ATADA News, Winter, 2007 Archive

ATADA News, Winter, 2007

From the President

Lifetime Achievement Awards dinner

"...They have all made significant contributions to our industry through their research, generosity, teaching and promotion. We are very fortunate to have such people representing the field of tribal arts."

This will be my last letter to you as president of the organization. It has been an interesting and, yes, at times, demanding job. It is also one I would not have missed. I have enjoyed working with people who have generously given their time and ideas to what I believe is a vital and important organization. Those of us who have been part of the field of tribal arts can look back at earlier days and be proud and pleased at how far we have come. ATADA's formation had no small role to play in this process.

As part of our continued desire to further the recognition and respect within the field of tribal arts, we are pleased to be sponsoring a Lifetime Achievement Awards dinner in Marin this February.

Seven people have been recommended to receive this award. They have all made significant contributions to our industry through their research, generosity, teaching and promotion. We are very fortunate to have such people representing the field of tribal arts. I urge you all to attend the dinner and show your support for these stellar individuals and for ATADA. I look forward to sharing the evening with you and your guests.

The Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association

Lifetime Achievement Awards

The Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association's dinner honors the recipients of ATADA's Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Awards 7 PM on Saturday evening, February 24, 2007, At The Rings Restaurant at the Embassy Suites Hotel 101 McInnis Parkway San Rafael, California

The Awards dinner will take place during the 23rd annual Marin Show: Art of the Americas, at San Rafael's Marin Center on February 24 and 25. Tickets: $100 per person All proceeds benefit ATADA

The ATADA Lifetime Achievement Awards recognize and celebrate the outstanding accomplishments and contributions of people whose work has been both groundbreaking and instrumental to the fields of American Indian and Tribal art.

The 2007 Honorees

Quintus and Mary Herron, who have given their tribal art collection to Idabell, OK, through the Herron Foundation

Warren Robbins, who founded what has become the National Museum of African Art

American Indian art collector/dealer Martha Hopkins Struever

Archeologist Stuart Struever

Scholars John and Anne Summerfield, who donated their collection of Minagkabau textiles (Sumatra, Indonesia) to the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA

Editor's Notebook

Two new ATADA members, Mark and Lori van Buskirk (Ranchfolks Navajo Rug Co., eBay User ID: ranchfolks), are ATADA's first (we believe) full-time eBay sellers. To quote from webmaster Arch Thiessen's email to the van Buskirks, "You appear to be the first ATADA members who are exclusively eBay sellers. You are important to us, as ATADA wants to do something that slows down the flow of incorrectly identified items on eBay. Use of the ATADA logo and ATADA guarantee by at least one eBay seller will be a small step in the right direction."

Welcome, Mark and Lori, and welcome too to new Associate member Stephanie Porter (eBay User ID: turqraven). To quote Arch again, "We will encourage her to use the ATADA logo and the ATADA guarantee."

I hope to see all of you at ATADA's big night out, the Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Embassy Suites Hotel on Saturday, February 24, at 7 PM (during Kim Martindales's 23rd annual Marin Show: Art of the Americas). All ATADA News subscribers should have received their invitations to the dinner by now (if not, please contact me at acek33@aol.com), and I hope most of you have already sent in your reservations.

See you in Marin!

Alice Kaufman

Member Close-Up

Jay Evetts

This is a transcript of a conversation Susan Swift had with Jay Evetts in October, 2004. In Susan's words, "We were mainly going to talk about how he became an Indian trader." The conversation focuses on Jay's roots in Colorado and New Mexico and, of course, Southwest Indian jewelry.

JE: Yeah, I got inspired. You know, spent a lot of money -- for me -- at that show. Couple thousand or three thousand or something.

SS: What did you buy?

JE: Ah, mostly rugs. Bought four or five rugs, I think.

SS: Must've been good ones.

JE: Well, yeah, they were OK. They weren't great. Through the years I did well with those.

SS: So then did you proceed to start buying more in earnest in order to sell?

JE: Yeah, then I started buying at antique auctions, and I'd go to a few shows. Ron Milam at that time was having lots of auctions in Colorado. He always had pretty good stuff . I started buying jewelry more, too.

SS: So you were probably in your early 20s then?

JE: Yeah, early 20s. Well, mid-20s.

SS: Still living in Colorado?

JE: Yes, still living in Colorado, farming and ranching.

SS: So how did one sort of take precedence over the other?

JE: Well the Indian trading just kind of every year got more involving, you know, involved more money and more items. More travel. I think that I had lots of rugs, twenty or thirty, and I think I did a show in Albuquerque in 1975 or 1976. Wasn't very successful. But anyway, it kept growing more and more. Finally, ranching got worse and worse, so I could see the day when I was going to do this full time.

SS: At what point in time did you move to New Mexico?

JE: I moved there in 1986 after I quit farming and ranching.

SS: To Gallup?

JE: To Gallup. Me and Bob Vandenberg and Rick Rosenthal bought a place in Gallup, and I moved down there. Well, that was full time then. Started buying and selling. Old stuff and also new stuff.

SS: Were you and Bob Vandenberg partners from that time on?

JE: Yeah, me and Bob were partners from about 1983, probably, when we bought a house, an old house in Colorado Springs that was an antique shop. Started running that.

SS: As an antiques store?

JE: Yes.

SS: How many years did that go on?

JE: Well, we sold it about 1997 or 1998, probably.

SS: What was it called?

JE: Antique Brokers. It was on East Colorado Avenue, Colorado Springs.

SS: So Jay, would you tell us a little bit about your early life? Who your parents were and what it was like?

JE: Well, my parents were from Oklahoma. I was born in Elk City, Oklahoma in 1946. In 1946 they moved to Monument, Colorado, near Colorado Springs and Denver, and taught school. Then in 1948, my parents had twin babies, my sisters. And my folks moved to Ramah, Colorado. Dad taught there like ten years. And he farmed and ranched and I started school in Ramah. That was 1953 I guess. Then he moved south to Yoder, where there was a small country school. He taught there like twelve years, farmed and ranched at the same time. That's where I started high school, and farming and ranching. And then did that until 1986 when I moved to Gallup.

SS: Were you the only male child in your family?

JE: Yeah, I have the twin sisters, and I had an older sister who passed away when she was four.

SS: I understand that you read a lot of books.

JE: Well I have lots of books, and I read some of them.

SS: Did you start reading really early?

JE: Yeah, I started buying Indian books, probably when I was sixteen. Every year I'd buy all the current books. Still do.

SS: You've probably even read them.

JE: Oh, I've read a lot of them. I haven't read them all, but they come in handy when you need to look something up.

SS: I understand you've made a little silver jewelry yourself.

JE: Yeah, in the 1970s, probably 1974, I wanted to know more about Indian jewelry, so I decided to learn how to make jewelry. I took a night class from the high school teacher in Colorado Springs. Just learning, you know, basic silversmithing. And I made a few things, for a few years, but nothing really... and not much quantity. But I learned how things were made, what to look for.

SS: Was that the main impetus behind your wanting to make silver jewelry?

JE: Learning how it was made was the main reason to do it. I didn't want to become a craftsman or anything. But I made a few pieces I really liked and quite a few pieces I didn't like.

SS: There are a few still floating around...

JE: I still have a few pieces that I actually wear that I made.

SS: We're looking at your ring collection here and there are 52 rings, and I was wondering, over what period of time were they collected?

JE: Oh, probably from the late 1970s up until the last few years. About a twenty year time span, twenty-five maybe.

SS: And what was the criterion for a keeper?

