Every year the School of Journalism at the University of Montana in Missoula does a newspaper insert containing stories about Montana Indian reservations. In previous years I’ve responded with letters -- this is the first time I’ve been asked for ideas beforehand. My reporter is someone named Vicki.
Where to start? First, Bob Scriver never did "Indian art" and was not part of that world. His museum was about animals though he often made sculpture about Blackfeet as well as animals, family members, and commissioned portrait busts. He employed maybe four or five Blackfeet families over decades, but they didn't do "Indian art." They helped with the taxidermy and the sculpture, both, as well as building and maintaining the ranch over towards the Rockies. Another group was paid to pose for sculpture. Bob always meant his museum to complement the Museum of the Plains Indian, not to challenge it.
It may surprise some that the categories of "Indian art" and "Cowboy art" are quite distinct with customer bases that are often quite different. “Indian art” is often abstract and always based in the Southwest, maybe in Santa Fe where there is a school that gathers young people. “Cowboy art” as it exists in Montana is dominated by the example of Charlie Russell, who was always realistic and mostly self-daught.
BUT Bob was raised among the Blackfeet (born in the house where Leland Ground now runs EagleCalf Medical Supplies, next to Cuts Wood School.) Most of the people he knew were Blackfeet and he was always friends with Claude Schaffer, Tom and Alice Kehoe, John Ewers, and Raymon Gonyea, the anthropologists at the Museum of the Plains Indian. (Gonyea is Indian, but not Blackfeet. He's now at the Eiteljorg.)
In Browning the Museum of the Plains Indian was ALWAYS the main museum from the time it was formed in the 1940's. It was seriously damaged in the Big Flood of 1965 and so were many of the materials stored in the basement which was flooded. The damage has never really been addressed and this information is suppressed. The displays were never changed and were not originally meant to be: they were supposed to be a “library” for craft workers and one wing held the work room. That room was run for many years by Jackie Parsons, now the head of the Montana Arts Council. She is Blackfeet. It’s a bit of a mystery why that system came apart.
At the height of the “Red Power” movement when anthropologists were no longer directing operations, all the files in the archives that had to do with white people were taken to the dump. That included white artists like Russell. Not long ago a Ph.D. candidate went with her professor to visit the library but was prevented from entering because she was Blackfeet. The white professor was admitted. It was another of those Simple Simon reversals that reservations are prone to perform, doing the opposite of something that got them in trouble but without understanding why. The Museum is owned by the Craft Board, which is a subsidiary of the BIA. They are much less powerful now and largely unfunded. They would like to give the museum to the Tribe, which cannot afford to maintain it.
Another blunder was an “upgrading” of some of the exhibited materials, mainly the clothing. In doing cleaning, repair, and replacement, the value of antiquity was lost. But this sort of issue is not a matter for tourists to think about. They probably didn’t know the difference. The local people who did the work thought they looked better and, of course, they made a little money.
The feeling is that tourists might not be stopping in Browning because Bob is gone and his museum has been obliterated, now existing as the Blackfeet Heritage Center. I’m not sure how many of Bob’s art customers even came to Browning. Certainly, they were not tourists if they already knew about Bob’s work. “Tourists” were people who happened by and came in out of curiosity. Once they walked through the front door, we worked very hard to get them to buy an admission to the museum. Many turned on their heel and left. Few could have afforded a bronze if they had wanted to.
The suggestion was made that Bob’s bronze customers were famous people who came from Europe because they loved Indians, but I don’t think so. Scriver customers mostly belonged to the people served by the Industrial Cowboy Art Cartel, a network of auctions, institutions, and galleries -- people who swarm the CM Russell Auction every March. Very few Indians attend or participate in that Auction. Many of Bob’s customers were Montana folks and almost all were white and American. America patriotism, especially for Republicans, links far more strongly to “cowboy art” than to Indians, unless the subject is the Prairie Clearances and the resulting genocide by cavalry, where some white people weirdly identify with the victims AND the soldiers.
