Some Thoughts on the National Museum of the American Indian

78 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 19 NUMBER 2 A Different Sort of (P)Reservation: Some Thoughts on the National Museum of the American Indian Allison Arieff "Aren't bows and arrows sometimes just to define itself and its audience for centuries. A crea- bows and arrows?" (Burchard 1991:59) tion of the modern world, the museum was ill equipped to represent various collective cultures and n the past decade, for a variety of reasons—e.g., identities. The pervasive disenchantment with mod- the gains of feminism and the civil rights move- ernity and its institutions in recent decades, has Iment, the profusion of mass media, a growing forced the museum to reconsider its purpose and awareness of non-Western/non-European cultures, practices. With the recognition that culture is an the increasing commodification of cultural produc- historical construct comes the realization that our tion, and the emergence of postmodern1 theory, to representations of it are incomplete. As James Clifford name a few—the museum has become increasingly has written, culture is neither an object to be de- contested terrain, and its practices the subject of scribed nor definitively interpreted but is instead voluminous critique. What is the role of the museum "contested, temporal, emergent" (1986:18-9). Impli- in contemporary society? What is exhibited and what cated in this emergence is representation and expla- is excluded? Who is to interpret the material and to nation—both by insiders and outsiders. This what end? Responses to such questions, including the discovery has had serious implications for the mu- reinstallation of permanent collections, temporary ex- seum. hibitions, academic treatises, institutional directives, Inherently resistant to alteration, the goal of the and even a children's book, Make Your Own Museum2, museum has always been definitive—not provisional have proliferated in recent years, typically with the or variable—interpretation and explanation. By re- intent to subvert traditional museum practice by chal- moving objects from their original contexts and mak- lenging narratives, modes of display, and strategies of ing them stand for abstract wholes, museum representation. The new National Museum of the collections create the illusion of an adequate repre- American Indian in New York City is one institution sentation of the world. Modes of display override that has worked to subvert the museum status quo, specific histories of production and appropriation.3 but whether it stands as a model for future institutions Systems of ordering and classification promote and or as an object lesson in the dangers of trying to be validate notions of progress, universality, and objec- all things to all people is debatable. In this essay, I will tive truth. The advancement of a binary frame of address critically the efforts of the NMAI, with the reference, typical of Western thought, serves to un- intent of placing it within the larger cultural discourse dermine external realities of diversity—high/low, on museums and the representation of cultures and us/them, black/white. As Douglas Crimp has written their objects. the history of museology is "a history of the various The museum has historically validated the values attempts to deny the heterogeneity of the museum, and beliefs of the powerful majority, while at the same to reduce it to a homogeneous system or series" time justifying its own existence through a rhetoric of (1983:49). But the traditional museological practices social benevolence and equality. It has been struggling outlined above are no longer tenable and institutions Museum Anthropology 19(2): 78-90. Copyright © 1995, American Anthropological Association. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 79 have been forced to respond. As a result, I would Museum of Natural History had hoped to receive at argue that the museum has been undergoing a least part of the collection, but in 1987 negotiations Kuhnsian paradigmatic shift. broke down and the trustees of the Museum of the The inclusion and representation which the mu- American Indian became officially affiliated with the seum currently seeks have, however, never really Smithsonian Institution.4 The NMAI and the Smith- existed. This is not to say that these goals are not sonian planned the relocation of the Heye collection worthwhile, but rather to point out that the democ- to a new national museum in the last available loca- ratization of the museum is not simply a question of tion on the Mall in Washington D.C. , just east of the reverting to the way things were. Current vogue not- National Museum of Air and Space. President George withstanding, the basic demands of museum reform Bush signed legislation establishing the National Mu- have remained fairly consistent for the last century. seum of the American Indian in 1989. The Native The rhetoric of the stated aims of museums and the American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act political realities of their actual functioning are, as (H.R. 5237), designed to "to facilitate a more open Tony Bennett (1990, 1992) explains, inherently con- and cooperative relationship between Native Ameri- tradictory. Though there exists a desire for openness cans and museums"5 became Public Law 101-601 in and accessibility to all, the museum succeeds bril- 1990. Recognizing the importance of transferring liantly at differentiating populations. Easily catego- control of Indian culture to Indians themselves, the rized on the basis of class, race, and especially repatriation law represented a significant shift in education, the museum audience tends to be an insu- museum policy and practice. lar group possessing a particular form of cultural In October 1994, the museum opened in its tem- capital. Museums, nevertheless, engage themselves in porary home at One Bowling Green in lower Manhat- an unending quest to furnish equality of access. tan. The museum's proximity to the Statue of Liberty Despite its exclusionary practices, the museum is and the new Ellis Island Museum makes it a prime sustained by the fiction that it provides an adequate tourist destination. (It also lies along a former Algon- representation of the world. Even as the paradigm of quin trade route.) Indeed, all of the museum's exhibits the white Western male as representational norm is adopt travel as a device—the three inaugural exhibi- slowly shifting, the museum will never be all-inclu- tions are titled Journey of Creation, This Path We sive, and will never adequately represent anyone or Travel, and All Roads Are Good. Visitors to lower anything. Still, it does a good job of faking it—pre- Manhattan can "experience" the history of migration senting itself as an arbiter of truth and universality. and immigration in the course of the afternoon. A While the demands the museum generates are insa- cultural resource center dedicated to conservation tiable, as Bennett explains, people continue to work and research is planned for 1997 in Suitland, Mary- to address them. Firmly rooted in the modern ideol- land. The opening of the Washington D.C. museum is ogy of representational adequacy, museum reform is scheduled for 2001, but given the current cultural an inherently incomplete project. But in critiquing climate, this date is not definite.6 museological practice, I do not want to discount the One can view the decision to insert a monument to validity or merit of museums. My analysis is moti- Native cultures inside the 1907 Beaux Arts building vated by a desire to sustain their viability and rele- that also houses a federal bankruptcy court, as a bit vance for contemporary society. of postmodern jouissance, or alternatively as yet an- other instance of American subordination of Native The National Museum of the American culture (Fig. 1). The building's status as a landmark Indian precluded architectural modification, thus dictating A brief history of events leading up to the opening the museum's restricted floorplan. The exhibition of the National Museum of the American Indian space is limited to a narrow path that snakes around (NMAI) is in order. Its founder, George Gustav Heye the perimeter of the building's first floor. The spacious was a New York banker who over a fifty-four year rotunda which one encounters when entering the period, amassed one of the largest collections of Na- building is left empty—its use requires governmental tive American objects in the world. Until recently, the consent. The NMAI can use it for museum receptions. collection was displayed in the Museum of the Ameri- This central space could be utilized imaginatively but can Indian in upper Manhattan, with Heye as director the displays are relegated to the museum's periphery. As one reviewer described it, "the Heye Center has from 1916 until his death in 1957. The American 80 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 19 NUMBER 2 1. George Gustav Heye Center for the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Photo: Roy Gumpel. been developed as a parasite, the Customs House its tees, and all of its artists and selectors are of Native host. With no exterior markers other than signage, the ancestry. This is atypical—few museums devoted to museum gains civic significance from the landmark's indigenous culture have been put into the hands of status. But in return the center . cedes any possi- indigenous populations. Represented by others Na- bility of contesting the values for which the Customs tive Americans have tended either to be primitivized House stands" (Urbach 1994:88). The museum is in natural history museum dioramas or excluded wholly contained by the architectural space, a photo- (with a few exceptions) from art museums. Does graphic banner at the foot of Broadway is the only self-portrayal constitute a significant departure from indication of its presence inside. Susan Power, a Da- traditional museum practice? Has it done so thus far? kota Sioux writing in Bazaar magazine, has inter- It is important to acknowledge that, given the new- preted the arrangement quite differently.

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