Amazonian Indigenous Cultures in Art and Anthropological Exhibitions

This ground-breaking work uses extensive archival research and informative illustrations to bring Amazonia-focused exhibitions to life under an astute, critical gaze combining anthropology, art history and museum studies. The thought-provoking analysis opens a new window on how we represent others and how they might be given the space to represent themselves. —Stephen Hugh-Jones, Honorary Emeritus Associate, King’s College, University of Cambridge, UK.

 Cinthya Lana’s book surveys how different political, intellectual and artistic paradigms have influenced the presentation of Amazonian cultures in exhibitions. By comparing exhibitions taking place across European, North and South American museums, Lana guides the reader to suspect the neutrality of curatorial and institutional discourses, exposing underlying processes of exclusion, prejudice and racism in contemporary exhibition practices. As a curator myself, I have been an observer of how collections have been used and manipulated for political purposes, both historically and today. Fundamentally the book questions how exhibitions showcasing objects, histories and cultural elements of others can still be produced without a deeper involvement of the people concerned. — Adriana Muñoz, Curator of the Americas, National Museums of World Culture, Sweden.

Amazonian Indigenous Cultures in Art and Anthropological Exhibitions is a powerful contribution to the urgent debate over representation of Indigenous peoples in exhibitions. Through nuanced interrogation of museum archives and oral histories, Lana brings influential exhibitions back to life through generous illustrations and informed critique. She connects exhibition theory and practice to broader movements in art history and anthropology showing how, even where intentions are good; the voices of Amazon rainforest peoples are invariably marginalized. Ending with proposals for different ways of working, this important book will surely find a wide readership among all those interested in how museums, art and anthropology can truly serve Indigenous peoples, in the Amazon and beyond. — Mark Nesbitt, Curator of Economic Botany and Senior Research Leader at Kew, Royal Botanic Gardens, UK.

This is a solid work inspired by Cinthya Lana’s earlier ethnographic research carried out among the Waiwai in northeastern Amazon. Lana has a great knowledge of the collections of Indigenous peoples from Brazil held in many European museums, acquired especially during her doctoral and postdoctoral research at King’s College London and at the National Museum of Brazil respectively. Lana has actively collaborated with the project of reconstruction of ethnographic collections for the National Museum of Brazil since the fire in 2018. I am very happy this excellent and very original research is becoming a book and accessible to a wider audience. — João Pacheco de Oliveira, Professor of Anthropology at the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Curator of Ethnographic Collections at the National Museum of Brazil