CURATORIAL PRACTICE IN ANTHROPOLOGY: ORGANIZED SPACE AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION by Shelby Richardson BFA, The Ontario College of Art and Design University, 2010 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Anthropology Shelby Richardson, 2012, University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE Curatorial Practice in Anthropology: Organized Space and Knowledge Production by Shelby Richardson BFA, Ontario College of Art and Design, 2010 SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE Dr. Andrea Walsh, (Department of Anthropology) Supervisor Dr. Brian Thom, (Department of Anthropology) Departmental Member ii ABSTRACT Much of the curatorial and anthropological literature on museology has oversimplified museum spaces as monolithic colonial entities. However, recent developments in museum practice as a process of collaborative and public cross-cultural exchange are changing the way these spaces are interpreted and used. In this thesis, I examine contemporary curatorial endeavors at a number of museums and galleries in Vancouver, British Columbia, that attempt to revitalize the ways in which the cultural expressions of Indigenous artists and their communities are represented. The artists whose works are examined in this thesis locate their traditional territories along the coastline of B.C. As both separate and similar institutions, museums and art galleries are useful venues from which one may examine and chart ongoing processes of cross-cultural exchange. A curatorial exhibition project of my own: Understanding Place in Culture: Serigraphs and the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge will explore some of the obstacles and benefits of engaging in cross-cultural conversations of cultural representation. The exhibit looks at a selection of prints by Indigenous artists from the Smyth and Rickard Collections of Northwest Coast Prints from the University of Victoria Art Collections (UVAC) chosen specifically because they concern the artists’ perspectives of place as it relates to physical locations, identity, and cultural practice. The relationship between the organization of knowledge and culturally specific attachments to space and place are central to understanding how we think about, and engage with, the world around us. The relationship between places and local knowledge connects the content of the images with the space in which they are to be exhibited: the Maltwood Prints and Drawings Gallery in the McPherson Library at the university. Through interviews with artists and curators, and a review of the literature surrounding these issues, I have attempted to create an argument for the importance of space and place in support of an agentive curatorial practice. As an attempt to decolonize the museum/gallery space, this thesis argues that diverging perspectives of place are essential to the way we understand the world and our position within it. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE .................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. v LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: THE POLITICS OF SPACE AND PROBLEMS IN REPRESENTATION .......... 7 The Politics of Space .................................................................................................................. 7 Indigenous Space: The problem of boundaries ......................................................................... 11 Inalienable Landscapes: Visual Representation of Place.......................................................... 16 Problems in Representation ...................................................................................................... 22 Visual Descriptors of Difference .............................................................................................. 23 CHAPTER 2: CURRENT PRACTICE AND IDEAS .................................................................. 31 Collaboration............................................................................................................................. 34 Breaking Down and Setting Up Boundaries ............................................................................. 43 Sensorial Space ......................................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 62 CHAPTER 3: PRINTS AS KNOWLEDGE PRODUCERS AND CONVEYORS OF PLACE . 65 The Exhibition Space ................................................................................................................ 70 Particulars of Place ................................................................................................................... 73 The Specifics of Institutional Space ......................................................................................... 88 Prints as Learning Tools ........................................................................................................... 99 CHAPTER 4: CURATORIAL AGENCY AND THE ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE 106 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 114 APPENDIX A: SELECT EXCERPTS FROM ARTIST INTERVIEWS .................................. 125 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the following people who were instrumental in the creation of thesis. First I would like to thank the participants whose thoughts and opinions greatly influenced my work: Dr. Sharon Fortney, Karen Duffek, Dr. Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Francis Dick, Maynard Johnny Jr., and Edward Joe, your contributions to this thesis make it an extremely valuable and personal document. I would also like to thank the professors, who without their assistance and dedication, this thesis would not have been possible; to Dr. Andrea N. Walsh, Dr. Brian Thom and Dr. Ann Stahl, I sincerely thank you for your efforts and unrelenting support. I am also grateful to my fellow peers, Jane Welburn and Caylie Gnyra, who have been extremely helpful to me in the process of completing this document. To my family: Mom, Dad, Derek and (baby), thank you for giving me the strength and will to press on. I would also like to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, The Department of Anthropology and the Department of Graduate Studies at the University of Victoria for their generous support. v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Map of the Northwest Coast ........................................................................................ 12 Figure 2.1 Crooked beak Hamatsa Mask by Kevin Daniel Cranmer ........................................... 46 Figure 3.1 Wanx'id: To Hide, To be Hidden by Marianne Nicolson ............................................ 55 Figure 4.1 Salish Portals by Susan Point...................................................................................... 59 vi INTRODUCTION The topic of curatorial practice and its relationship to anthropological methods is not a new one. In fact, the role anthropological curators have played in mediating cultural representations in museum exhibits is a widely discussed topic, and an essential part of the framework of its own discipline, museology (Ames 1986; Clifford 1997; Duffek 1987; Jessup and Bagg 2002; Martin 2002; McLoughlin 1999; Nemiroff 1992; Philips 2005). The history of critical museology reflects some of the major changes in both the social and cultural perspectives of cultural exhibits that have transformed over the years, a full account of which is far too extensive for this particular thesis. The aim of this research is to chart recent and local curatorial projects in Vancouver, British Columbia that demonstrate dramatic shifts in the cultural representations of Indigenous communities on the Northwest Coast, while at the same time analyzing the relationships between these curatorial endeavors and changes in the context and creation of museum/gallery spaces.1 After this discussion, I place my own exhibition project into the context of this critical curatorial movement. This thesis places a major emphasis on a notion of curatorial agency. Curatorial agency pertains to the pivotal role curators play in the way in which culture is created, read, and 1 I have used the term ‘Indigenous’ because of the association this term has as a relational concept from which to understand ontologies of land use and dwelling. In response to Tim Ingold’s (2000:151) criticism of the term in relation to its dependency on a ‘colonial narrative of conquest,’ I do not use it to necessarily identify peoples as ‘being there first.’ Rather, I have chosen this term because of its