Indians have made it a point to preserve their own identities and to protest against governmental domination. It is said that many Europeans, particularly Germans, come to Browning for the culture and art. The Germans and French are very aware of the NA American genocide and still insist on the idea of the Vanishing Indian, though they’ve stopped vanishing! Euros want relics, they want 19th century sights (tipi villages), and so on. Darrell Norman’s operation capitalizes on that. His wife is German. Adolph Hungry Wolf actually LIVES that.
Vicki says that a survey in 1995 on behalf of the Montana Arts Council verified over 300 traditional artists practicing beautiful work on the Blackfeet reservation. She asks, “Why isn't it a draw for economic development?” It’s very hard to interface between producers and consumers because the producers tend to be free-lance individuals working out of their homes, when they have time, an idea and the right materials. The consumers come through during a ten week period in summer and there is no real “marketplace.” Producers tend to need money as they go, so they don’t stockpile for the summer.
But it’s possible to follow the Pow-wow circuit, which is a bigger market and one that grows constantly as more NA people themselves become prosperous enough to be good customers. Artists who are good enough to go to the annual Santa Fe annual fair can really clean up.
Also, people really don’t know how to evaluate Indian work and tend to buy “trinkets,” that is, beaded barrettes and the like. If people do major, sophisticated, expensive artifacts, they get a lot more money, but have to find some other way to pay the bills in between. Those who appreciate high-end authentic artifact reproductions are not usually tourists but are more likely to work through brokers. Responding to the need for small popular items, a class of pan-tribal objects has developed, like dream-catchers or rearview mirror fetishes that include feathers and crystals. The big seller at this spring’s Indian Art Show, a separate and very nice art show at the Civic Center during the Russell Auction, was dream catchers with a wee basketball at the center!
Vicki bravely asks a painful question: “Are people afraid to stop on a reservation?” The answer is also painful: people are always afraid to stop. This was especially true when there was polio on the reservation in the Fifties (before I came) and after Wounded Knee II when the image of Indians changed drastically. I’m not afraid of street “winoes” because I know most of them (might’ve been their English teacher!) but tourists can’t tell. Anyway, they can see Glacier Park in the distance. The highway looks a little tough these days. No white money comes in from outside because there are no particular advantages for white merchants-- sometimes penalties. There is a LOT of risky traffic on the main streets, esp. in summer, because local people spend so much time cruising. Gas prices may fix that.
Indians want two mutually exclusive things at once: they want everyone to come around and love them and celebrate them, but they also want to appear potent and connected to the 19th century warrior culture. If you look at Robert Hall’s “Rez Dogs” video (created in Missoula as part of a project), you’ll see the full spectrum from the spitting contempt of the first wino to the expansive hospitality of the one at the end. (It might still be on YouTube.)
The focus gets lost. First it’s artifacts, then it’s modern art, then it’s dinosaurs, then it’s a casino, then it’s environmental studies. As leadership shifts around and the media change the subject, everyone hares off to the next idea instead of concentrating on one thing until it works. Successes like the Scriver Studio or Darrell Norman’s camp and gallery, or the Blackfeet Trading Post happen because of a near monomania over a period of years, maybe decades. Too many people want instant results. They have a deep conviction that there is a magic answer and a terrible vulnerability to the possibility that they just aren’t good enough. What wins is a lot of preparation, steady work at the project, and the ability to congratulate oneself over small but real successes.
Showing posts with label theory of museums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory of museums. Show all posts
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
MUSEUMS: OXYMORONS?
Some words mean two contradictory things: for instance, “cleave” means both cut apart and stick together. In addition, I would claim, there are CONCEPTS that mean opposites, for instance, “museum,” which on the one hand connotes that which is old, unimportant, socked away, dirty, outmoded, and not worth attention -- but on the other hand means cutting edge, valuable, indicating identity and culture, worth saving, and an important source of thought.
