Synopses & Reviews
Tourist art production is a global phenomenon and is increasingly recognized as an important and authentic expression of indigenous visual traditions. These thoughtful, engaging essays provide a comparative perspective on the history, character, and impact of tourist art in colonized societies in three areas of the world: Africa, Oceania, and North America. Ranging broadly historically and geographically, Unpacking Culture is the first collection to bring together substantial case studies on this topic from around the world.
Synopsis
"An outstanding set of studies that work well with each other to produce truly substantial and rich insights into the making and consuming of art in the colonial and post-colonial world."and#151;Susan S. Bean, Curator, Peabody Essex Museum
About the Author
Ruth B. Phillips is Director of the Museum of Anthropology and Professor of Art History and Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Representing Women: Sande Masquerade of the Mende of Sierra Leone (1990) and Trading Identities: Native Art and the Souvenir in Northeastern North America, 1700-1900 (1998). Christopher B. Steiner is Lucy C. McDannel '22 Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies at Connecticut College. He is the author of African Art in Transit (1994) and coeditor of Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation (1997).
Table of Contents
Art, authenticity, and the baggage of cultural encounter / Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner -- My father's business / Frank Ettawageshik -- Nuns, ladies, and the 'Queen of the Huron': appropriating the savage in nineteenth-century Huron tourist art / Ruth B. Phillips -- Tourist art as the crafting of identity in the Sepik River (Papua New Guinea) / Eric Kline Silverman -- Samburu souvenirs: representations of a land in amber / Sidney Littlefield Kasfir -- Authenticity, repetition, and the aesthetics of seriality: the work of tourist art in the age of mechanical reproduction / Christopher B. Steiner -- Northwest Coast totem poles / Aldona Jonaitis -- Master, machine, and meaning: printed images in twentieth-century India / Stephen R. Inglis -- Elizabeth Hickox and Karuk basketry: a case study in debates on innovation and paradigms of authenticity / Marvin Cohodas -- Threads of tradition, threads of invention: unraveling Toba-Batak women's expressions of social change / Sandra Niessen -- Drawing (upon) the past: negotiating identities in Inuit graphic arts production / Janet Catherine Berlo -- Gender and sexuality in Mangbetu art / Enid Schildkrout -- Defining Lakota tourist art, 1880-1915 / Marsha C. Bol -- Studio and soirâee: Chinese textiles in Europe and America, 1850 to the present / Verity Wilson -- The Indian fashion show / Nancy J. Parezo -- Tourism and taste cultures: collecting native art in Alaska at the turn of the twentieth century / Molly Lee -- Tourism is overrated: Pueblo pottery and the early curio trade, 1880-1910 / Jonathan Batkin -- Indian villages and entertainments: setting the stage for tourist souvenir sales / Trudy Nicks -- Art, tourism, and cultural revival in the Marquesas Islands / Carol S. Ivory -- Ethnic and tourist arts revisited / Nelson H.H. Graburn.