A: It was about trying to show that in every culture, we wrap ourselves in cloth, from birth to death, coming of age rites, weddings; we always wear ritually important clothing, whether heirloom textiles, handmade cloth or fabric valued for various other reasons.
Although the clothing displays great diversity — you see a plethora of techniques, of dye colours, ornamentation, geo-cultural origin — the meaning behind these textiles are so human. We amplify our identities through the wearing of clothing. This exhibition is not about representing exotic others from some distant past or far-off lands, rather it is meant to demonstrate to museum visitors that we wear clothing for similar purposes. Because these cloths come from living cultures, we need to understand and respect their meanings and protocols of use and production.
A: MOA’s reputation of being a cutting-edge museum with innovative, collaborative representational practices and active relations to First Nations Northwest Coast cultures brought me here.
I knew of MOA when I was a graduate student at Columbia University in New York City and went to Bella Coola, British Columbia, to do my doctoral research with the Nuxalk Nation. I didn’t want to be another anthropologist that came, recorded knowledge and never stayed, never came back. So Vancouver was the closest I could be to a major university and still maintain connections to the community and my adopted family and friends in Bella Coola.
I didn’t want to be another anthropologist that came, recorded knowledge and never stayed, never came back.
A: It’s really interesting. My time is divided, 60-percent curator, 40-percent professor. Finding a mathematical divide means teaching one three-credit course one year and the following year, two three-credit courses. So if it’s a year where I’m teaching six credits, I’m often teaching our two-term museum practice and curatorship course, ANTH 431. It’s very different from your average lecture-based course as it is embedded within the museum and directly hands-on.
Almost every staff member, from the director, conservators, collections and the education and public programming department participate in teaching this class. We take no more than 20 students and they learn about museum ethics and theory combined with real, engaged museum practices, from visitor studies to object accession and cataloguing to exhibition curation and the creation of educational programs.
A: I consider myself a ‘critical museologist’ — one who pays attention to the institutional power that we have in the ability to represent others.
At MOA, we strive to practice collaborative museology, working with communities of origin, whether they are individual artists, cultural educators, historians and practitioners, or specific First Nations such as the Nuxalk with whom I work to represent their culture in the museum’s galleries.
Ostensibly, the job of a curator is to care for, research, exhibit and publish the collection in order to share knowledge widely. Always at the forefront however, we represent cultures that usually aren’t ‘us’. When I talk about being aware, you must be very self-reflective about what you’re doing, especially as a non-native curator who works with native collections.
Always at the forefront however, we represent cultures that usually aren’t ‘us’. When I talk about being aware, you must be very self-reflective about what you’re doing, especially as a non-native curator who works with native collections.