Many of the articles I save from the Internet are about this collision of concepts and how they are interpreted. I’ve noted in earlier blogs how museums, on the entrance of a new curator, suddenly define a major part of the holdings as valueless and sold them to buy a new category of holdings which later curators in turn announced were valueless and, in turn, dumped. (This is quite apart from curators and directors who steadily drain collections for their private income and aggrandizement.) In Great Falls last weekend I was told that the current director of the Montana Historical Society is allowing the tearing out of exhibits and parts of exhibits in order to replace them with new versions by contemporary (and possibly lesser) artists who are more favored by well-heeled patrons, possibly high dollar contributors to the institution who privately hold investments in these artists that are improved by the connection. This is presented as “modernizing.”
The Historical Society museum and many others are bulging with constant acquisitions from citizens who think of that institution as a sort of giant state closet or vault where things will be kept safely, all the things that families believed for years were important bits of history. But those same contributors are not willing to authorize enough tax money for the giant warehouses and battalions of staff who would be able to cope with the avalanche. When people go to reclaim objects they thought they were “on loan,” they “can’t be found” which is, of course, understood to mean that they are missing -- possibly stolen or given away.
The basic issue of who is qualified to curate collections or direct museums is becoming more intense as one generation retires and another becomes impatient to make changes. This is particularly sharp in the case of art museums, where what art “is” and which styles are “real” and “valuable” have been the subjects of contention for a century, pitting abstract Manhattan sophistication against accessible and beloved representational work. Must directors have college degrees? Years of experience? Art experience doing painting or sculpture themselves?
Another troubled issue is simply that of money. If the roof is falling in, can part of the collection be sold to pay for repairs? Outrage whichever way you go! And yet raising funds for the ordinary needs of museums is hard work that few are interested in tackling. Raising taxes for museums is -- well, forget it.
Museums since the days of the Pope’s closet collection of exquisite tributes have been markers of status. Most people love to see themselves on lists of donors -- maybe have a room or building named for them -- and fund-raisers spend time trying to think of categories to publish that will flatter donors. The highest dollar donors are generally described in terms of “perpetual” or “lifetime” as though the people themselves were being granted immortality. The bottom category is usually “friends.” They get free admission. Maybe a newsletter.
One way of raising money through status has been renting the premises of the museum (this only works if the museum is relatively attractive) for social events: not just major civic celebrations but private weddings or soirees. One Montana curator lost her job when she objected to the inevitable damage to the “treasures,” like smoke from cigarettes, spilled drinks and food, or bad behavior. Another of those contradictions: being “in” means using the place as if it were your home, which is a sign of high status because of the value of the exhibits -- but in the process diminishing the value.
Another problem arises over the tension between display and interpretation. The more there are explanations and re-organizations of the materials to conform to new thought, the more the people who come back as to a familiar and commemorative site are going to be upset, especially if in the process their own ancestors have to take a step down. Thus, the main displays at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning are never changed, except to loan out pieces. But in the process of shuffling materials around, they get worn or lost. A local church minister announced that she wanted to remove all the cluttery old commemorative objects like benches, mozaics, and drinking fountains, so as to increase the “dignity” and attractiveness of the building. The next year she was assigned a different church.
Right now the construction industry is geared up beyond the flow of business coming in. Architects itch to strut their stuff. They are not particularly interested in building useful libraries and archive storage: they want the big gesture that will illustrate what they can do. So we end up with the equivalent of a reservation schoolhouse that is all basketball court and no classrooms, which forces the future into ostentation rather than scholarship, which few people really can do and not everyone reads -- but isn’t that the real “business” of a historical society?
These trends and dilemmas are not unique to Montana or even to the United States. The articles I’m collecting come from the entire planet. Some of the most anguished are about the consequences of the war in Iraq to museums and objects, no less than the destruction of the locus of Adam and Eve and the roots of our own civilization. A few zealots would probably consider them even more precious and irreplaceable than the lives lost at the World Trade Center in the attack the war was supposed to avenge, but an additional and unconsidered loss to ourselves rather than to our enemies.
We need to do some hard thinking about what we value, what we are prepared to do to preserve both objects and systems of thought, and how we are going to provide the funding for such things. Not every city has a dedicated Ad Club that pours money into the local scene.