JE: Age was one of the main criteria. Aesthetics, if they looked good. I tend to like turquoise maybe better than plain silver. I always tried to keep interesting stone rings. This is the last of my collection. Fifteen years ago, I sorted out probably twenty or thirty rings and about five years ago I sold another thirty or forty. I consider these the best ones.

SS: The ones you've held onto the longest.

JE: Yes.

SS: If you had to pick out a couple of favorites here, what would they be?

JE: Well, I kinda like big rings and I like these early three-stone type rings that probably date from 1910. Here's a real big ring, square stone ring from the 20s or 30s. That's probably the one I'd wear if I wore any of these.

SS: What's the story on the ones with the garnet? I see three here that have garnet or garnet-like material.

JE: Well they were just... Way back in the 1890s and 1900, turquoise was very scarce. They would use glass or native garnets once in a while. So that's where that comes from. A lot of turquoise was pretty low grade at that time. Persian turquoise was available too. I think glass was available and relatively cheap compared to turquoise.

SS: But we'd have to say that their love of blue, or the turquoise color, took over.

JE: Yeah, I think they liked the blue the best, so if they could come up with blue turquoise, they used it. Most of the glass is either red or blue.

SS: When did turquoise begin being mined, or mined prolifically?

JE: Oh, I'd say after the turn of the century. A lot of it was associated with copper, and Persian turquoise was shipped in here pretty early, 1880s and 90s probably. I think it was pre-cut, over in Persia.

SS: Who was requesting it?

JE: Well it was like a Victorian gemstone, and then, Indians always liked turquoise. They had prehistoric turquoise available to them, and most of the known deposits were mined in prehistoric times. But I don't think the Navajos actually mined any turquoise. They just got it through trade or found it in ruins.

SS: Do you think the mined turquoise was kind of a bonus that was found when they were mining copper?

JE: Yeah, most of the miners were looking for copper. Looking for gold and silver and then copper was secondary. So, there were probably a few individuals who went for turquoise, like the Cerrillos mine was mined just for turquoise. I'm not sure if the Tiffany Company owned it or some New York people owned it. They called one of the mines Tiffany and they mined it mainly for Victorian use, I think.

SS: About what period of time did that start, the mining for turquoise in earnest?

JE: Probably 1890s, and I don't know what happened after, like World War I, there probably wasn't much going on with mining, except copper. Same way with World War II; the emphasis was on copper and not turquoise.

SS: So is it fair to say that some of the fancier turquoise that we see now, and that we enjoy now, was discovered after World War II?

JE: Yeah, I'd say that Blue Gem, No. 8, Lone Mountain, all that is kind of 1940s and 50s stuff. Bisbee I think is even later, as a rule. I think [C.G.] Wallace had a lot to do with mining turquoise, because back in the 1930s and definitely the 40s, he was encouraging a lot of jewelry manufacture, and jewelry making. And I think he even developed his own mines.

SS: This is Mr. Wallace who had the trading post at Zuni?

JE: Yeah.

Is That Gull Legal?

ATADA Law Committee colleagues (as well as father and son) Roger and Will Fry sent the following to the Maine Antique Digest in response to an editorial that appeared in that publication. Here is a preview:

This article is prompted by an editorial that appeared in M.A.D. recently on the subject of a mounted greater blackbacked gull, collected over 150 years ago, and displayed in an old Victorian frame in Cappy's Chowder House restaurant in Camden, Maine. According to the owner, the framed mounted bird had been purchased at auction 20 years ago. The bird had been observed by a patron, humorously referenced in the article as a stool penguin, who reported it to the local office of the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS). The USFWS promptly commenced confiscation proceedings on the basis that possession of this bird constituted a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA) which protects listed avian species. The MBTA makes it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture, or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to barter, barter, offer to purchase, deliver for shipment, ship, export, import or cause to be imported...etc. any part of a listed migratory bird. Without reading further one could quickly conclude that everything other than bird watching is illegal.

The MAD editorial stated that a violation of the law may result in penalties of up to six months in jail and a $500 fine for possessing a prohibited species. Although the MBTA textually precludes possession of listed species, as quoted above, the Code of Federal Regulations provide that "Migratory birds [or] their parts...lawfully acquired prior to the effective date of Federal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 U.S.C. 703-712) may be possessed or transported without a permit" but may not thereafter enter commerce.

The regulations referred to above were promulgated by Secretary of Interior to fill in administrative "blanks" in the MBTA. The Legislature drafted only the outline of the MBTA; the enforcement and administrative procedures were created afterwards by the Secretary of the Interior and must be read in conjunction with the Act language itself. As noted in Andrus v. Allard, "the Migratory Bird Treaty Act contains no explicit exception for the possession or transportation of bird parts obtained before the federal protection became effective: that exception is created by the Secretary's regulation 50 CFR Section 21.2 (1978)." Accordingly, the Secretary of Interior created a legal exception to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act allowing for both possession and transportation of listed birds or parts that were "lawfully acquired" prior to the effective date of federal protection under the Act.

The subject bird, based on the editorial, was clearly lawfully acquired before the Migratory Bird Treaty Act became law. Importantly, the date of the enactment of the MBTA in 1918 is not the starting point for this analysis; rather, the interested party would need to determine when the greater black-backed gull was actually listed as a protected species under 50 C.F.R. Section 10.13. However, that is not an issue here due to the fact that the bird was collected in 1854, over 60 years before the enactment of MBTA.

The owner of the bird, according to the editorial, was not offering it for sale or trade, which would, arguably, constitute violations of the law. She was, on the contrary, simply possessing it which falls within the two exceptions carved out by the Regulations which permits possession or transportation of bird parts "lawfully acquired" before the federal protection became effective.

Based on the owner's possession alone, we question the position taken by USFWS that she was in violation of the law.

We wonder if Fish & Wildlife instituted confiscation proceedings on the belief that the owner illegally purchased the bird 20 years ago even though, at the time, she could not conceivably have imagined that purchasing such an object at public auction, obviously from somewhere back in the 19th century, could constitute a crime. The antique buying public has no knowledge of this, nor could it. Just ask your average dealer or buyer at the next antique show you attend what he or she could tell you about the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Eagle Protection Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act, the Lacey Act, the Archeological Resource and Protection Act, just to name a few, and you will get a blank stare by even the most knowledgeable.

In any event, as has been said before, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Conceivably, one could argue that the purchase of this object 20 years ago did, in fact, constitute a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by the seller and buyer, at the time of the sale and purchase.

The question that then arises is whether or not possession of this bird, under the circumstances here, is illegal, subjecting it to confiscation and subjecting the owner to criminal prosecution for possession as suggested in the editorial.

Our view on this is as follows: If the bird was purchased 20 years ago, depending on how the MBTA was being interpreted at the time, it may have been a violation of the law, since there is no exception in the MBTA for the purchase or sale of antique bird objects that predate the law. If that was a crime, consider the fact that the statute of limitations on federal crimes that do not have their own specific statutes of limitations is five years from the date of the criminal act. That five year time period has long since expired in view of the fact that the subject bird was legally taken in the wilds over 60 years before the enactment of the MBTA. Accordingly, we believe it may be lawfully possessed and transported under the provision of the Code of Federal Regulations cited above. Further, in the greater black-backed gull case, the bird was killed legally in the wild prior to the enactment of the MBTA.

Therefore, we believe that the exception in the C.F.R. permitting possession and transportation should apply, even though the purchase of the bird may have violated the MBTA. The sale and purchase were the potential crimes, not the possession.

