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INDEXING (IN)AUTHENTICITY

Art and artefact in ethnography museums

Carine Ayélé Durand*

Abstract

Over the past three decades, ethnographic museums have increasingly collected and displayed

contemporary artworks in order to challenge assumptions about the (in)authenticity of cultural

minorities. Yet, this paper argues, by perpetuating ambiguities and contradictions in their collect-

ing and display practices, they have often failed to fully acknowledge the complexities attached

to the notion of cultural continuity. Drawing on examples from the Etnografiska Museet in

Stockholm and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in Cambridge, it is sug-gested that the collecting of contemporary artworks in ethnographic museums might not be

sufficient to make these institutions socially and politically relevant. As some of the Sámi and

Mäori artists involved have indicated, direct engagement between artists and museum staff, and

with the public, is fundamental to conveying that their artworks are at once “traditional” and

“contemporary”.

*Department of Social Anthropology,University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Email: [email protected]

Introduction

This paper takes as its focus the collections

of objects used to represent in museums what

were once described as “primitive” cultures.

It considers a current trend among ethno-

graphic museums to develop collections of

contemporary (“ethnic”) art as a strategy for

demonstrating their social relevance. Despite

curatorial good intentions, it is argued, some

museums have perpetuated persistent biases by

failing to demonstrate that indigenous cultures

and art production are at once “traditional and

contemporary” (Thomas, 1999, pp. 16–17). By

exploring the way these matters were addressed

at the Etnografiska Museet (Stockholm,

Sweden) and the Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology (MAA; Cambridge, UK), this

paper shows how the process of selecting and

acquiring contemporary artworks places muse-

ums in a complex position in relation to debates

about cultural continuity. If they purchase



INDEXING (IN)AUTHENTICITY 249

pieces that look too “modern” as exemplar of

contemporary cultures, they risk suggesting to

their audience that those peoples have lost their

cultural distinctiveness to the ravages of coloni-

alism and globalization. On the other hand, ifthey collect things that are too traditional, they

are accused of perpetuating the notion that such

cultures live in a timeless ethnographic present.

As experiences from my ethnographic research

demonstrate, museums have increasingly sought

to address this apparent impasse by involving

representatives of indigenous peoples and cul-

tural minorities themselves in collecting (as well

as exhibition) processes. So far this has typically

involved giving artists a strong degree of artisticfreedom in producing commissioned works, and

encouraging them to present their work in their

own terms to the museum-going public.

Art in museums of ethnography

From the mid-1970s on, the emergence of an

international indigenous art market has aroused

the interest of ethnographic museums in ethni-cally conscious art. The collection and display

of such productions have been encouraged to

increase the contemporary social and political

relevance of museums. It has also helped them

to strengthen their relationships with indig-

enous peoples and other cultural minorities on

the one hand, and to offer something new to

their public by assembling historical objects and

new works of art on the other. As several exam-

ples will show however, it is still difficult for

European museums that have lacked constant

relationships with indigenous contemporary

art producers to avoid perpetuating the view

of contemporary indigenous art as inauthentic.

Over the past three decades, the collect-

ing of contemporary artworks produced by

indigenous peoples has redefined the role of

institutions, which were established to assem-

ble material records of “vanishing” cultures

and traditions in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries (Haas, 1996; Phillips & Steiner, 1999;

Stocking, 1985). At the same time, indigenous

artists, scholars and museum practitioners have

increasingly called traditional display practices

into question, which had “despised as inauthen-

tic” or “relegated to the category of ‘touristart’” objects which demonstrated “‘accultur-

ated’ or ‘hybrid’ aesthetic forms” (Phillips,

1994; Phillips, 2006; Thomas, 1999). While

the 1970s and 1980s witnessed the develop-

ment of an international indigenous peoples’

movement (Daes, 1977; Sanders, 1977) and

the adoption by many countries of a politics of

multiculturalism (Hewitt, 2005; Turner, 1993),

Jean Fisher has argued that (despite curatorial

good intentions) exhibition contexts have been“persistently colonial in nature”, failing “to

acknowledge not only the circumstances under

which . . . collections are formed but also the

modern existence of Native peoples” (1992,

p. 44). Commenting on similar biases, Ruth

Phillips recalled, for instance, that during her

doctoral fieldwork in Sierra Leone in the early

1970s she was “still complicit in the search for

the mythic ‘authenticity’ and ‘purity’ of African

art” (1994, p. 43). She describes how her obser-vations of Mende artists’ practices profoundly

challenged her first assumptions:

During the colonial period, Mende art, like

many other traditions around the world,

began to display an increased naturalism that

was antithetical to the formal qualities most

Western art lovers appreciated in African art.

