ABSTRACT
The debate around the "proper" place for Native art emerges out of a concern for how "difference" is constructed and perpetuated in museums. Acknowledging that many of their audience members may believe that the words contemporary and Native are entirely incompatible—and equate Native art with the beads and feathers that Duffek described— the texts carefully articulate the aesthetic "authenticity" of the art works. The works of artists like Mungo Martin and Willie Seaweed, who, in the 1930s and 1940s were instrumental in revitalizing Northwest Coast carving and bringing it to a larger audience, are absent from the galleries. Despite this gap, which is most likely a product of economics, the museum has made a commitment to displaying the continuity and growth of Northwest Coast art, supplementing their historic pieces with the commissioned doors, totem poles, and Reid's Raven and the First Men.
