I have refrained from chiming in on this thread but couldn't help myself
any longer.  I waited until I could pull out the December 2000 issue of
Architectural Digest that I had purchased in an airport specifically
because it had an interview with Mr. Small and some stunning photographs
of his collection mounted in the living/dining rooms of the apartment.
OK, so I'm a packrat, guilty.  (I actually knew where the issue was in
my personal journal stacks without looking but we won't go into what
kind of personal obsession about organization that reflects!  The only
other Architectural Digest that I have ever purchased had an interview
with Rob Lowe, we won't say why I bought that one.)  I will refrain from
expressing my decidedly one-sided emotions on this issue since that
would just lead to another round of emotional responses that I don't
want to read.

I highly recommend taking a look at the article if you want to see some
of the collection.  It is visually stunning and could probably be the
foundation for a couple of dissertations if there had been culturally
contextual information collected with the objects.  Without it, they're
just extraordinary items used to add decorative flair to someone's
private space.

According to the article, some of the collection that Mr. Small owns was
purchased from other collectors but some was collected "...on trips to
remote villages in north-central Brazil during the 1980s, when Larry
Small was a senior Citicorp executive overseeing its Latin American
operations...."  page 128

My first reaction to this quote when I read it was "how did he get them
past customs in either country, did Fish and Wildlife see them come in,
how can he bring those in when every scientist I know struggles to get a
permit for the least object and still can get their collection
confiscated for ungodly amounts of time, what are the rules about sacred
and ceremonial objects from Brazil, and were they infested and what kind
of bugs might he be importing?"  Then again, I'm a museum person.  But,
if you are traveling a lot and collecting pieces that contain natural
materials like a bunch of parrot feathers that you bring into the
country yourself, I would think that somewhere along the line, someone
might have said something to you at customs.  Just try to bring a piece
of fruit through and see what happens.

And "... Nature has populated the Brazilian rain forest with the world's
largest variety of parrots, and the tribespeople have a remarkable
talent for using the birds' plumage to add color to their rituals and
ceremonies." Page 128

The quote that I found particularly offensive as an anthropologist was
the following, and I quote directly from the article, page 132:
        "In the forest these pieces have a very short life span," Larry
Small says.  "For many indigenous people it's not the object that's
important.  If they need a headdress for a ceremony, it's the ceremony
that matters.  When it's over, they don't care what happens to the
headdress."

What gave me hope for these objects was the last paragraph of the
article that discusses Mr. Small's insistence that nylon carpeting be
used instead of natural carpeting because "Natural carpeting can have
bugs, and they might eat the feathers."

As usual, none of the opinions offered here represent my employer, they
are my own.

Elizabeth Moore, PhD
Curator of Collections and Archaeology
Virginia Museum of Natural History

Snip

Since I have already deleted all of this thread I cannot vouch for David
Haberstich's exact wording, but I did not get the impression that he
"blamed" the native artist and "excused" Lawrence Small. He did raise an
important issue, namely that to stop the killing ("taking") of regulated
animal species (like the illicit excavation of archaeological remains)
we
need to look at what is happening at the beginning of the
collecting/creating process as well as the end user.
The use of alternative materials (or even alternative income sources) is
one
possibility that, for better or worse, has become fairly standard with
contemporary Native American art; most of us are resigned (for lack of a
better word) to the fact that the feathers on our art will be painted
turkey
or chicken and not hawk, eagle or any other regulated species.

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