North American Indian art

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This work showcases 114 outstanding examples of Native art and heritage from the Canadian subarctic forests to the American Southwest, preserved in Dutch museums. Many of these rare materials, collected from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, have never been published before. They are presented as individual works of art within their cultural and historical contexts by forty-two experts from America, Canada, and Europe, who weave together the historical narrative of each object’s acquisition with current Native and scholarly interpretations of their significance. Pieter Hovens, in his introductory essay, details the history of Dutch interests in North American Indian cultures, spanning from the seventeenth-century colonial experience in New Netherland to the collecting activities of public institutions and private connoisseurs, as well as academic scholarship and social engagement. These interests have enriched the variety of objects featured and shaped public perceptions of Native Americans in the Netherlands. This book provides the first comprehensive overview of all institutional collections of Native North American arts and cultures in a single European country, allowing Dutch museums to share these heritage collections with a broad audience. Hovens is a curator at the National Museum of World Cultures in Leiden, while Bruce Bernstein is the executive director of the Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts in Santa