The first idea I would like to establish is that a museum that succeeds is not a static preservation system, but a process of finding meaning through collection and analysis. How to keep that from degenerating into a way of directing the flow in the front door and out the back loading platform needs to be preserved in safeguards reached through consensus -- not by erudite scholars, though their input is important, but by the citizens themselves since the ultimate safeguard is always a checkbook. The second safeguard is education, which is a function of the museum itself.
Many of the articles I save from the Internet are about this collision of concepts and how they are interpreted. I’ve noted in earlier blogs how museums, on the entrance of a new curator, suddenly define a major part of the holdings as valueless and sold them to buy a new category of holdings which later curators in turn announced were valueless and, in turn, dumped. (This is quite apart from curators and directors who steadily drain collections for their private income and aggrandizement.) In Great Falls last weekend I was told that the current director of the Montana Historical Society is allowing the tearing out of exhibits and parts of exhibits in order to replace them with new versions by contemporary (and possibly lesser) artists who are more favored by well-heeled patrons, possibly high dollar contributors to the institution who privately hold investments in these artists that are improved by the connection. This is presented as “modernizing.”
The Historical Society museum and many others are bulging with constant acquisitions from citizens who think of that institution as a sort of giant state closet or vault where things will be kept safely, all the things that families believed for years were important bits of history. But those same contributors are not willing to authorize enough tax money for the giant warehouses and battalions of staff who would be able to cope with the avalanche. When people go to reclaim objects they thought they were “on loan,” they “can’t be found” which is, of course, understood to mean that they are missing -- possibly stolen or given away.
The basic issue of who is qualified to curate collections or direct museums is becoming more intense as one generation retires and another becomes impatient to make changes. This is particularly sharp in the case of art museums, where what art “is” and which styles are “real” and “valuable” have been the subjects of contention for a century, pitting abstract Manhattan sophistication against accessible and beloved representational work. Must directors have college degrees? Years of experience? Art experience doing painting or sculpture themselves?
Another troubled issue is simply that of money. If the roof is falling in, can part of the collection be sold to pay for repairs? Outrage whichever way you go! And yet raising funds for the ordinary needs of museums is hard work that few are interested in tackling. Raising taxes for museums is -- well, forget it.
Museums since the days of the Pope’s closet collection of exquisite tributes have been markers of status. Most people love to see themselves on lists of donors -- maybe have a room or building named for them -- and fund-raisers spend time trying to think of categories to publish that will flatter donors. The highest dollar donors are generally described in terms of “perpetual” or “lifetime” as though the people themselves were being granted immortality. The bottom category is usually “friends.” They get free admission. Maybe a newsletter.
One way of raising money through status has been renting the premises of the museum (this only works if the museum is relatively attractive) for social events: not just major civic celebrations but private weddings or soirees. One Montana curator lost her job when she objected to the inevitable damage to the “treasures,” like smoke from cigarettes, spilled drinks and food, or bad behavior. Another of those contradictions: being “in” means using the place as if it were your home, which is a sign of high status because of the value of the exhibits -- but in the process diminishing the value.
Another problem arises over the tension between display and interpretation. The more there are explanations and re-organizations of the materials to conform to new thought, the more the people who come back as to a familiar and commemorative site are going to be upset, especially if in the process their own ancestors have to take a step down. Thus, the main displays at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning are never changed, except to loan out pieces. But in the process of shuffling materials around, they get worn or lost. A local church minister announced that she wanted to remove all the cluttery old commemorative objects like benches, mozaics, and drinking fountains, so as to increase the “dignity” and attractiveness of the building. The next year she was assigned a different church.
Right now the construction industry is geared up beyond the flow of business coming in. Architects itch to strut their stuff. They are not particularly interested in building useful libraries and archive storage: they want the big gesture that will illustrate what they can do. So we end up with the equivalent of a reservation schoolhouse that is all basketball court and no classrooms, which forces the future into ostentation rather than scholarship, which few people really can do and not everyone reads -- but isn’t that the real “business” of a historical society?
