The art of Indigenous Americans and American art history: a century of exhibitions

Abstract

The indigenous arts of the United States have long stood in a vexed relationship with the canons of American art history. 1 This brief essay covers only the highlights of this relationship, by considering some major exhibits and installations of Native art in American art museums (and, occasionally, in other exhibition spaces) during the past century.I make these comments as an art historian who has for more than three decades focused on Native American art, with some contributions to others areas of American art history as well. 2 2 In the last two decades, some scholars of American art have sought to incorporate Indigenous art's history into their courses; the two major textbooks in the field provide creditable coverage of such topics, 3 and the principal journals of American art published in the United States provide at least occasional coverage of Native themes and topics.4 Many important museums in the United States have a far longer history of collecting Native art than is often recognized.Yet as I will show, most continue to ghettoize Native American art, despite demonstrable efforts to include African-American, Asian-American, and Latino arts into their narratives of the history of visual art of the United States.In this essay, I divide a century of Native art history into three broad periods, in order to demonstrate how major art-historical trends were manifested in exhibitionary practice. Native American Art in American Art Museums in the early twentieth century 3In the wake of the First World War, and in the shadow of the Second, one way the United States claimed its artistic independence and affirmed its indigenous roots was through its celebration of Native art.Assertions of Indian art as essentially "American"The art of Indigenous Americans and American art history: a century of exhibi...

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