Native art of the Northwest Coast : a history of changing ideas

Townsend-Gault, Charlotte, (editor.). Kramer, Jennifer, (editor.). Ḳi-ḳe-in, 1948- (editor.).

Summary: This remarkable volume, many years in the making, records and scrutinizes definitions of Northwest Coast Native art and its boundaries. A work of critical historiography, it makes accessible for the first time in one place a broad selection of more than 250 years of writing on Northwest Coast "art." Organized thematically, its excerpted texts are from both published and unpublished sources, some not previously available in English. They cover such complex topics as the clash between oral and written knowledge, transcultural entanglement, the influence of surrealist thinking, and the long history of the deployment of Northwest Coast Native art for nationalist purposes. The selections are preceded by thought-provoking introductions that give historical context to the diverse intellectual traditions that have influenced, stimulated, and opposed each other - publisher's website.

Record details

ISBN: 9780774820509 (paperback)
Physical Description: print
xxxvi, 1081 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits, genealogical table ; 26 cm
Publisher: Vancouver : UBC Press, [2013]
Copyright: ©2013

Content descriptions

General Note:	"Most chapters consist of an introductory essay followed by excerpts from the literature"--Page xxxv.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction -- Interpreting cultural symbols of the People from the Shore -- Ḥilth Hiitinkis -- Haida cosmic -- From explorers to ethnographers, 1770-1870 -- Thresholds of meaning -- Objects and knowledge -- "That which was most important" -- Anthropology of art -- Going by the book -- The dark years -- Surrealists and the New York avant-garde, 1920-60 -- North Coast art and Canadian national identity, 1900-50 -- Art/craft in the early twentieth century -- Welfare politics, late salvage and indigenous (in)visibility, 1930-60 -- Form first, function follows -- Democratization and Northwest Coast art in the modern period -- History and critique of the "renaissance" discourse -- Starting from the beginning -- Shifting theory, shifting publics -- Value added -- "Where mere words failed" -- Art for whose sake? -- "Fighting with property" -- Museums and Northwest Coast art -- Collaborations -- Pushing boundries, defying categories -- Art claims in the age of Delgamuukw -- Stop listening to our ancestors -- NWC on the up-load -- The material and the immaterial across borders.