Making History: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

Edited by Nancy Marie Mithlo
University of New Mexico Press (2020)
185 pages

Review by Linda Chappel

As editor of the new book, Making History: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache) aims to address the current state of pedagogy in the field of art history, stating, “Our focus is on providing a scaffold of resources for emerging Native arts scholars, Native and non-Native readers, students, and academics who wish to understand the tenor and tone of what this field is about and how to approach teaching and learning about Native American Indian arts.”

Making History is written for a wide audience and draws into layers of discussions, serving as both an example and a resource for the study of Native American art history. Mithlo draws on the collection of art from the Institute of American Indian Arts’ (IAIA) archive and from Native American scholars. The book speaks to the reader directly, supporting Mithlo’s goal to provide the resources for rebuilding the field of study.

Making History engages the reader directly in conversations on the arts from an Indigenous perspective. To support the use of this as a textbook, at the end of each chapter there are vocabulary terms and questions for the reader. These offer ways to engage students and they serve as an example for teaching contemporary Native American art. Particularly practical for instructors are a wide variety of vocabulary terms, discussion prompts, and larger questions, including a section on Indigenous aesthetics.

The chapters “Transforming Art History in the Classroom” by Lara M. Evans and “No Rules Make Art: The Work of C. Maxx Stevens” by Patsy Phillips serve as examples of how Native American ontologies are used in the study of Native American art. Evans provides numerous approaches to teaching, creating a framework for engaging students in the first steps in the study of art history and in thinking critically about the canon and selection of research references. Lastly, chapter six is a collection of four essays focused on pedagogy in Native American arts. For those in the field or for upper-level students, this provides a contemporary lineage to teaching Native American art and teaching Native students.

Mithlo includes four “gallery” sections of 102 colored plates along with two poems. In the introduction, she notes the dynamic and unprecedented outpouring of contemporary art holdings of IAIA and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and these galleries provide us with the visual evidence. But as a reader, I was not always clear on how the galleries related to the chapters. Each chapter also contains its own images, so in a sense the galleries augment these chapters. In my mind, the question is how were the images chosen, organized, and arranged? A curator’s note would be helpful and informative. Meanwhile, the poems subtly demonstrate a form of Indigenous pedagogy. “Indian with a Watch” by Alex Jacob (Mohawk), which appears prior to the opening chapter, and “Illumination” by Elizabeth Woody (Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama), after the close of chapter six, give the reader an entrance to and exit from the text. Placing these in the opening and closing of the chapters connects layers of understanding and provides another sense of how the editor envisions teaching “American Indian art from an Indigenous perspective.”

This book is a much-needed structural guide for Native American art history. The wider discussion in art and art history education has been how to address discrepancies in studying arts, which need to be addressed from both a global perspective and from a specific place, such as the classroom at a tribal college. Making History provides us with a resource written specifically for and aimed at Indigenizing art history while also providing space for in-depth conversations.

Linda Chappel is faculty for the visual arts and area chair at Tohono O’odham Community College.