Knowing Native Arts, University of Nebraska Press (2020)
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's 2021 Best Subsequent Book Award finalist.
Cover Art: Sara Siestreem, Thanks Giving / Giving Thanks: Prayer, Unarmed, Nonviolent, Lithograph, 2016, Missoula Art Museum Collection, gift, MATRIX Press, 2016. By permission of the artist. To purchase the book: Go to University of Nebraska Press
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Knowing Native Arts identifies and debates the central frames of Native arts scholarship including the institution of the museum and the academy, forms of Indigenous aesthetic analysis, the receptive scope of Native arts in new global and digital realms, and models of exhibition practices in light of current American Indian Curatorial mandates. This contribution to the field of fine arts is intended to broaden the scope of discussion and to offer insights that are often not included in contemporary appraisals. While many readers may anticipate a rapprochement between established frames of Western and Native arts, this is not a task that one person or one book can accomplish. Rather, consider these musings as an extended case study of one academic traversing a dynamic and at turns fraught era of Native self-determination.
Reviews
Clarke, Gerald. Review of Knowing Native Arts, by Nancy Marie Mithlo. American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Volume 44, Issue 1, 2020, pp. 145-147. escholarship.org/uc/item/9dg1t103
Vegh-Gaynor, Shoshana. Review of Knowing Native Arts, by Nancy Marie Mithlo, Art Libraries Society of North America, January 2021. hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:54621/
Britton, Karla Cavarra. Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education, August 23, 2021. tribalcollegejournal.org/knowing-native-arts/
Davis, Benjamin P. Review of Knowing Native Arts, by Nancy Marie Mithlo, American Indian Quarterly, Winter-Spring 2022, Volume 46, Nos. 1-2, pp. 141-145. 10.1353/aiq.2022.0007
Well-Off-Man, Manuela. Review of Knowing Native Arts, by Nancy Marie Mithlo, and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract by Phillip Joseph Deloria. The Art Bulletin, September 2022, pp. 146-149. doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2022.2066920