The carvings preferred by Mende audiences in

1972 had been influenced by Western modes

of representation which were journalistic and

commercial rather than artistic. I also met

Mende carvers in proud possession of recent

paperbacks on African art, which they used

as sourcebooks for replications of sculptural

genres from other parts of Africa. The hybrid,

in other words, was everywhere to be seen,

although—in that prepostmodern phase of

scholarship—it had not yet been ‘named’ or

celebrated as a valid form of postcolonial

expression. (1994, p. 40)



C.A. DURAND250

While scholars like Phillips increasingly ques-

tioned their own assumptions about cultural

authenticity and traditions in the 1970s, non-

Western anthropologists voiced their concerns

about a persistent interest in anthropology instudying “vanishing” cultures before their dis-

appearance. As Simeon Chilungu wrote:

Lévi-Strauss goes on to say that ‘research must

be speeded up and we must take advantage

of the few years that remain to gather all the

information we can on these vanishing islands

of humanity. Such information is vital for,

unlike the natural sciences, the sciences of

man cannot originate their own experimenta-tion’. Here I totally disagree. Africans, Asians,

Polynesians, American Indians, Melanesians,

and Australians are critical of anthropologists

because of this very guinea-pig approach.

(1976, pp. 464–465)

By the 1990s museum practitioners were well

aware of criticism voiced by anthropologists

engaged in the “writing culture” debates and by

representatives of indigenous communities andethnic minorities who increasingly participated

in national and international arenas. Important

political and academic developments, including

the emergence of an international indigenous

peoples’ movement and the growing contri-

bution of informants to the development of

collaborative methodologies in anthropology

(Lassiter, 2005), influenced museum practice

in North America, the Pacific and Europe.

After more than a decade of self-reflection,

they were now in a better position to critically

analyse their collecting and display strategies.

The renewed interest in ethnographic collec-

tions as “primitive art” in the 1980s, while

criticized (Clifford, 1988; Danto, 2006 [1984];

Faris, 1988; Gell, 1999; Miller, 1993; Price,

1989; Rubin, 2003; Vogel, 2006 [1988]), drew

attention towards ethnographic and cultural

history museums that had been so far per-

ceived by many as “warehouses of material

culture from peoples living in the late 19th

and early 20th centuries” (Haas, 1996, p. S8).

By the 1990s, therefore, the growing interest

by mainstream art galleries and museums in

non-Western contemporary artworks raised the

question of whether and how ethnographic andcultural history museums should also collect

and display such artworks to demonstrate their

social relevance (Weibel & Buddensieg, 2007).

Faced with shrinking budgets, limited storage

facilities and the multiplication of indigenous

peoples’ institutions—built to display their own

cultural heritage, museum professionals in eth-

nography institutions wondered whether, why

and how they should still continue to collect

(Sayers, 1991). In Britain, for example, mostethnographic museums could not afford to

participate in the expensive tribal art market. In

contrast to the prices of antiquities, pre-Colum-

bian, African, Indonesian and Oceanic arts,

which are seen as inherently traditional rather

than contemporary, Aboriginal Australian art,

usually marketed as “contemporary fine art”

(Geismar, 2001, p. 44), at least initially, seemed

more affordable. As their productions become

entangled in the art market “some of those whowere or might have been native craftsmen are

transformed into artists in the Western sense”

(Stocking, 1985, p. 6), being accorded “interna-

tional appreciation as producers of ‘high art’”

(Myers, 1991, p. 27). However, the authenticity

of their art is still under scrutiny. For example,

a television documentary Art from the Heart?,

screened in 1999, argued that “Aboriginal

paintings produced for the market could not

be authentic” (Burns Coleman, 2001, p. 385).

Four grounds were specified on which the claim

that these productions were not genuine art

was based: (i) the paintings in question are not

spiritually motivated but were produced for sale

and therefore are not traditionally Aboriginal;

(ii) Aboriginal paintings produced in acrylics,

on canvas, or in any other medium that is not

traditional, are not authentic; (iii) some paint-

ings were not produced by people of Aboriginal

descent and are not, therefore, Aboriginal art;

and (iv) as some paintings were not produced




by the persons who were believed to haveproduced them, the Aboriginal people whosigned them were engaged in the productionof fakes.

