Inclusion, Diversity and Equality”announced prelude of a revolution in progress.
Recounting the “lived experiences” of Native Americans
Le « Northwest Coast Hall » [voir ill.] is the oldest gallery in the museum. Inaugurated in 1899 by Franz Boas, a leading anthropologist at the time, it had changed little in appearance in almost a century. It took five years and 19 million dollars (18.1 million euros) to give it a new face, which visitors can discover since May 13: jointly designed by Peter Whiteley, curator in charge of northern ethnology -American at the museum, and Haa’yuups, head of the house of Takiishtakamlthat-h of the Huupa’chesat-h First Nation located on Vancouver Island in Canada, the new exhibition aims to focus on the “lived experiences” by indigenous peoples around the thousand or so objects it brings together.
In its day, Franz Boas’s presentation was considered a model of its kind, with an avant-garde discourse: whereas other museums, in particular the Smithsonian Institution, still characterized the Amerindian peoples as “savages”at “civilize”, Boas showed that these objects were the product of sophisticated civilizations. A supporter of “cultural relativism”, he argued that the beliefs and behaviors of a human group depended on its environment and that societies could therefore not be hierarchized. “It was quite revolutionary”, comments Peter Whiteley. Despite everything, the speech of the room, in places very paternalistic, had aged rather badly and needed to be updated.
Objects selected by the tribes themselves
The sixty-seven totem poles and monumental sculptures, essential social and religious emblems in the cultures of the Pacific Northwest, now stand out against the walls painted in a deep blue, supposed to evoke the landscapes of the azure fjords of the region. The original pavement of the long room has been preserved, but the eight alcoves and four corner galleries that once structured it have been completely opened up, making the passage from one section to the other much more fluid. The showcases have also been redesigned to accommodate objects of all kinds and sizes, the previous ones being too hollow, created mainly for the exhibition of hooks, Franz Boas’ hobby.
These objects, headdresses, baskets, dishes, ceremonial instruments or a large canoe carved from a trunk of red cedar suspended from the ceiling, are much more numerous and much more diverse than in the original presentation and had for the most have never been shown to the public. Many have been unearthed from museum storage by representatives of the ten nations whose cultures are represented. This is one of the salient features of this renovation: in addition to having called on an Amerindian curator, in the person of Haa’yuups, the museum wanted to associate with the design of each of the ten sections of the exhibition a group of experts and witnesses from the mentioned tribe.
The result is a presentation that emphasizes the spiritual and functional functions of the objects for the people who made them and who used them. Many cartels are written in the first person and give voice to Native Americans, in the form of testimonials or user manuals. Contextual inserts are ubiquitous throughout the gallery, which overflows with texts, images and videos offering so many opportunities for communities to share their perspectives, including the most critical ones, on their stories and their objects: the different forms of government repression of their culture is mentioned, as is the colonization of their land or even the theft of their objects for the benefit of museums. “I still believe that these objects belong to us”, indeed regrets Haa’yuups, who agreed to participate in the renovation project because he does not believe likely, in the short term, a large-scale restitution of these objects. It is however a recurring request from the tribes concerned: for many of their representatives, who came to discover the new gallery during a ceremony on May 4, to see these artefacts, to which they attribute spiritual power, confined in a museum see imprisoned. In a press release, the museum announced that it had opened discussions for a “limited restitution process”because that’s the whole paradox of this new gallery: how can you refuse to return the objects when so much emphasis is placed on their spiritual faculties, their role in the communities and the tumultuous history of their acquisition by the museum?
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