ABSTRACT
Museums have long played a central role in both constructing and shaping senses of beauty, whether at the level of art, artifact, specimen, or architecture. In their positionings of beauty, museums influence the appreciation and the creation of art and artifacts in ways that are variously dialogic, resistant, and affirming. But even the affirming activities inevitably lead to an interaction with publics', critics', and creators' evaluations of aesthetics, design, beauty, and craftsmanship. Aesthetic values incorporate cultural protocols that support clan ownership and inheritance of treasured belongings, the material manifestation of the immaterial belongings of a clan, and the reciprocity and interdependence between opposite clans. The qualities they linked to beauty – ingenuity, creativity, diligence – are qualities the seniors would like their own cultures to be recognized for more broadly. Creativity and imagination are words used in ways akin to ingenuity, but that come from the group members themselves.