Burns Coleman, writing critically about theprogramme, noted:

These claims were supposed to lead us to the

conclusion that the paintings under question

are fakes: in the sense that they are not ‘tra-

ditional Aboriginal art’ and in the sense that

they are not ‘art’. (2001, p. 385)

Yet, she continues, Aboriginal groups have pre-

sented “counter-claims that challenge Westernphilosophical preconceptions about authentic-ity in painting. They have claimed that worksthat are ‘obviously’ inauthentic from a Westernperspective are in fact authentic” (p. 385).Debates in Australasia and North America,including growing criticisms of the preferencefor the traditional in indigenous art and thedifficulty for museums in acquiring contempo-rary objects, have also emerged in European

museums. However European ethnographicmuseums have developed distinctive ways ofengaging with such issues. On the one hand theyhave had to question their relationships withindigenous communities that are geographi-cally distant. On the other hand, particularlyin the Nordic countries, some have also dealtwith people indigenous to their territories. Inaddition, ethnographic museums have workedmore and more with representatives of indig-

enous groups who are living as members ofdiasporic communities in European urban cen-tres (Raymond & Salmond, 2008). They havethus developed specific questions regarding thecollecting of contemporary indigenous art. Incontrast to their colleagues in North Americaand the Pacific, curators in European institu-tions have found it more difficult to break withpopular stereotypes about indigenous peoplewho are more likely to be seen on television

than in the streets.A common assumption in anthropological

and museological literature is that while cura-tors and scholars have now acknowledged theimportance of showing culture change, thebroader audience visiting museums retain “an

appetite for a pure ‘primitive’ culture that canbe romanticized” (Thomas, 1999, p. 16). Asexamples drawn from my own fieldwork expe-rience will soon demonstrate, this assumptionseems even more justified in Europe, where thepublic is often described as “ignorant” of geo-graphically distant contemporary indigenouscultures and art production (Schindlbeck, 2002,p. 351). In the next section I therefore questionwhether museum professionals and their finan-

cial supporters are now clearly encouragingalternative perspectives on indigenous peoples’authenticity. Even in European museums thathave developed more enduring relationshipswith indigenous peoples, the presentation ofcontemporary artworks is sometimes jeopard-ized by a persistent preference for traditionalethnic art.

Collecting Sámi art

The Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm has beencollaborating with indigenous communitiesfor more than a decade. Important initiativeshave included the return of its Sámi collec-tion to Ájtte, the Swedish Mountains and SámiMuseum of Jokkmokk in northern Swedenin the late 1980s, and the repatriation of acarved totem pole to the Haisla community

in Canada (Cardinal, 2003; Rozental, 2007).The museum has thus developed knowledge onand relationships with both distant and nearbyindigenous communities. In 1999, it planneda new exhibition, Den Skapande Människan(Creative Man), designed to “convey the ideathat human beings create and shape world-view, beliefs, and material objects through theirunique understanding of the natural environ-ments in which they live” (Durrah Scheffy,

2004, p. 179). The exhibition is divided intothree sections, presenting the artistic traditions



C.A. DURAND252

of indigenous peoples in Australia, the Amazon

and the Arctic. The Arctic section focuses on

four ethnic groups: the Sámi, Inuit, Chukchi

and Aleut. Karin Westberg, then museum edu-

cator and responsible for the Sámi part in thisexhibition, explained that the inclusion of Sámi

artistic creations in a museum dedicated to the

presentation of non-European cultures was

motivated by a lack of knowledge in Sweden

about contemporary Sámi culture. As she says:

“Many Swedes still look at Sámi as they were

living ‘before’” (K. Westberg, personal com-

munication, March 2008).

In an effort to counter popular stereotypes

of Sámi as merely reindeer-herders living inthe far north, Westberg commissioned Sámi

handicraft artist Helge Sunna to make a con-

temporary drum that would help to present

current Sámi concerns. Ceremonial drums from

the 17th and 18th centuries are among the

most exhibited Sámi objects in ethnographic

museums. Called sorcery drums (troll trummor

in Swedish), they were confiscated or burnt

during the expansion of Christian missions in

Fenno-Scandinavia and Kola Peninsula (Russia)(Mulk & Westman, 1999). As a result, less

than 80 historic drums remain—now stored in

museums across Europe, mainly in Sweden but

also in Denmark, Norway, England, Germany,

France, Spain and Italy (Edbom, 2005).

