Early Years of Native American Art History: The Politics of Scholarship and Collecting

This collection of essays deals with the development of Native American art history as a discipline rather than with particular art works or artists. It focuses on the early anthropologists, museum curators, dealers, and collectors, and on the multiple levels of understanding and misunderstanding, appropriation and reappropriation which characterized their transactions. The essays examine major figures, art forms, institutions, and events of the early years when Native American artworks were first collected, studied, and displayed.