Likewise it is notable that The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (hereinafter CITES) also utilized the term "acquired" in exempting "preconvention" antiques from the operation of the act. However, the member nations subsequently realized that the term "acquired" was ambiguous as applied and amended the Treaty to state "the date on which a specimen is acquired be: for live and dead animals or plants taken from the wild, [or parts and derivatives thereof]: the date of their initial removal from their habitat [or for parts and derivatives; the date of their introduction to personal possession, whichever date is the earliest.]"1 While we agree that commercial transactions are banned, we do not agree that the possession or transportation of such articles is illegal or unlawful, after the five year statute of limitations has run on the possible crime of purchase.

We therefore conclude that the conduct of Fish & Wildlife was incorrect. We will welcome comments from USFWS agents and prosecutors with thoughts on this subject. We would like very much to educate the collecting public with regard to these acts, however it is also necessary that the authorities responsible for enforcing them act in a manner consistent with the acts. This act of confiscating this bird based upon possession does not appear to be consistent with the law.

Submitted to M.A.D. by William H. Fry and W. Roger Fry

Media File

Excerpts from recent newspaper, magazine and Internet articles of interest to the membership. All opinions are those of the writers of the stories and of the people quoted, not of ATADA. Members are encouraged to submit press clippings or e-mail links for publication in the next issue of the ATADA News.

Grace Glueck's review of the Met's show of Papuan art, "Coaxing the Spirits to Dance," had the headline, "Works That Called Out to the Gods and Offered Them a Place to Dwell. The story appeared in the New York Times on October 27, 2006.

The story: "Helpful spirits, essential to the good life, didn't come easily to the clannish peoples of the Gulf of Papua. They had to be coaxed. And in the coaxing lies the history of Papuan art, a religious pursuit entirely devoted to making masks, figures and spirit boards for habitation by the powerful local gods whose intervention was sought for success in hunting, harvesting, warfare, trading and treating the sick.

"How the Papuans practiced their beliefs on the remote Pacific island of New Guinea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they still had little contact with the West, is the complex and fascinating story told in 'Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition of some 60 objects and 30 rare photographs of the works on site or in actual use is the first comprehensive study of the material, the Met says, since a pioneering survey in 1961 mounted by the former Museum of Primitive Art in New York. The current show was organized by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, in collaboration with the Met, and the New York presentation was put together by Virginia-Lee Webb, the Met's research curator in the art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

"The art reflects the Papuan social order, which was based on families, especially those whose ancestry was identified with particular rivers and places. Each family's totemic emblems and legends spoke of its land and spiritual heritage. The men in the society kept the traditions and made the art. They lived in long houses, apart from their women and children (who were forbidden to enter). The long houses, long huts with individual cubicles, served as communal residences as well as performance halls for the spirit-coaxing dances, and also provided a place for clan shrines, maintained to preserve each family's tree.

"The carved and painted 'spirit boards' made throughout the gulf region, on the south coast of present-day Papua New Guinea, are probably the most easily recognized of the area's traditional artworks.

Each board was meant to serve as a home for the rain forest or river deity embraced by a particular clan. Their central designs, passed down from fathers to sons and through marriages, typically represent a bush or river spirit, with a heavily stylized face and perhaps a small body, surrounded by various totemic symbols.

"A striking example in this exhibition is a long, almost surfboard shape (collected in 1912) from the Orokolo people of the Western Elema area. Painted in natural pigments of red, white and black, it has a face with typically elongated eyes and a frozen grimace, baring teeth. Its shrunken body, replete with prominent genitals, ends in a navel, and one of its kneecaps is higher than the other, not a carver's oversight but a way of representing motion, as if the spirit were dancing on the board.

"More daring in concept were the masks used in ritual dances, whose performers became temporarily possessed by the spirit their masks personified. One impressive example is the semese mask (about 1912) made by the Kiri people of the same area, an oval shape about seven feet tall. Made of painted bark cloth on a wicker frame, it probably represented a fearsome sea spirit, with a highly stylized symmetrical design ending at the bottom in a fierce-looking beak and a pair of flippers.

"A ceremonial dance by men wearing semese masks was captured in a 1912 photograph by A. B. Lewis, an anthropologist from the Field Museum in Chicago. The dance ended with dozens of performers streaming out of the long house in an impressive charge. The masks, also used in initiation rituals, were kept hidden from the women, who were warned away by bull roarers, thin lengths of decorated wood that men would swing above their heads to create a warning whir suggesting spirit voices.

"Many other arresting masks are in the show, among them two stunners called hokore from the Karama village of the Eastern Elema area (about 1885). One has a long, beaklike face marked in black, white and red with the emblematic form of a crocodile; the other, shaped like a shield and in the same colors, is meant to represent a gecko. A wicker mask, about 1912, from the Kerewa people of Goaribari Island takes the form of a miniature long house.

"Guardian spirits known as iriwake were said to protect the long houses of the Urama Island communities in the central part of the Papuan Gulf. An arresting one here is almost life-size, looking like a flat cutout of a gingerbread man wearing a grass skirt, with bones visible in his arms and torso. His smiling face and upraised arms give him a benign look, but his skeleton is disturbingly visible, and there are what look like shark's teeth at his elbows.

"The show's many photographs depicting Papuan customs, habitats and arts were mostly taken by the anthropologists and photographers who visited the area as Christianity was beginning to take hold at the end of the 19th century. More than a few depict objects in the show in their original settings, like a cheerful Wapo spirit board that was placed on pig skulls in a long-house shrine, snapped in 1930 by the Swiss anthropologist Paul Wirz.

"The dean of Papua's photographers, however, was an Australian, Frank Hurley (1885-1962), best known for his images of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic in 1914. The first to use cinematography and aerial photography in the Gulf of Papua, Mr. Hurley collected objects and photographed places that no longer survive. His aerial view of Kaimari villages on the Purari Delta in 1922, shot from about 1,500 feet, gives a vivid idea of the territory and its watery byways.

"It is an area to which the show gives eloquent voice. Papuan art may not be as varied or exciting as that of many African or Amerind peoples, but it records a vibrant community."

''Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf'' runs through Sept. 2, 2007, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (212) 570- 3949, www.metmuseum.org.

The headline of a very brief story in The New York Times, October 28, 200: "Museum Director Resigns."

The story: "W. Richard West Jr., below, resigned as director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian yesterday, effective November 2007. Mr. West, 63, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma who has been director for 17 years, said in a statement: 'Now is the time for the museum to have new leadership, as it embarks on the second phase of its journey.' The museum opened a new building on the Mall in Washington two years ago."

"Precious artifact stolen, ancient culture shattered: Looters ravage Indian ruins to sell pottery, heirlooms on the black market," was the headline of Dennis Wagner's front page story in the Arizona Republic on November 12.

In the dead of night, looters are destroying the history of America, desecrating sacred Indian ruins," Wagner's story began. "An estimated 80 percent of the nation's ancient archaeological sites have been plundered or robbed by shovel-toting looters. Though some of the pillaging is done by amateurs who don't know any better, more serious damage is wrought by professionals who dig deep, sometimes even using backhoes.

"The motive is money. Indian artifacts are coveted worldwide by collectors willing to pay for trophy pieces of the past. Fine antiquities are displayed in glass cases at mansions and museums. Lesser objects wind up on fireplace mantels or stored in garages.

"Looters are just the first link in a chain that includes collectors, galleries, trade shows and Internet sites such as eBay. But stopping the blackmarket business is virtually impossible because of a lack of manpower for enforcement and loopholes in the law that make it hard to convict the few who get caught. The result is a scientific and spiritual loss.

" 'They're changing history,' Vernelda Grant, a tribal archaeologist for the San Carlos Apaches, says as she stands amid 800- year-old ruins that have been transformed into a crater field. 'They're killing us. They're killing the existence of who we are.'

