Too Much Hedging, Not Enough Scholarship

“The Museum of the American Indian has much to boast of… But the ambition of creating a ‘museum different’ – the goal of making that museum answer to the needs, tastes and traditions of perhaps 600 diverse tribes, ranging from the Tapirape of the Brazilian jungles to the Yupik of Alaska – results in so many constituencies that the museum often ends up filtering away detail rather than displaying it, and minimizing difference even while it claims to be discovering it.”