Expanding Internationalism - A Conference on ... - Mary Jane Jacob

works in the same spirit whether he is in the mountains of Scotland or
Bolivia), joins together a conception of art and of the world.
The
"mountain" becomes santized, tamed and delocalized by its association with
the "gallery;" the "gallery" becomes romanticized, placed in a great open,
timeless space by its association with the "mountain."
We know that galleries and museums are far from neutral. They are
subject to the laws of the land, and are often the focus of intense
controversy, either taking place privately before the exhibition or
publicly afterwards, as to what is permissable or desirable in that
space.
The question of what is permissable becomes coupled with the
question of the relation of the museum to the land, or the "cultural" to
the "natural" space, in a particularly acute sense, in fact in a
life-and-death sense, with the history of shows of Native American art.
These questions were illuminated for me by the writings of Jimmie Durham,
Jean Fisher, Susan Hiller, Margaret Holm, and others.
At the 1986 World's Fair in canada -- to take a typical example
space in the projected "Indians of canada" pavilion was denied to Native
American groups because the authorities felt that if they controlled it
themselves they would not use it in prescribed cultural ways, but would
draw attention to their present-day struggles, especially struggles over
land rights. For their part, Native American groups have sometimes
refused to land artifacts to museum shows as a challenge to the ruling
assumptions, which, in relation to Native American culture, have
one-sid.edly emphasized the spiritual. Thus, "The Spirit Sings, " organized
at calgary as part of the 1988 Winter Olympics was boycotted by the
Lubicon Cree because the oil company which partly sponsored the show was
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