Rethinking the Value of Art

The Albuquerque Art Museum has brought another fine exhibition to town: Coast to Coast to Coast: Indigenous Art from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. What most caught my interest in the show was the selection of traditional art from the Northwest Coast.  After a quick walk-through my first thought was to wonder at how I had grown up in Seattle and undergone sixteen years of "education" there without achieving a better understanding and appreciation of the area's indigenous art.  There are some obvious personal and social reasons, I think, but a large part of the educational deficit was the absence of native voices in the process.  What brought home that idea was the opening presentation by two Canadian indigenous experts on the subject of the show.

I had developed an interest in anthropology during my time at the University of Washington, but somehow it was not channeled into the local access that was available to native cultures.  Instead, I wandered off to explore a bit of the Northwest Amazon which my months there only gained me a superficial view of the possibilities of learning about traditional societies.

Most of the art  discussed by the presenters was recent work by Canadian indigenous artists.  I have never been very interested in museum-directed work of that kind, but the discussion did point to the importance  of the underlying motivations and history.  The brief comments on the role of art in the traditional cultures of the Pacific Northwest, however, really sparked my interest in the subject.

I was particularly taken by the explanation by Bonnie Devine about the Potlatch as a key element of a sustainable economy.  Of course, that subject was touched on in my college classes, but I only remember it being presented as kind of an aberrant curiosity.  Devine's few words on the topic made the tradition of giving away precious art objects seem perfectly rational and practical.  Thinking the next day about that viewpoint brought me to the idea that a modern day analogy might be the history of the Free Software Movement.

So, I am looking forward now to several more visits to the current exhibition at the Art Museum and to spending some time exploring the available literature on the subject.