Art, anthropology and museums: postcolonial orientations in the United States

Abstract

Over the past half-century, changes in political, cultural, demographic, and academic realities in the United States have contributed to a significant reorientation in the museological representation of difference. This essay weaves in and out of these different contexts in order to explore some of the ways in which anthropology and art history have been nudged in new directions, with important consequences for museums and their publics. Beginning with shifts in the ethics of field ethnography, it traces changes in the nature of ethnographic writing, the growth of art historical interest in materials that were once the sole domain of anthropology, the involvement of native voices in both disciplines, and the trend toward collaborative anthropology and co-curated museum exhibitions.