"A few feet away, a Gila monster crawls dinosaur-like through remnants of the ancient Pueblo village, its scales dazzling like native beads amid broken pottery tossed aside by diggers. Grant spots several bone fragments, white against red earth, and reverently buries them with a stick, not allowing photographs.

" 'Everything we make and everything we do, we always do with prayer,' she says. 'All that's around me in the four directions and above my head and beneath my feet, all of it has life.'

Garry Cantley, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, listens quietly. He does not share the mysticism; he lives for empirical discoveries, the piece-by-piece puzzle of history, the cultural window. But, like Grant, he is sickened by the damage.

" 'The problem is, they don't make these anymore,' Cantley says, surveying the field of foxholes. 'The archaeological records are finite. And, once they're gone, history is gone.'

"Robbing the Nation"

"The San Carlos Reservation covers 1.8 million acres of high desert, pine forest, canyon lands and archaeological sites -- a wilderness patrolled by 10 rangers who spend most of their time protecting game and fish.

"The enforcement story is equally grim elsewhere in the West: too much country, too many diggers, not enough officers. In May, a report by the National Trust for Historic Preservation concluded that artifact hunters, off-roaders, urban sprawl and vandals are 'robbing the nation' of cultural resources.

"Warren Youngman, assistant BIA special agent in charge for Arizona, shrugs when asked how many looters are working tribal lands: 'There's a lot of wide-open spaces, and we don't have the manpower to cover it. We'll never know.'

"Enforcement is complicated by a plethora of overlapping agencies. Depending on where a ruin is, it could be the jurisdiction of U.S. Forest Service rangers, National Parks officers, Bureau of Land Management investigators, tribal police, BIA agents or state investigators.

"Until this year, the BIA, with policing oversight for 561 recognized tribes nationwide, had just one investigator assigned exclusively to looting. The agent, John Fryar, retired this year and was not replaced.

" 'I just barely scratched the surface, frankly,' says Fryar, now living in New Mexico. 'One person was definitely not enough.' The lack of enforcement is true across a nation peppered with ancient settlements in national forests, federal parks, BLM lands, military bases and state turf. Just two investigators work Arizona trust lands covering 9 million acres. BLM officers cover more than a million acres each.

"Manpower shortages are compounded by a lack of information. Many government agencies have only begun to inventory archaeological ruins. Arizona's statewide catalog lists more than 100,000 known sites, most of which have not been inventoried. The BLM is responsible for 261 million acres nationwide (86 million in Arizona), but most of the land is not surveyed.

"Meanwhile, it is sheer guesswork as to what percentage of ruins have been looted. A 2002 report on federal lands in the remote Four Corners area put the figure at 32 percent. Archaeologists and enforcement officers generally estimate that eight of ten Southwest sites have been robbed or damaged. Fryar is more pessimistic. 'At least 95 percent-plus have been looted at one time or another,' he says. How looters work

"Typically, the digger arrives in early evening, hiding his truck in bushes a distance from ruins. After retrieving tools from a nearby stash, he hikes to the site using a GPS device. A pro can read the landscape and quickly map out a 1,000- year-old village that has eroded into the earth. He recognizes the burial mounds and debris exposed by rain. He follows rock lines that mark foundations.

"Wearing a headlamp in the darkness, he probes the earth with a long metal pole. A ballbearing welded to the point enables him to feel the soft soil where a body was buried or a building eroded over time.

"He works methodically, like a child playing Battleship, knowing that he will hit pay dirt eventually. When he senses an air pocket or feels the crunch of pottery, he turns to a narrow-bladed shovel to dig straight down, periscoping into the earth to see what's there. If the site is promising, a larger shovel cuts into the soil, sometimes many feet deep. Screens filter the dirt for smaller artifacts.

"When one dig is tapped out, the looter moves on. Some ruins resemble minefields, full of holes and dirt piles. The objects are packed, hauled away and cleaned for sale.

"Cantley, the BIA archaeologist, says hardcore looters school themselves in archaeology and zealously defend their right to dig. 'These guys know archaeological sites as well as the experts,' he says. 'For many of them, it's a generational thing. They did it with their fathers and grandfathers, and they think it's a god-given right.' Buyers and sellers

"The commercial value is based on uniqueness, artistry and preservation. A plain Navajo bowl may bring $100. A good polychrome pot from the Salado people fetches $5,000. Ancient Hopi yellow- ware pottery may be worth $80,000. Besides the diggers, there are so called 'doorknockers' who roam the Indian reservations like old-fashioned buffalo traders. Going door to door, they buy artifacts and heirlooms from Native Americans. But it is illegal to traffic in objects that are considered religious or patrimonial.

"Looters and doorknockers get to know buyers by visiting shows, sharing contacts and researching artifacts. They offer their finest merchandise to wealthy collectors who pay top dollar for one-of-a-kind items in pristine condition. More modest objects are sold to galleries. Mediocre antiquities go to bulk dealers or are offered on eBay.

"If prosecuting looters is difficult, bringing charges against blackmarket buyers is nearly impossible, because authorities must prove that the collector knew artifacts had been looted.

"Some artifacts are sold with provenance papers, listing where and when they were recovered. But there is no way for consumers or government agents to know whether objects were legally excavated from private property, looted from public lands or handed down by family members. Once a stolen relic is on the market, enforcement is next to impossible.

"Ed Vaught of Atlanta, who operates at IndianArtifacts-.com, says legitimate traders do their best to avoid illicit products. 'You try to get as much history on the artifact as you can,' he says. 'It's also nice to know the person you're dealing with so there's some provenance.'

"Vaught, who has been a collector for six decades, says artifacts didn't even have any value until the 1960s, when Americans began to romanticize Indians and their history. Suddenly, old pots became expensive kitsch.

" 'It's enormous now. Huge,' says Vaught, echoing comments from other dealers. 'Not just in the United States. The Japanese, the Chinese, Europeans are all infatuated with Native American things.'

"As the interest grew, so did the incentive for plundering ruins. Looting emerged as an occupation, along with the contemporary manufacture of phony antiquities known as 'ghosts.'

"Today at Arrowheads. com, a Web site for Native American artifact collectors, you can find a list of 143 auctions, shows and other events. Search for 'Indian artifacts' on Google and you'll get nearly 380,000 hits - many of them buyers and sellers.

Legal Loopholes

"Over the past decade, authorities have charged only a handful of people with violating the key federal laws designed to preserve historical sites and items: the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and the National American Graves Repatriation Act.

"The state Attorney General's Office has been even less busy prosecuting violators of the Arizona Antiquities Act and the Burial Protection Law of 1990. Near urban areas, ruins are often damaged by amateurs. But the systematic destruction is caused by pros who rarely get caught in the act. The lack of enforcement is a key factor. But wiggle room in the law may be even more significant. Simply put, it is legal to unearth archaeological relics on private property, except burial sites. It is also legal to purchase items from others who have obtained them lawfully or by inheritance. And it is legal to buy contemporary art -- bowls, baskets, kachinas -- that resemble antiquities.

" 'So we have to prove this pot came from federal or Indian land,' says Cantley. 'And what happens when we approach these guys? They're going to say two things: "These articles came from private property, and I want my lawyer." '

"Even when thieves are caught at a dig, court rulings may insulate them. In 2003, two men used a winch to haul rare petroglyph boulders from Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada. They were found guilty of theft but acquitted on a looting charge. Then the convictions were overturned in June because, judges ruled, federal agents could not prove the defendants knew they were stealing something of archaeological worth.