When Sunna began making drums in the

mid-1960s, he created what he now calls “cop-

ies” of ceremonial drums, without modifying

the selection and disposition of the so-called

bildvärld (world-picture)—the figures painted

on the skin of historic drums. The drum maker,

he argues, creates a copy when he tries to repro-

duce as precisely as possible the bildvärld of old

drums (personal communication, June 2007).

He adds that makers need a long time to prac-

tise copying old drums before being able to

make one of their own. Sunna created his first

“own” drum in 1997. The skin of this drum

was decorated with a Sámi flag in the centre

and was purchased by a private collector from

Uppsala (Sweden). In making his drums, Sunna

aims to integrate symbols and figures found on

old drums into the present (Sunna, 2006). He

argues that, through their drums, contemporary

handicraft artists also tell stories about their

own living environment.In contrast with replicas of traditional

drums made by other contemporary artists,

Sunna’s drums show current issues and aspects

of present-day Sámi life. As he commented in

the exhibition text he wrote to accompany his

work, the drum expresses both continuity with

the old drums held in museum stores and his

own contemporary perspective on Sámi life

(Sunna, 1999), thus demonstrating that Sámi

culture was simultaneously traditional andcontemporary. However, this approach was not

fully supported by the museum. As Westberg

recalled, the Etnografiska Museet refused to

purchase the drum at first on the grounds that its

budget was too limited. She thus contacted the

Museum Friends Association hoping for finan-

cial support: “[A]t first [they] were interested in

sponsoring the drum but when they heard it was

‘a modern drum’ they refused” (K. Westberg,

personal communication, March 2009).Following these refusals, Sunna suggested

lending the drum to the museum until the

closing of the exhibition. Eventually, in 2001,

2 years after the drum was first exhibited, the

Etnografiska Museet secured funding to pur-

chase the piece, which is still on display. The

inclusion of Sunna’s drum in a display about

the traditions of indigenous cultures generated

a debate within the museum about what is

authentic Sámi art. For Westberg and Sunna,

the authenticity of the drum lay, on the one

hand, in Sunna’s knowledge of the environ-

ment and of the materials he used, and on the

other, in his ability to express his own vision of

contemporary Sámi culture through the things

he made. However, as Westberg wrote in her

introductory text to the Sámi display case, other

commentators, such as the Museum’s Friends

Association, recognized authenticity only in the

reproduction of the traditional art forms of the

past centuries:




[W]e can hear critical voices saying that

Helge’s drum cannot be authentic. It does not

look like the old ones, those that were made in

the 17th and 18th centuries! . . . If [contempo-

rary indigenous peoples’] craft and art are notvisibly traditional they are not considered as

‘authentic’ . . . If a Sámi does not wear a kolt

[traditional garment], does not perform joik

[traditional singing], does not live in a kåta

[traditional dwelling] while reindeer-herding,

it is said that he is or she is not an ‘authen-

tic’ Sámi! (Westberg, 1999, my translation)

As seen earlier with the controversy surround-

ing the screening of the Australian televisiondocumentary, Art from the Heart?, scholars

and indigenous artists in the Pacific have been

involved in similar debates as those surrounding

Sunna’s drum (Burns Coleman, 2001). By com-

missioning Sunna to make a new drum, Westberg

wanted to give voice to Sámi “counter-claims”

about authenticity. Indigenous peoples have

increasingly sought to distance themselves from

essentialist ideologies regarding the continuity

of their traditions. International institutionssuch as the Working Group on Indigenous

Populations (WGIP) and museums have been

used as forums in which such communities

together with other cultural minorities have

explicitly argued that their cultural continu-

ity, while based on past traditions, implies the

constant creation of new knowledge. Informed

by these international debates, Westberg thus

convened public encounters in which Sunna

expressed his definition of authenticity in his

own terms, stressing the authority he had gained

over the years through family connections and

continuous engagement with materials, such as

reindeer antlers, roots and skins, that helped

him to talk about his experience and knowl-

edge through his art and craft (Sunna, 1999).