These trends and dilemmas are not unique to Montana or even to the United States. The articles I’m collecting come from the entire planet. Some of the most anguished are about the consequences of the war in Iraq to museums and objects, no less than the destruction of the locus of Adam and Eve and the roots of our own civilization. A few zealots would probably consider them even more precious and irreplaceable than the lives lost at the World Trade Center in the attack the war was supposed to avenge, but an additional and unconsidered loss to ourselves rather than to our enemies.
We need to do some hard thinking about what we value, what we are prepared to do to preserve both objects and systems of thought, and how we are going to provide the funding for such things. Not every city has a dedicated Ad Club that pours money into the local scene.
The first idea I would like to establish is that a museum that succeeds is not a static preservation system, but a process of finding meaning through collection and analysis. How to keep that from degenerating into a way of directing the flow in the front door and out the back loading platform needs to be preserved in safeguards reached through consensus -- not by erudite scholars, though their input is important, but by the citizens themselves since the ultimate safeguard is always a checkbook. The second safeguard is education, which is a function of the museum itself.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
WHAT IS A POST-MODERN MUSEUM?
Unintelligible as much of the theory-based post-modern culture criticism has been over the last few decades, many far-reaching questions have emerged that are quite significant in terms of Montana lives. Naturally, much of it has had to do with Native Americans, but much of it also is very relevant to European-based peoples, to say nothing of the African and Asian heritages. Many of these issues are about education or museums, which most of us probably think of as educational. Since Montana formed as the Industrial Revolution was transforming the planet, much of this material is crucial to the future.
What IS a museum? In preparing Bob Scriver’s biography, I read a number of books that examine the origins of museums and the history and development of collections. Mostly they seem to have arisen from people’s natural inclination to save things they liked or that seemed to have value. The early Popes had a room like a vault where they kept precious objects, often commissioned from outstanding artist/craftsmen or perhaps gifts from great kings and leaders. In the modern United States, objects created in crystal by someone like Steuben Glass -- gorgeous, fragile, and one-of-a-kind -- might be presented.
In the 19th century, when taxonomies were the great obsession, natural history buffs (often amateur) required extensive accumulations of insects, bird skins, eggs, and so on, all in the interest of grouping them into categories and thus discovering something about creation. This was one of the duties of Lewis and Clark. (Now, of course, all those taxonomies and “family trees” have been blown away by DNA analysis.)
In those times anomalies and freaks interested a lot of people. Bob was of a “one excellent example of each” turn of mind, probably coming from the assumptions of taxidermists with hunter clients. He was always having to shoo away people who wanted to give him albino skunks or two-headed calves for the Scriver Museum. (This museum is dispersed now.) He continued this frame of mind with the bronzes, keeping “one of each,” which is now the basis of the estate entrusted to the Montana Historical Society.
Another influence from the 19th century was the growing awareness of “the last of these.” This continues today with even more anquish as we see whole species, whole languages, entire peoples, whole life-works, disappear under the wheels of time. Rare-ness has always been a criterion for value. Museums treasure the last dodo bird, the last passenger pigeon.
At present we see a great fascination with family trees so that -- running parallel with DNA studies of inheritance -- many people are looking up their own pedigrees, the begats that brought them to this place and time and the stories of those lives. My newly discovered branch of the Welsh sister descendants brought me two new documents, one a transcription of a Christian Oklahoma homesteader family and the other a book length account complete with photos. The closer we get to the present, the easier it is to find documents such as letters -- until we get to email. The Internet, of course, has been an amazing help when things are scannned and posted.
The idea that a museum is a repository for documents and objects is a strong one with an intense emotional engine, whether or not values are shared by others. When my mother died, one of the hardest problems was finding new homes for her most prized objects: the bisque porcelain hen that had been brought intact in a pioneer wagon by burying it in a barrel of flour, the huge blown-glass bluegreen Japanese float found at the beach, a gold lustreware vase that had been saved from disaster many times. We were shocked to discover that no one wanted them, not even dealers.
19th century anthropologists collected skeletons with no particular thought for their meaning to families. 20th century accumulators stole the heads off “death house” burials with grisly disrespect. Sometimes they kept such objects secret, showing them only to their closest friends, and other times skulls rested on the back bars of taverns, grinning at the clients. Reversing this practice has been a battle for NA activists.