"Sherry Hutt, a former Maricopa County judge who now oversees a National Park Service program to protect Indian burial relics, said the ruling means that only archaeologists who violate the law face prosecution, because they are the only ones who know the scientific value of artifacts. Science and spirit

"As the monetary value of antiquities grows, the spiritual and scientific values remain incalculable. Grant, the Apache archaeologist, holds up a handful of pottery bits discarded by looters, letting the pieces slip through her fingers. With a master's degree in cultural anthropology, she understands DNA and carbon dating. But she also is an Apache woman who believes in native ceremonies, dream reading and sacred rites.

"Grant was baptized Christian but completed the Apache coming-of-age ritual known as na'ii'ees, or Sunrise Ceremony, at age 13. She bitterly recalls the Lutheran minister confronting her -- telling her to repent her pagan ways. Instead, Grant immersed herself in tribal culture, joining a native dance troupe that toured the nation, then studying at Northern Arizona University.

"She served an internship at the Smithsonian Institution, working amid a collection of 1,500 Apache artifacts. She returned to Arizona and went to work protecting Native American relics for tribal governments, first the Salt River Pima, then the Apache.

"She wants her remains buried beneath a traditional rock mound in the high country so their spirit will not be stranded. She says the pillaging of sacred objects is a gutwrenching assault on the forefathers, on sacred land.

" 'But how can you prove that in a court or in our archaeological surveys or lab forms?' Grant asks. 'It's very difficult. ... Even some of our tribal members don't believe it. But I believe, because I've seen it and I feel it.' "

From the same article, four laws to stop looters

Federal

"Archaeological Resource Protection Act: Bans the knowing excavation, removal or damage of archaeological resources on public or Indian land without a special permit. Prohibits the purchase or sale of those resources. (Surface arrowheads are exempt, as are artifacts collected prior to the law's adoption in 1979.) Violators face misdemeanor or felony penalties and possible civil sanctions.

"Native American Graves Protection Act: Outlaws the excavation, removal, sale or purchase of human remains and Native American religious, historical or cultural items from federal and Indian land without permit. Violations are subject to criminal and civil penalties. (Contemporary Indian art and non-sacred artifacts may be bought and sold if obtained legally.) The law also requires the return of sacred items from federal agencies to tribes.

State

"Arizona Antiquities Act of 1927: Bans unauthorized digging, defacing or plundering of historic, archaeological or paleontological sites on state land.

"Burial Protection Law of 1990: Prohibits the vandalism of human remains or funerary objects in Arizona, requiring a land owner to give notification upon discovery of a historic grave. (It is legal for a property owner to excavate ruins and remove artifacts from private land, except burial sites.) "Violators face criminal penalties."

"Convicted Antiquities Dealer Claims he was Digger, Collector, not Looter" was the headline to Dennis Wagner's sidebar to the following story, also published in the Arizona Republic on November 12.

Rodney Tidwell sits at the living room table of his suburban home in Mesa, wearing a tanktop and reflecting on his lifelong career as a digger and trader of Native American artifacts," the story begins. "He admits being caught many times on government lands and Indian reservations while unearthing Indian ruins. He describes his years traveling from village to village, buying tribal heirlooms and antiquities. He talks of his years in prison for dealing in stolen Indian artifacts.

"Still robust at 64 years old, gravel-voiced, a family man quick with laughter, he defends himself. 'I am not the big, bad wolf. In all my dealings, I never bought or sold any stolen items.'

"Now a maintenance supervisor at an RV park, Tidwell frets aloud that by going public he will incur the government's wrath again. But there are things that need to be said. Native Americans have been trading their wares with Whites since the first explorers hit North America, Tidwell begins, and they are still doing so in posh galleries and at roadside stands. He argues that statutes prohibiting Indians from selling religious and ceremonial objects violate the property rights of tribal members.

" 'The word is not looting,' he insists. 'It's digging. We excavate. We all had collections. ... I've read lots and lots of books on it. It's history. We weren't looting the ruins. What we found we cleaned up and showed. I had a pot published in National Geographic.'

"While much of the work was done legally on private property, Tidwell admits he frequently broke the law by digging on public lands or in burial mounds. But he also has an explanation for that: 'If you find a big fish under a rock, that's where you're going to fish.' Mystery death

"Thomas Dawson Boone couldn't handle the guilt. After stealing and selling religious masks from his Zuni tribe in the early 1990s, he went to authorities and confessed. Boone said he'd been doing business with a White man from Arizona named Rodney Phillip Tidwell. Law enforcement agents knew of Tidwell from previous dealings. He had been caught, cited and fined about a half-dozen times at ruins in Arizona and New Mexico. Dealing in artifacts was his livelihood and had been since his early 20s. With no other known occupation, he had a house near Payson on the market for $640,000.

"Boone told John Fryar, a criminal investigator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, that Tidwell operated as a 'doorknocker,' visiting remote hogans and reservation homes throughout Arizona and New Mexico. The tactic was reminiscent of Great Plains rumrunners who traded firewater to Indians for buffalo robes. Tidwell would bring gifts. He'd buy ice cream for the children. He'd offer to pay cash for old baskets, pottery, clothing, jewelry, masks and dolls.

"Arguably, everyone came out ahead: Poor Indians got spending money. The doorknocker profited. Collectors wound up with rare and beautiful objects.

"But, for many Native Americans, selling religious relics amounts to cultural betrayal, spiritual death. In many cases, when the objects have religious or ceremonial properties, selling them also violates the law. Boone told Fryar he could not sleep at night. The masks were talking to him, asking to go home. So Boone agreed to go undercover.

"In October 1992, while BIA agents watched, Boone sold a mask to Tidwell, who was arrested on felony charges. Investigators searched Tidwell's home and found more artifacts, plus eagle feathers and frozen migratory birds used for trade with Indians.

"When Boone's shame became public, he fell ill. According to Fryar, Zunis saw the sickness as a sort of curse from the Creator and refused to sing healing songs. Boone passed away.

"With the government's key witness dead, Tidwell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges. His written statement to the U.S. District Court in New Mexico acknowledged 'that what I did was coming out of greed and seeing the masks as sort of a prize to be obtained rather than something which is important to other people for spiritual reasons.'

"Tidwell was fined $10,000 and got three years probation. It was no deterrent. Six months later, he sold a Hopi mask to BIA investigator John Fryar, who was posing as an artifact collector. Acoma vestments

"Working undercover, Fryar 'became' a protege to Tidwell. He says Tidwell targeted alcoholics, cutting deals with an undisguised contempt for Native Americans. 'He was in it purely for the money,' Fryar says. 'I think he felt they were dumb, and he knew how to twist and turn them. He'd bring toys for the kids.' Tidwell sold Fryar Catholic liturgical vestments from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. A pink chasuble dated to 1760. Other vestments bore stains that Tidwell claimed were blood splatters from priests killed when the tribe revolted against Spanish rule in 1680.

"Fryar bought the items for $3,000. Two Acoma women, members of the Altar Society, later testified that they sold the vestments to Tidwell for $300 because they needed money to buy groceries.

"Tidwell also came up with masks from a Hopi, Ernest Wendell Chapella. In November 1996, Fryar was in Tidwell's home near Payson when investigators arrived with a search warrant. Tidwell went into a panic, trying to hide artifacts. Seconds later, Fryar says, Tidwell realized Fryar was an undercover agent and 'he threatened to blow my head off.'

"Investigators found a looter's scrapbook in the house. There were records of his run-ins with the law, and pictures of Tidwell in a ruin holding a skull.