As examined below in a second example from

Cambridge, museum practitioners in Europe

have increasingly expressed an interest in what

contemporary indigenous artists can offer

museums regarding the concept of authenticity.

Unsettling the (in)authentic: Pasifika

Styles

Together with other ethnographic museums

in Europe, North America and the Pacific,MAA has developed strategies over the last

decade to add contemporary art and craft to

their ethnographic collections. Drawing on a

broad network of students and scholars from

the university, who conduct anthropological

and archaeological fieldwork in many coun-

tries, MAA allocates each year small grants

issued from its Crowther Beynon Fund, one

of which enabled the curators of the Pasifika

Styles exhibition to collect newly made itemswhich were later incorporated to co-curator

Rosanna Raymond’s art installation Eye Land

Pt2: Welkome 2da K’Lub (Durand, 2008).

Participating in the Pasifika Styles exhibi-

tion, I became involved in the interactions

and discussions surrounding the selection and

display of a wide variety of objects including

artefacts drawn from the museum’s Oceanic

collections, items purchased in New Zealand

by the co-curators, as well as artworks commis-sioned for the exhibition and brought from the

Pacific or created by the artists in the museum.

It became soon obvious that, by displaying all

these objects in the same space, the Pasifika

Styles exhibition called into question the oppo-

sition between traditional and contemporary,

as explained in the exhibition website:

A fusion of contemporary style and technologi-

cal innovation with ancient traditions, Pasifika

Styles unites the new wave of contemporary

Pacific art and culture with extraordinary

historical collections. (MAA, 2008)

Described by one commentator as “a poly-

phonic collage” (Moutu, 2007), and enriched

by recorded interviews of the artists and audio-

visual material exhibited alongside artworks

and artefacts, Pasifika Styles explored issues

of authenticity and inauthenticity, in part by

showing a wide diversity of art forms (painting,



C.A. DURAND254

sculpture, photography, etc.) and materials

(acrylic Perspex, glitter on canvas, synthetic

flowers, newspapers and so on). Deidre Brown,

a contemporary art curator and historian of

Mäori Art at the University of Auckland,describes this artistic approach, common in

New Zealand, which does not eradicate the

traditional but embraces it as a crucial com-

ponent of the contemporary. She argues that

“while European influence has changed Pasifika

art aesthetically, it has not changed it concep-

tually” (Brown, 2008, p. 28). Western media,

art practices and technologies, she continues,

“have often been employed to perpetuate Pacific

concepts” (Brown, 2008, p. 28). The fusionof “contemporary style” and “ancient tradi-

tions” evoked by the museum’s website, and

the perpetuation of Pacific concepts described

by Brown, were also made evident in the work

of Mäori artist Bethany Edmunds (Figure 1).

Her installation pART mAOri (2006) showed

traditional Mäori carving patterns made out of

denim. Edmunds, as the artist herself explains

in an interview with Rosanna Raymond, usesall the abilities she has gained from her double

heritage—part Mäori, part Päkehä (people of

European descent)—to translate her traditional

knowledge into contemporary materials.

A lot of my work is focused on young people

. . . I’ve had the privilege and the ability to

sit with my old . . . nannies . . . and learn

skills from them and I think that it’s really

important because I’ve been given all of . . .

this knowledge. I then become a vessel for

that knowledge and it’s my responsibility to

hand it on to future generations. . . . Being

part Mäori is a huge thing for me and having

returned back to the big city [Auckland] where

I grew up as a teenager it’s really interesting

to translate all of that old knowledge that I’ve

got from the far north and then bring it back

to the city and put it into a context that peo-

ple in an urban environment can understand.

(interview by Rosanna Raymond, 2005)

In the same way as Sunna explained to visi-

tors to the Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm,

Edmunds relates the authenticity of her work to

the knowledge she has acquired over the years.

Learning the history and stories related to themotifs she uses has given her, she argues, the

“licence and the ability” to interpret them in

an urban environment (interview by Rosanna

Raymond, 2005). Using simultaneously the tra-

ditional and the contemporary, Edmunds states

that “it’s about not having to put myself in a

little tiny box. I can actually be comfortable to

weave all of the strands of my bloodlines into

the person that I am” (ibid.).

FIGURE 1 Detail of pART mAOri by Bethany

Edmunds at the Cambridge Museum

of Archaeology and Anthropology,

May 2006.