Family is such a deeply embedded aspect of humans that the celebration of family versus their branding as traitors and failures has dominated much of historical interpretation. Quite aside from the discomfort of homesteaders living next to the Native Americans pushed off the same land, is the on-going rivalry among families of both populations, so strong that it still affects ordinary commerce in towns. My cousin once remarked to me that the “Pinkertons” which are the branch of my maternal grandfather were not as good as the “Cochrans” which are the branch of my maternal grandmother, because the Cochrans walked to the West on the Oregon Trail -- making them tougher -- but the Pinkertons came on the train, which was somehow weaker. I pointed out that the Pinkertons came quite a bit later than the Cochrans and would be FOOLS not to take the train, since by that time there WAS one! I think he had gotten the idea partly because a Cochran ranch was honored by the state of Oregon as a “Centennial” 100-year ranch. The Pinkertons never had anything but a prune orchard that went bust. Prosperity and endurance are the pioneer criteria. Maybe they’re pretty basic to all humans.
But there ARE other issues of value. For instance, whether or not Two-Guns Whitecalf posed for Fraser when he created the buffalo nickel is a matter involving considerable prestige and people have spent hours poring through archives to figure it out definitively.
What I’m leading up to is that the Montana Historical Society, kindly accepting papers, collections, and family heirlooms for decades and decades, is bulging at the seams. Storage is so crammed as to make items impossible to locate. Staff works in a small labyrinth, elbow-to-elbow. Yet there has been little discussion of what the real defining goal of the historical society -- much less its museum which many people see as its only function -- ought to be in the future. By what principles are decisions to be made? And if there is anything that the post-modern critique insists upon, it must be a “people’s” decision, not fiats from high-status, high-power, high-dollar experts.
Is the point of an historical museum to interpret what has happened? Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is my favorite example of interpretation-based exhibits, though the Glenbow is Calgary is also outstanding. Or is it to show off the importance of an area or a people? Might it be to store information as a way of researching and developing the future?
Should it be a way of preserving valuable objects like the CM Russell paintings? Or should it be a kind of public gallery developing art in general, as the CM Russell Museum in Great Falls has become, raising questions about the relationship with private for-profit galleries? The CM Russell, which needs to build an endowment for maintenance, lately put its Couse paintings up for auction. Couse was a major SW painter of Native Americans, but the curator felt they were “outside the mission” of the museum. The Montana Historical Society owns works by de Kooning and Picasso, which would fetch a pretty penny on the current hot art market. Can these be defended as part of Montana’s heritage? Or consider the Alberta Bair ranch, stocked with fabulous European objects.
Questions abound and should not be answered by decisions already made without realizing the limitations they can impose.
What IS a museum? In preparing Bob Scriver’s biography, I read a number of books that examine the origins of museums and the history and development of collections. Mostly they seem to have arisen from people’s natural inclination to save things they liked or that seemed to have value. The early Popes had a room like a vault where they kept precious objects, often commissioned from outstanding artist/craftsmen or perhaps gifts from great kings and leaders. In the modern United States, objects created in crystal by someone like Steuben Glass -- gorgeous, fragile, and one-of-a-kind -- might be presented.
In the 19th century, when taxonomies were the great obsession, natural history buffs (often amateur) required extensive accumulations of insects, bird skins, eggs, and so on, all in the interest of grouping them into categories and thus discovering something about creation. This was one of the duties of Lewis and Clark. (Now, of course, all those taxonomies and “family trees” have been blown away by DNA analysis.)
In those times anomalies and freaks interested a lot of people. Bob was of a “one excellent example of each” turn of mind, probably coming from the assumptions of taxidermists with hunter clients. He was always having to shoo away people who wanted to give him albino skunks or two-headed calves for the Scriver Museum. (This museum is dispersed now.) He continued this frame of mind with the bronzes, keeping “one of each,” which is now the basis of the estate entrusted to the Montana Historical Society.
