[MSN] Museums Establish Guidelines for Treatment of Sacred Objects

[AppraiserL]

New York Times   August 10, 2006



Museums Establish Guidelines for Treatment of Sacred Objects
By HUGH EAKIN

When the Blackfoot Nation approached the Denver Art Museum about borrowing a
horse shawl for a ceremony a few years ago, the museum faced a quandary.
Curators were eager to oblige, but they worried that the ritual would expose
the early-20th-century relic to the damaging effects of horse sweat. After a
delicate negotiation, a compromise was reached: The tribe would use the
object in the ceremony without actually putting it on the horse.

The story is not unusual. As American Indian and other groups have become
increasingly assertive about guarding their cultural heritage, museums have
struggled to strike a balance between the traditional practice of collecting
indigenous objects as art and the often competing interests of the people
whose ancestors produced them. In many cases federal laws have enabled
tribes to reclaim works outright.

Now the issue has become pressing enough that the leading association of art
museums is asking its members to take ³special consideration² when dealing
with what it terms sacred objects. In guidelines be released today, the
Association of Art Museum Directors calls on museums to consult with
indigenous groups to determine what works might fall into this category and
to accommodate the wishes of these groups as far as possible in displaying,
conserving and even discussing these works on museum labels and in catalogs.

The guidelines, which have been approved by the association¹s membership but
are not binding, are intended to apply to indigenous and other religious
groups both inside and outside the United States, including American tribes
that have not been federally recognized. An advance copy was provided to The
New York Times.

The recommendations exceed the requirements set by the 1990 Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as Nagpra. That law, which
specified the criteria under which groups could reclaim burial remains and
objects deemed to have special sacred or cultural value, applies only to
federally recognized tribes. And in cases when objects did not have to be
returned, museums did not have to collaborate with tribes on their care.

Although the most prominent cases under the law have focused on natural
history and ethnographic museums, some art museums have also faced claims,
including the Seattle Art Museum, the Denver Museum, and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. 

Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., and a
co-author of the sacred objects report, said the museum association was
motivated to issue the guidelines not in response to a specific case or
demands but in an effort to encourage greater dialogue with indigenous
groups. ³We wanted to go beyond the technical, narrow provisions of Nagpra,²
Mr. Monroe said.

Some museums with large indigenous collections have already done so. The
Peabody Essex has an agreement with native Hawaiian groups to allow ritual
offerings to be made before a rare 19th-century Hawaiian temple image in the
museum¹s collection.

The Denver Art Museum, which houses one of the nation¹s oldest collections
of Indian art, a pioneer on the issue of collaborating, has met with 100
different tribal delegations about works in its collection.

³Its a whole new way of doing business for us,² said Nancy J. Blomberg, the
museum¹s curator of native arts.

It was not immediately clear how the new recommendations will be viewed by
indigenous leaders, who were not consulted on the report. Joe Watkins, an
anthropologist at the University of New Mexico who has mediated between
museums and tribal groups, said, ³It¹s a sign of maturity that museums are
looking at the ethics of collecting and maintaining² indigenous material.

But Mr. Watkins, who is a Choctaw Indian, cautioned that sacredness has
widely different meanings among American tribes. The report acknowledges
that drafting a broad definition of a ³sacred object² would ³create
immensely difficult problems for art museums as secular institutions.²

In an effort to restrict its definition, the report draws a distinction
between works that merely ³express religious ideas, values and feelings² and
those that are ³created for use in ritual or ceremonial practice of a
traditional religion.² Some curators acknowledge privately, however, that
such a distinction might be difficult to draw in reality.

The report comes amid a broader movement for indigenous rights in the
collection and interpretation of cultural objects. Controversy arose in 2004
over the new permanent galleries at the National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, which generally forgo a scientific and historical
approach in favor of indigenous traditions like oral history and
storytelling.

This spring a group of archivists and librarians began working with a
committee of indigenous leaders to establish Protocols for Native American
Archival Materials, sweeping new principles for dealing with ³culturally
sensitive² materials in university collections and archives. The draft
protocol, which has not yet been formally adopted, calls for a cautious,
collaborative approach, but also states that Indian communities have
³primary rights² for all ³culturally sensitive materials² that are
affiliated with them.

The museum association report, in contrast, identifies ritual objects more
narrowly and does not address directly the issue of ownership or control.
³We are aware of the potential risks,² Mr. Monroe said.

Still, by embracing indigenous notions of what is sacred, some scholars say,
art museums are taking a bold step.

³Sacredness is very elastic,² said Michael F. Brown, an anthropologist at
Williams College. ³It can easily be stretched to include all kinds of things
that wouldn¹t to outsiders be sacred or religious. And because of the nature
of American society, it is a very potent term right now.²


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