Other ways of assembling traditional and

contemporary resources in the museum were

demonstrated by artist George Nuku. At the

entrance to the Pasifika Styles exhibition, visi-

tors were welcomed by his Outer Space Marae,carved from acrylic Perspex (Figure 2). In May

2006, in preparation for the exhibition opening,

Nuku used museum workshop facilities to cre-

ate additional elements for this piece. Assisting

him in his work, which took place partly in the

museum’s galleries, I could see how the public

engaged with his installation. Many of the visi-

tors at first could not tell whether the Marae was

made of plastic or ice. Nuku encouraged them to

touch it and then discussed why he had chosen towork with Perspex rather than wood. He argued

that Mäori have always worked with the materi-

als available around them. In the 21st century, he

said, “we live in a plastic world, there is plastic all

around us” (G. Nuku, personal communication,

May 2006). His carved Perspex demonstrated

his ability to call on the experience and knowl-

edge of previous generations while engaging

with contemporary materials. Commenting on

the issue of authenticity debated over the past

decades in anthropology and in museums, Nukucalled into question the judgment of scholars and

art critics:

How can somebody who lives on the other

side of the world come and tell you on your

side of the world how you’re supposed to be?

I mean that doesn’t make any sense—it would

be like me going over to England and trying

to instruct the people of England on English

culture and saying that their culture is notauthentic and it’s become corrupted and they

should be doing it this way. (interview by

Rosanna Raymond, 2005)

Edmunds’ and Nuku’s artworks illustrate “the

extent to which an indigenous population can

FIGURE 2 George Nuku completing his installation Outer Space Marae at the Cambridge Museum

of Archaeology and Anthropology, May 2006.



C.A. DURAND256

remain grounded in tradition and in ances-

tral practices while being fully engaged with

modernity at the same time” (Thomas, 1999,

p. 223). Yet such intentions do not always get

through to museum audiences. Museums maynot always succeed in conveying the simulta-

neity of traditional and contemporary, despite

curatorial good intentions and a collaborative

approach to exhibition planning. According to

Edmunds herself, indeed, “to view someone’s

work on the wall is one thing but to converse

with the artist about where they’re coming from

is a whole other thing” (interview by Rosanna

Raymond, 2005). Well aware of this issue,

the Pasifika Styles exhibition offered museumvisitors the opportunity to understand how

the artists challenged common assumptions

about authenticity by simultaneously using

traditional and contemporary elements in their

artworks. This was achieved by a variety of

methods, including a documentary featuring

artist interviews, directed by Lisa Taouma, a

New Zealand-Samoan writer and broadcaster

(Salmond, 2008); interviews (available on sound

stations in the gallery and on the Pasifika Styles

exhibition website [MAA, 2008]); and work-shops, as well as gallery demonstrations led by

visiting artists (Figure 3). In late June and early

July 2006, for example, Bethany Edmunds led

weaving workshops in Cambridge with Mäori

weaver Kahutoi Te Kanawa. Participants were

able to acquire knowledge about the traditional

and contemporary practice and uses of Mäori

weaving. During 3 days, they were taught “the

harvesting of New Zealand flax (Phormium

tenax), extracting its fibre, traditional dye tech-niques using heated stones from a small fire pit,

and the techniques of Mäori decorative täniko

finger weaving” (Harknett, 2008, p. 101).

A year after the exhibition opened, in

April 2007, an interim evaluation report ana-

lysed some of the visitors’ comments about

FIGURE 3 MAA’s anthropology gallery during the closing of the Pasifika Styles Exhibition, February

2008.




the “fusion” Pasifika Styles aimed to produce

between Mäori and Pacific Islanders’ contempo-

rary art and the museum’s Oceanic collections.

