My response to the review of the Hood's new exhibitions ("New Hood exhibits emphasize anthropology over aesthetics," April 2) may be influenced by my own involvement with the Hood Museum of Art. As a student intern at the museum, I have probably spent more time in and around the "Our Land" and "Thin Ice" exhibits than most students. Nevertheless, I respond to the review not only as a Hood intern but as an art history major.
Over the last several decades, the line between "art" and "artifact" has been blurring. Eurocentric mentalities have been nudged aside slowly but surely, taking African tribal art out of natural science museums and installing it in the same institutions as Monet and Van Gogh. Still, some older conventions hold out. Art history 1 and art history 2 here at Dartmouth, for instance, are considered survey courses of the history of art -- but they do not observe the arts of Asia, pre-Columbian North and South America or Africa (outside of its influence on Picasso). As curators and students we are moving into new territory; who gets to decide what is art and what is artifact? Can something utilitarian be beautiful, or vice versa? These are difficult questions to answer, but coming out of a century of Eurocentric exclusion, I believe it is our job to keep an open mind when we at least try to answer.
The author of the review of "Our Land" and "Thin Ice" seemed to have two central and understandable problems with the exhibits. First, he questioned what was "modern" or "contemporary" about the art of "Our Land," when much of the art in that exhibit seems to resemble works from the "Thin Ice" exhibit. For many Westerners, "modern" art is synonymous with radical art, often jarring and sometimes aesthetically unappealing. It would make sense, then, that the art in "Our Land" would not seem modern.
However, contemporary Western art does not have the same goals as contemporary Inuit art. Inuit culture has lived intimately with an environment for thousands of years, working with and not against it. Recently, this land has been changing, melting and disappearing. The goal of contemporary Inuit art in "Our Land," as I understand it, is to preserve a cultural history. Works of art may resemble the "artifacts" from "Thin Ice" because the beauty of those objects is what the artists are trying to preserve. They are not trying to break the molds of tradition in the way that Western artists often do; instead, they are trying to record their own traditions through contemporary interpretation so both their past and their present can survive.
The second concern which the author of the review voiced was with the space dedicated to the two exhibits: "Putting it bluntly, it seems a real stretch to fill three galleries in the museum with three separate exhibits on such similar topics." Following the success of the "Dreaming Their Way" Aboriginal art exhibition last fall, I wonder why there was no such concern for that exhibition. Was the "Dreaming" exhibit more "art-like" because it used paint on canvas? Do the Inuit works merit less space in the galleries because they may resemble "artifacts"? Many major museums contain room after room of single artists or movements, but I believe there has been little complaint about wings full of Monet.
What is art and who gets to decide is one of the most important questions each generation of artists and art historians must answer for themselves. As students of Western education, I believe many of us (including myself) have ideas about what art should look like, and many of those ideas are unfortunately predicated on an exclusionist history.
To be fair, the author does comment in regards to his evaluation: "This isn't to say that the show isn't beautiful, fascinating or worth seeing." In this we are in absolute agreement. More than anything else, I would encourage you to go see for yourself. I personally love how many of the stone sculptures seem to have been formed naturally, with features of birds and mammals carved by river water and not an artist's hand. I love the subtlety of coloring in the prints and the inseparability of man, land and animal.
Find what you like or don't like in the exhibit, but don't go into the museum having already decided what is art. What I wish to encourage most, in response to the review in The Dartmouth, is for students to experience the exhibits of "Thin Ice" and "Our Land" with an open mind.