"Chapella was convicted in Hopi tribal court. Condemned, shamed and still facing federal charges, he shot and killed himself. A note to family members explained that he ended his life to protect them from vindictive spirits: 'This way nobody will bother you guys.' After prison

"Tidwell was found guilty on 20 felony counts of stealing and selling Native American robes, vestments and other liturgical items. He served a 33- month prison sentence and completed probation.

"Tidwell says he quit the excavation business years ago after his truck was confiscated. He continued roaming Indian reservations of the West, buying artifacts. But he insists that he respected Native Americans as friends and flatly rejects Fryar's characterizations. He also denies threatening Fryar. 'I did not take Indians booze for them to sell me things. I never felt they were dumb. I enjoyed dealing with them. It was the greatest job I ever had. I was not taking advantage of them. I was buying things they wanted to sell.'

"After prison, Tidwell says, he quit dealing in artifacts. He still wears a silver watchband embedded with turquoise. A few baskets and pots decorate his home, remnants of a grand collection.

"In March, an Apache ranger patrolling near San Carlos Reservoir came upon three people on tribal lands without permits. One of them was Rodney Tidwell. He was cited for trespassing but persuaded a tribal judge to reduce the fine from $160 to $50.

"Tidwell says he wasn't after artifacts. He was just checking the lake to see if fish were biting."

" 'Apocalypto' does disservice to its subject," was the headline for Zachary X. Hruby's article about the Mel Gibson movie that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 11. Dr. Hruby is a lecturer and research affiliate in the department of anthropology at UC Riverside, and senior archaeologist at CRM Tech in Riverside. This article originally appeared on mesoweb.com.

Apocalypto,' Mel Gibson's new thriller about the ancient Maya civilization, is exactly that: thrilling. But this entertainment comes at a price.

"The Maya at the time of Spanish contact are depicted as idyllic hunters and gatherers, or as genocidal murderers, and neither of these scenarios is accurate. The film represents a step backward in our understanding of the complex cultures that existed in the New World before the Spanish invasion, and it is part of a disturbing trend re-emerging in the film industry, portraying non-Western natives as evil savages.

" 'King Kong' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' show these natives as uncaring, beastlike and virtually inhuman. 'Apocalypto' achieves similar goals, but in a much subtler fashion.

"As in 'The Passion of the Christ,' Gibson utilizes native language to invoke a veneer of credibility for his story, in this case Yucatec Maya, a technique that unfortunately does much to legitimize this rather strange version of Maya history.

"First, a typical Maya village is shown as an unorganized group of jungle people who appear to subsist on hunting alone. The Maya were an agricultural people with a very structured social and economic system. Even small villages in the hinterlands of large cities were connected to some political center. The jungle people in Gibson's movie are flabbergasted at the sight of the Maya city, exclaiming that they have never seen such buildings. The truth is, pyramids of comparable size were never more than 20 kilometers away from anywhere in the Maya world, be they occupied or abandoned.

"Second, Mayan city people are shown as violent extremists bent on harvesting innocent villagers to provide flesh for sacrifice and women for slaves, leaving the children to die alone in the jungle.

"Hundreds of men are sacrificed on an Aztec style sacrificial stone, their headless bodies thrown into a giant ditch reminiscent of a Holocaust documentary or a scene from 'The Killing Fields.' Problem is, there exists no archaeological, historic or ethnohistoric data to suggest that any such mass sacrifices -- numbering in the thousands, or even hundreds -- took place in the Maya world.

"Third, once Gibson paints this bloody picture of 15th century Maya civilization, the ultimate injustice is handed the pre- Columbian Maya. As the jungle hero escapes the evil city and is chased to the edge of the sea by his antagonists, with literally nowhere else to turn, Spanish galleons appear, complete with a small, lead boat carrying a stalwart friar hoisting a crucifix. For Gibson, the new beginning for these lost Mayan people, the Apocalypto, evidently is the coming of the Spaniards and Christianity to the Americas.

"Although this film will undoubtedly create interest in the field of Maya archaeology by way of its spectacular reconstructions and beautiful jungle scenes, the lasting impression of Maya and other pre-Columbian civilizations is this: The Maya were simple jungle bands or bloodthirsty masses duped by false religions, resulting in the ruin of their mighty but misguided civilization, and their salvation arrived with the coming of Christian beliefs saddled on the backs of Spanish conquistadors.

"As archaeologists struggle to accurately reconstruct ancient Maya society, obstructed by their decimation via Western diseases; destruction of their books, art and history by Spanish friars; and their subjugation and exploitation by the conquistadors, such films as 'Apocalypto' represent a significant disparagement of that process.

"Further, inaccurate representations by Hollywood of indigenous peoples as amoral, inhuman or uncivilized can only lead to greater misunderstanding and strife in contemporary society. This may be particularly important in a modern world, where common ground is increasingly difficult to come by."

From the Wall Street Journal on December 22, 2006: "Powwows' Popularity Fuels a Black Market For Eagle Feathers; Native Americans Compete With Dances and Regalia; Carcass Sting Operation."

The front page story, written by Amir Efrati, was datelined Indio, CA, and began: "At an American-Indian dance competition here last month, Travis 'Thunder' Lovett bobbed his head, hopped on one foot while spinning and froze suddenly as the last drumbeat stopped. On top of his headdress, two eagle feathers swayed. The perfectly executed finish earned him first prize and $1,000.

"It's hard to acquire eagle feathers legally these days, and Mr. Lovett, 21 years old and one eighth Cherokee, was guarded about their source. 'I'm not supposed to tell anybody how I get them,' he said. In a later interview, Mr. Lovett said he misspoke. His feathers were 'handed down from a friend' who might have gotten them from the government's official repository of eagle parts and feathers.

"Powwows, festivals where mostly Native Americans gather to socialize and compete, have surged in popularity. In turn, according to wildlife law-enforcement officials, they've fueled a black market in eagle parts used to decorate dancers' outfits. Government and unofficial estimates suggest several thousand protected bald and golden eagles in the U.S. and British Columbia are killed every year, mainly by poachers eager to profit from the phenomenon.

" 'Powwows are the biggest killer of eagles,' says Eddie Benally, a Navajo conservation officer at the tribe's 17-millionacre reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, who assists U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents in nabbing eagle shooters and traders. Mr. Benally says eagle traders, who previously sold only individual feathers at powwows, today sell whole wings and tails.

"The term 'powwow' once referred to a spiritual leader or spiritual activity. It was later co-opted by nonnative settlers to describe any type of Indian gathering. The modern powwow event derives from the ceremonies of Ponca and Omaha tribes of the Great Plains, says Dennis W. Zotigh of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

"There have been almost 1,000 powwows this year, according to Paul Gowder, who keeps a calendar on his Web site, PowWows.com. His day job is to manage the Web site of South Carolina's attorney general. One of the nation's largest powwows, Gathering of Nations, in Albuquerque, N.M., attracted 3,000 dancers this year, up from 2,000 a decade ago. "Indian-owned casinos, which sponsor many of the events, are a big reason for the rising numbers. Prizes there have climbed to as high as $3,000 for first place in each dance category, leading some Indian families to try earning a living by traveling from competition to competition, says Mr. Zotigh.

"Many dances require eagle feathers for headdresses or fans, and competitors are judged on the quality of their outfits, among other things. The men's 'northern traditional' dance, for example, requires a winglike contraption consisting of up to two eagles' worth of feathers. Young golden eagles, whose tails are made up of white feathers with black tips, are the most sought after for dancing outfits, called regalias.