Wonu Veys (then a curatorial assistant at MAA)

recalled that from the beginning of and duringthe project there were serious reservations and

concerns about having a contemporary art

show in an anthropology museum (personal

communication, April 2009). Indeed, some

commentators from the fine arts community in

New Zealand feared that contemporary Mäori

and Pacific Islanders’ artworks exhibited in

a museum of anthropology would inevitably

be associated “in many people’s minds with

primitivist and ethnically orientated under-standings” (Raymond & Salmond, 2008,

p. 13). However, responses to the 2007 visi-

tor survey demonstrated a strong interest in

this innovative approach. In answering the

question, what did you learn that was new?,

a visitor wrote, “how culture is developing

with new influences yet still keeping traditional

styles and methods” (Harknett, 2007). Others

acknowledged the “eagerness of artists to link

traditional craft with contemporary art” and“the juxtaposition of ‘old’ and ‘new’ taonga/art,

the effect–impact was one of cultural/artistic

continuity and change” (Harknett, 2007). To

the questions: “What did you like least? If you

could change one thing, what would it be?”,

only 1 of 46 respondents answered “that it is

too modern art like” [sic]. The vast majority

of visitors who responded to the survey were

in line with the following statement: “I think

the key idea is progress, by incorporating tra-

ditional elements it is possible to innovate but

stay true to your cultural heritage” (Harknett,

2007). If they are representative of the wider

community, these generally positive comments

tend to challenge Thomas’ and Schindlbeck’s

claims, that the broader audience visiting muse-

ums retain “an appetite for a pure ‘primitive’

culture that can be romanticized” (Thomas,

1999, p. 16). A wider survey would have been

necessary for a truly representative sample,

but the findings freely provided by 46 visitors

to the exhibition suggest that museums willing

to remain socially relevant might gain insights

from this initiative. While many of the audience

visiting the Pasifika Styles exhibition were unfa-

miliar with contemporary art from the Pacific,they seem to have been eager to understand

the kinds of connections artists drew between

ancestral collections and contemporary art-

works. The kaupapa or guiding strategy of

the exhibition certainly influenced the public’s

positive responses. As mentioned, at various

times during the exhibition museum visitors

were able to directly engage with the artists

participating in public lectures and workshops.

Visitors were thus able to discuss with the artiststo understand “where they are coming from” as

suggested by Edmunds (interview by Rosanna

Raymond, 2005).

The example of the Pasifika Styles exhibition

suggests that the collecting of contemporary

artworks in ethnographic museums might not

be sufficient to make these institutions socially

and politically relevant. As some of the Mäori

and Pacific Island artists involved have indi-

cated, direct engagement between artists andmuseum staff and with the public was fun-

damental to convey that the revitalization of

past traditions cannot be reduced to formal or

functional affinities between the old and the

new. While assembling their artworks, the art-

ists demonstrated that none of their works fell

neatly into the category of inauthentic produc-

tions created for an international art market,

in which non-Western works of art have often

been classified since the 1970s. Rather, they are

self-conscious works that aim to reveal, rather

than conceal, the contradictions embedded in

the lives of indigenous peoples and other cul-

tural minorities today.

Conclusion

In response to discussions in museums and in

the academy about cultural and artistic authen-

ticity, the Sámi and Mäori artists participating



C.A. DURAND258

in the exhibitions discussed offered alternative

definitions of authenticity as the ability to be

simultaneously traditional and contemporary.

In doing so, they offered a challenge to the view

that indigenous peoples either “present them-selves and their causes in terms of essentialisms”

(Conklin, 1997, p. 728) or, if they do not con-

form to exotic images, are seen as not indigenous

enough. Criticism of Sunna’s contemporary

drum in the late 1990s at the Etnografiska

Museet in Stockholm seems to point towards

similar assumptions about authenticity: the

new is considered more authentic if it is easily

comparable with the old. While anthropologi-

cal discussions about indigenous peoples havelargely focused on essentialist discourses in

the past three decades, (Paine, 1985; Kuper,

2003; Barnard, 2006), many indigenous artists

have rejected the “role of exotic appearances as

markers of indigenous authenticity” (Conklin,

1997, p. 728). Nicholas Thomas has observed

for instance how some Pacific Island artists in

New Zealand “have embraced the fascination

with things Pacific, but insisted on defining

the object of that interest in their own terms”

(Thomas, 1996, p. 323). In the Pasifika Styles

exhibition, the organization of workshops,public lectures and, most importantly, the trans-

formation of the exhibition gallery into a space

in which the artists created their installations,

offered unique opportunities for museum staff

and visitors to better understand the difficul-

ties in recognizing contemporary works of art

as authentic.

Glossarybildvärld world-picture (Sámi)

joik traditional singing (Sámi)

kåta traditional dwelling (Sámi)

kaupapa guiding strategy (Mäori)

kolt traditional garment (Sámi)

taonga treasure (Mäori)

troll trummor sorcery drums (Sámi)




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