NOT FOR ART'S SAKE: An Early Exhibition of Pre-Columbian Objects at the Toledo Museum of Art, 1928-1929

Abstract

Early 20th-century exhibits of non-Western objects are today often viewed through the prism of Modernist Primitivism, that is, the avant-garde desire for unmediated confrontation with these objects' aesthetic form or spiritual force. This has been the usual interpretation of an exhibition of pre-Columbian pieces held in Paris in 1928. A study of archival materials and display practices related to this event, and to a sister show staged several months later in Toledo, Ohio, reveals that the organizing anthropologists and curators were pursuing quite different aims. These case studies provide rich examples of the conceptual shifts that occurred between the initial “discovery” of non-Western art by avant-garde artists and its later institutional recognition. Focusing particularly on the Toledo installation, thus far entirely neglected by scholars, this article further supports the call to broaden the story of the early transatlantic re-evaluation of non-Western art beyond the Paris–New York continuum.

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