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Article: A Museum of the Indian, not for the Indian.(Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian)
- Article from:
- The American Indian Quarterly
- Article date:
- June 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 University of Nebraska Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Apparently, there's been some controversy brewing around the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. A bit of it is due to the dismay over the exclusion of so many tribes, which I'm sure in time will be remedied, given that the exhibits are supposed to rotate every couple of years. But more fundamental is the debate over the museum's deliberate choice to center its philosophy around the interpretive exhibits of so-called community curators. Your opinion of the success of this approach, whether you're Native or not, I suppose depends primarily on your expectations of the function, responsibility, and very definition of what a museum should be because those ...