"Regalia feathers are easily damaged. 'You need three of everything,' says Buckshot Knight, a 58- year-old Lakota tribe member from Eagle Butte, S.D. "The bald eagle was adopted by Congress as a national symbol in 1782 and became federally protected in 1940. Protection for golden eagles followed 22 years later. Today, with some very rare exceptions, it's illegal to kill eagles or sell eagle parts in the U.S. Non-Native Americans can't even possess eagle parts obtained after the birds became protected, unless they have a permit for educational or scientific use.

"Because eagles are important to American- Indian culture -- many tribes see them as a messenger between humans and God -- card-carrying members of federally recognized tribes can possess eagle parts. There are only a few ways to get hold of new eagle parts. Native Americans can apply for a seldom-granted permit to kill a bird for religious use. They can receive them as gifts or through inheritance. And they can make requests to a Denver based repository, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which collects eagles that die naturally or are electrocuted by power lines, among other hazards.

"Requests to the repository have doubled over the past five years, says its supervisor, Bernadette Atencio. She estimates that more than half of the requests from American Indians are related to powwows. The waiting list is so long that it takes about 2½ years to get a whole bald eagle carcass and 3½ for a young golden eagle. The wait is shorter for loose feathers.

"Prices for eagle parts on the black market have more than doubled since the 1980s, says Kevin Ellis, a Fish and Wildlife Service agent in Grand Junction, Colo. A whole, young golden eagle sells for as much as $1,200, and a single golden eagle tail feather in mint condition can fetch more than $250. A whole eagle yields about 52 feathers suitable for powwow outfits.

" 'More people are actively asserting themselves to obtain eagle parts' at powwows and more individuals are killing eagles for their own use, says Mr. Ellis, who relies on a network of informants. He says the development is partly due to frustration with the repository, which can be slow and sometimes hands out stained or crushed feathers.

"Wildlife law-enforcement officers employ some of the same tactics as federal narcotics officers, including wearing wires when coming in contact with suspected eagle-parts traders. Sometimes they embed microchips in carcasses at the eagle repository to catch people who try to sell the birds after receiving them.

"Wildlife agents say it's hard to enforce the laws because federal lawyers take relatively few cases against eagle killers or traders. Moreover, says James Candelaria, an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado, convictions in the cases rarely result in severe penalties because it is difficult to prove the black-market value of seized animal parts. Questions of religious freedom also complicate matters.

"In the late 1700s, there were as many as 100,000 adult bald eagles in the lower 48 states, says David A. Buehler, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Tennessee. The population was hurt mainly by habitat destruction and by hunting, and between around 1950 and the early 1970s the number of eagles in some areas fell by 90%. The number dipped as low as 800 in 1963 before reviving to more than 15,000 today. Separately, British Columbia and Alaska are home to about 100,000 bald eagles, a population that's remained relatively stable over the centuries.

"The population of golden eagles, which never became a threatened species, isn't as well tracked. As of the early 1980s there were about 63,000 golden eagles in 16 Western states, according to the Birds of North America encyclopedia. Golden and bald eagles are the only indigenous eagles in the U.S.

"At the Indio competition, Ken Ball, 61, a retired schoolteacher from Goodyear, Ariz., was entered in the 'southern straight' dance category. He carried a feathered fan and wore a headdress topped with a white feather tipped with black.

"When asked what bird the feathers came from, Mr. Ball, who is not Native American, cupped a hand around his mouth and whispered as if he were spelling a swear word in front of a young child: 'e-a-g-l-e.' Asked whether the golden eagle feathers were legal, Mr. Ball says he got them in 1962, just before the ban came into force."

"An Illuminating New Museum? Well, Not Literally," is Willard Spiegelman's take on the Musée de Quai Branly, published in The Wall Street Journal on December 28, 2006.

Datelined Paris, the story began, "Intended or not, the symbolism is striking: The Eiffel Tower, iconic image of 19th-century French ingenuity, rises along the Seine on Paris's Left Bank; nearby, the Musée du Quai Branly lies low and hugs the ground, one side nestled into it, and the other, supported on pylons, snaking away from it. The Branly is horizontal Mother Earth to the tower's majestic, vertical masculinity. And it speaks for 21stcentury architectural and mechanical savoir-faire.

"Jean Nouvel's new museum for the arts of everything nonwhite (it has four main connecting areas devoted to Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas) has stirred controversy since its planning, well before its opening last summer. Critics charged Premier Jacques Chirac, for whom it is rumored that the museum will eventually be named, with mounting a vanity project. Some 300,000 objects from the old Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens, and the ethnographic section of the Musée de l'Homme, have come here to roost. They will rotate; currently, 3,600 are on view.

"Chock-a-block with stuff, the Branly is an empire's steamer trunk, like London's Victoria and Albert Museum, albeit with a specialized focus on the arts of what used to be called the Third World. The vast collections include fabrics, sculpture, pottery, musical instruments, almost anything one can think of. Moving through it is like nothing so much as a trip through a carnival's darkened Fun House. Unlike the V&A it comes with the legitimate, politically correct idea of honoring 'otherness.' (Ironically, on three separate visits, I heard the Babel of languages expected at international tourist sites, but I saw very few nonwhite faces.)

"One wall label calls the collection the 'fruit of France's contacts with non-western cultures.' 'Contacts' seems a disingenuous euphemism. The Branly represents the products of French imperialism as well as the collecting impulse.

"Inside and out, the grounds and the building are oddly, self-consciously beautiful. If ever one could call a museum a theme park, the Branly would surely qualify. Its objects impress and astound by both their installation and the building's own spectacular, theatrical energies.

"Anyone not sure of foot or sight should beware: The Branly dazzles but it also overwhelms, and it may also trip you up. (I saw a couple of pensioners stumble on their way down to the lowest, darkest level, which houses the theater as well as the toilets.)

Inside, you first ascend a white circular ramp, which turns into a dark tunnel, designed to initiate you into the shadowy adventures ahead. At the top of the ramp, you find a handful of representative, gorgeous objects.

Like many things here, the 11th-century pre-Dogon Mali statue of an androgynous figure, and a mid-20th-century wooden sculpture from Papua, New Guinea, combining a man with a crocodile and an eagle, stand free, with no "do not touch" signs on them. (The most delicate things are either raised above arm's length or kept within cabinets.) Touching may be permitted, especially in a special section for handicapped people. And many large pieces of stone and metal are easily touchable (no guards seemed to mind). But knowing what you're looking at is often difficult.

Rather than put labels at eye-level, on a wall near the objects, someone has decided to challenge viewers by making them bend down occasionally to read signage on the floor. Kneeling is often necessary.

"Dark colors have been deliberately selected. The Branly has banished whiteness from its main space for both metaphorical and occasionally practical reasons. Everything is dark: There is only a little natural light. The floors of the American tributary (everything here seems to flow into everything else) are deep blue and black; those of the Asian, Chinese-red and deep purple-brown. Many smaller objects are in vitrines, dramatically lighted and backed by blackness. Low ceilings increase a sense of claustrophobia. Some fragile items, like a 19th-century Omaha buffalo hide, decorated with delicate geometric patterns and embroidery, appear in such low light as to be virtually invisible.

"In another way, the designers have taken comfort into account. Biomorphic walls, covered in beige leather, snake through the building and offer bench-like seating in niches and small computer- generated audio-visual screens that give relevant information.

"On the building's Seine side, little rectangular rooms, like chapels in a Gothic cathedral, permit a retreat from the interior, its caves, jungles, forests and undulating river. From outdoors, these cantilevered protuberances, colored in earth tones -- red, brown, mustard yellow -- add a whimsical industrial touch. Within, you find elegant groupings of such things as Dogon masks, Moroccan carpets and Asian textiles.

