Presenting Living Cultures: A Panel on Repatriation and the Indigenization of Museums

Canadian scholar Dr. Ruth B. Phillips will be speaking at CU Museum of Natural History.  Dr. Phillips has published widely on the indigenous arts of North America and critical museology. Her books include Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums (2011); Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast (1998); and Representing Woman: Sande Masquerades of the Mende of Sierra Leone (1995). She has served as Director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, and as President of the International Committee on the History of Art (CIHA). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

About the panel:

How do Western categorizations of sacred/secular and notions of propertyapplied through repatriation laws, policies and international conventionsalign -- or misalign-- with Indigenous concepts of power and ownership?

The ways in which Native American and other Aboriginal people and museums work together have changed drastically in recent decades, and some of the most productive new practices accommodate both difference and inclusivity. As a scholar and museum director with over forty years of professional experience, and a key shaper of new curatorial practices and institutional cultures, Ruth Phillips has been deeply engaged with resurgent Aboriginal communities and artists in Canada and beyond. This panel is assembled on the occasion of her visit to CUAM as Distinguished Critic of the Year to conduct a conversation about the cultural property that museums have collected in the past: who owns it? who displays it? why are pluralistic perspectives desirable?

This lecture is free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.