colonialism

Museums, Colonial Legacies, and Contemporary Art, Part 1: Introduction

October 12, 2020 By Saga Beus While provenance—the documentation of an object’s journey from maker to collector or collection through acquisition, sale, exchange, or donation—is crucially important in the museum world in establishing legitimate ownership and ethical collection practices, it can also tell us a lot about cultural exchange, colonialism, and the history of museums […]

Museums, Colonial Legacies, and Contemporary Art, Part 2: Primitivism and the Division of “Modern” and “Traditional”

October 12, 2020 By Saga Beus An examination of the Museum of Modern Art’s controversial 1984 exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern helps put the relationship between Western art history and non-Western art into historical perspective. The exhibition centered on the Primitivist movement that emerged in Europe at […]

Museums, Colonial Legacies, and Contemporary Art, Part 3: Expanding Modernism and Addressing Colonialism with Contemporary Art

October 12, 2020 By Saga Beus “Primitivism” went on view at a MoMA that still adhered to its chronological “isms”-based approach to defining modern art, which posited a clear evolution from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism to Cubism, and so on. The exhibition was hindered by its focus on individual artists and on a largely Euro-American progression […]