Another influence from the 19th century was the growing awareness of “the last of these.” This continues today with even more anquish as we see whole species, whole languages, entire peoples, whole life-works, disappear under the wheels of time. Rare-ness has always been a criterion for value. Museums treasure the last dodo bird, the last passenger pigeon.
At present we see a great fascination with family trees so that -- running parallel with DNA studies of inheritance -- many people are looking up their own pedigrees, the begats that brought them to this place and time and the stories of those lives. My newly discovered branch of the Welsh sister descendants brought me two new documents, one a transcription of a Christian Oklahoma homesteader family and the other a book length account complete with photos. The closer we get to the present, the easier it is to find documents such as letters -- until we get to email. The Internet, of course, has been an amazing help when things are scannned and posted.
The idea that a museum is a repository for documents and objects is a strong one with an intense emotional engine, whether or not values are shared by others. When my mother died, one of the hardest problems was finding new homes for her most prized objects: the bisque porcelain hen that had been brought intact in a pioneer wagon by burying it in a barrel of flour, the huge blown-glass bluegreen Japanese float found at the beach, a gold lustreware vase that had been saved from disaster many times. We were shocked to discover that no one wanted them, not even dealers.
19th century anthropologists collected skeletons with no particular thought for their meaning to families. 20th century accumulators stole the heads off “death house” burials with grisly disrespect. Sometimes they kept such objects secret, showing them only to their closest friends, and other times skulls rested on the back bars of taverns, grinning at the clients. Reversing this practice has been a battle for NA activists.
Family is such a deeply embedded aspect of humans that the celebration of family versus their branding as traitors and failures has dominated much of historical interpretation. Quite aside from the discomfort of homesteaders living next to the Native Americans pushed off the same land, is the on-going rivalry among families of both populations, so strong that it still affects ordinary commerce in towns. My cousin once remarked to me that the “Pinkertons” which are the branch of my maternal grandfather were not as good as the “Cochrans” which are the branch of my maternal grandmother, because the Cochrans walked to the West on the Oregon Trail -- making them tougher -- but the Pinkertons came on the train, which was somehow weaker. I pointed out that the Pinkertons came quite a bit later than the Cochrans and would be FOOLS not to take the train, since by that time there WAS one! I think he had gotten the idea partly because a Cochran ranch was honored by the state of Oregon as a “Centennial” 100-year ranch. The Pinkertons never had anything but a prune orchard that went bust. Prosperity and endurance are the pioneer criteria. Maybe they’re pretty basic to all humans.
But there ARE other issues of value. For instance, whether or not Two-Guns Whitecalf posed for Fraser when he created the buffalo nickel is a matter involving considerable prestige and people have spent hours poring through archives to figure it out definitively.
What I’m leading up to is that the Montana Historical Society, kindly accepting papers, collections, and family heirlooms for decades and decades, is bulging at the seams. Storage is so crammed as to make items impossible to locate. Staff works in a small labyrinth, elbow-to-elbow. Yet there has been little discussion of what the real defining goal of the historical society -- much less its museum which many people see as its only function -- ought to be in the future. By what principles are decisions to be made? And if there is anything that the post-modern critique insists upon, it must be a “people’s” decision, not fiats from high-status, high-power, high-dollar experts.
Is the point of an historical museum to interpret what has happened? Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is my favorite example of interpretation-based exhibits, though the Glenbow is Calgary is also outstanding. Or is it to show off the importance of an area or a people? Might it be to store information as a way of researching and developing the future?
Should it be a way of preserving valuable objects like the CM Russell paintings? Or should it be a kind of public gallery developing art in general, as the CM Russell Museum in Great Falls has become, raising questions about the relationship with private for-profit galleries? The CM Russell, which needs to build an endowment for maintenance, lately put its Couse paintings up for auction. Couse was a major SW painter of Native Americans, but the curator felt they were “outside the mission” of the museum. The Montana Historical Society owns works by de Kooning and Picasso, which would fetch a pretty penny on the current hot art market. Can these be defended as part of Montana’s heritage? Or consider the Alberta Bair ranch, stocked with fabulous European objects.
Questions abound and should not be answered by decisions already made without realizing the limitations they can impose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)