First Nations art exhibition opens in Paris
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James Hart, a carver from Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, Canada, displayed a six-metre house pole at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris as part of a new exhibition.
The show, titled “First Nations: Arts and Culture of the Northwest Coast of North America,” features over 250 works by artists from the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka’wakw, and other First Nations groups spanning from Juneau to Seattle.
The exhibition combines both ancestral and contemporary pieces, presenting Indigenous art as a living practice. Nika Collison, director of the Haida Gwaii Museum, explained the exhibition aims to show that First Nations people are still present and their culture continues to thrive. The Quai Branly Museum, which holds over 300,000 artifacts from around the world, is increasingly focused on collaborative and contemporary approaches to exhibitions, acknowledging its colonial history.
Artists like Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien), a weaver of Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Irish descent, contributed contemporary pieces to the show, while also questioning the power museums have in controlling narratives about Indigenous art. The exhibition drew loans from museums in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, and comes as museums worldwide consider the repatriation of cultural items acquired during colonial rule. France recently passed a law to facilitate the return of looted artifacts, though strict criteria remain for restitution requests.