"Visitors needing a respite from sinuous shadows have two other options. On the ground floor near the entrance, the hall for temporary exhibitions is open, airy and light. The current show, 'D'un Regard l'Autre' [closed Jan. 21, 2007], displays both European and non-Western objects together. The idea is to reflect changing Western conceptions of 'the other' and ways of absorbing a foreign aesthetic into a European one. The exhibit contains early pictures of Eskimos and American Indians, plus a wonderful group of eight large portraits, c. 1641, by Albert Eckhout of representative Brazilian racial 'types,' intended for the governor's residence in Recife.

"Various curios add unexpected grace notes. A 17th-century bust of a Moorish servant gives him royal-blue skin, because black was impossible to render in majolica. A group of 'bibelots aristocratiques' contains a small female figurine, 'America Seated on a Crocodile' (1745, Meissen), with parrot, jeweled cape and floral cornucopia. Why the croc? The early explorers decided that America, now the fourth continent, needed an animal of its own to match Europe's horse, Africa's elephant and Asia's camel.

"The show ends in the 20th century, with a row of 'African' heads done in the International Style, which we associate with Art Deco in France and the States, by various French sculptors, in bronze, marble and wood. And with African masks and sculptures collected by Apollinaire, Braque, Derain and Picasso, the indebtedness of the 'modern' to the 'primitive' could not be clearer.

"A fierce figure from the South Pacific island of Malakula, made of wood, fiber with pigment, and teeth, sits on a chair in a glass case, its eyes bulging, its limbs flailing. Matisse gave it to Picasso, who kept it in his studio from 1957 until his death. It looks -- well -- like a late Picasso. And Matisse made a glorious homage to his 1930 visit to Tahiti in 'Polynésie, le Ciel,' one of his late (1946) paper cutouts. Big, bright, beautiful, it brings this didactic show to a close with a heavenly burst of illumination.

"A statelier suffusion of light awaits at the Louvre, along with the pleasure of seeing 100 pieces from the Branly on display in chaste, spacious, white, vaulted, high ceilinged rooms (inaugurated by Mr. Chirac in 2000) that show them off to perfection. Designed by Jacques Kerchache and Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the galleries allow each piece to stand single on the floor or in its own case, to shine, and -- like the few spectators here -- to breathe. Call me old-fashioned, but there's a case to be made for the superiority of light, of 'luxe et calme,' to claustrophobic shadows. The Branly, for all its riches, tends to excite and then to suffocate rather than to satisfy fully." Mr. Spiegelman teaches at Southern Methodist University.

In her review of the newly renovated Yale University Art Gallery, "At Yale, Renovation Puts Africa in Spotlight," published in The New York Times on January 10, 2007, Holland Cotter talks about work displayed in the gallery from Van Gogh to Alexander Calder to Matthew Barney. But her true favorite is the African art.

Datelined New Haven, the review begins, "Fans of air, light and it-just-feels-right in architecture will find everything to admire in the revamped and revivified version of the Yale University Art Gallery's Louis Kahn building. Post- Kahnian partitions have been pulled down, picture windows uncovered. Rangy Modernist space - the space of the future when the building opened in 1953 - unfurls in all directions." And after a few more paragraphs about the other art, Cotter writes,

"And now we come to the innovation, and the compelling reason (Kahn apart) for making a visit: a big new permanent gallery devoted to the arts of Africa, with an inaugural display of a size and quality to put Yale at the head of the class, among university art museums, in this field. "Most of the art arrived only recently. It's from a collection of nearly 600 African objects given to the museum by Charles B. Benenson (1913-2004), a New York real estate developer and Yale alumnus. And in addition to leaving Yale one of the largest gifts of art in its history, Mr. Benenson endowed a curatorial position in African art at the museum. Frederick John Lamp, formerly of the Baltimore Museum of Art, has the job, and he designed the inaugural installation.

"Africa is immense and immensely, complexly diverse. Try to define its art strictly by region or culture and you're in trouble. Existing national boundaries are largely colonial inventions. Lamp produced a terrific multidisciplinary book, 'See the Music, Hear the Dance' (Prestel), in Baltimore. Rather than narrow categories, he expands them.

"As if in direct contrast to the compartmentalized European installation, he has left the African space undivided and open. Although some objects have been bunched into thematic units, most fall under two loose conceptual categories, based on the idea of art as psychologically and spiritually 'cool' or 'hot,' a distinction explored by many art historians, among them Robert Farris Thompson, with whom Mr. Lamp studied at Yale.

"Coolness, connoting serenity and benevolence, streams from the powdery white female figure in a Yoruba shrine sculpture at the gallery entrance. And it is the essence of a grand Baga dance mask representing an ideal of maternal probity. Exceptional in size and beauty, it is one of the noblest images at Yale, and anywhere else, for that matter.

"Arrayed on a diamond- shaped platform across from it is a kind of flying wedge of smaller 'hot' figures, several from Cameroon and Nigeria. Grimacing, twisting, generally making a spectacle of themselves, they project volatile, forceful, even violent dispositions. In the right hands, their energy can be channeled in a positive, coactive direction, and Mr. Benenson seems to have been particularly partial to them, judging by the number here.

"He was also that rare thing, a connoisseur of the uncanonical hybrid in art, as demonstrated by the presence of a headdress mask of a water spirit from Sierra Leone. With its brashly painted face and serpentine body made of imported leopard-skin-pattern fabric, the piece is a hot-cool medley, sweetly fanciful but also fierce in the fashion sense.

"Pieces like this stand well outside 'classical' African art as defined by Western taste, and I'm told there is more, and even wilder, stuff in the Benenson gift. If so, I can't wait to see it. (Maybe some of it will show up in a show of new acquisitions scheduled for September.) In fact, my single reservation about the new gallery is that it is a mite tame, adhering too closely to well-mapped ground.

"Over the last few decades, scholars, and specifically scholars of African art, have been redrawing that map. They've scrambled, revamped and revivified all sorts of old-time either/ors: art vs. artifact, Western vs. non-Western, functional vs. spiritual. They've shown that sound, movement and touch, the very elements we police our museums against, are essential to African art's meaning. They are the art, because they complete it.

"Much of the redrawing has been through experimental exhibitions, notably those at the Museum for African Art in New York, of which Mr. Benenson was a founding trustee. (The same institution's founding director, Susan M. Vogel, was director of the Yale University Art Gallery in the 1990s.)

"Of course, the present Yale installation is just a start. Mr. Lamp already has interesting plans in the works. They will lead him, no doubt, to tell the African art story differently in years to come. And his successors, perhaps one of his own students among them, may tell that history yet another way.

"I love art for its pleasures, but I believe it is ultimately about teaching and self-education. University art museums are where self-education for many teachers-to-be begins. This is what makes them such important institutions. They are safe houses for success and failure alike. (I hope the new African gallery risks both in a big way.) And they are workshops where intellectual space and ethical light should be abundant, which is why the reopened Kahn building feels so right."

The Yale University Art Gallery is at 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven; (203) 432-0600.

Kennewick Man Update

December 7, 2006

KENNEWICK MAN ON SCHEDULE FOR 6-MONTH CHECK-UP

Kennewick Man may have been dead for about 9,000 years, but he still has to suffer through regular checkups with the doc like the rest of us. But the ancient skeleton shouldn't expect to squeeze in the visit on his lunch break. The old bones will undergo about three days of methodical study Dec. 11-13 at the Burke Museum in Seattle. Army Corps of Engineers scientists and Burke officials plan to open the large custom-made cases that hold the bones and examine things such as its temperature, humidity and cracks.