Ruth Phillips argues that these practices are "indigenous" not only because they originate in Aboriginal activism but because they draw on a distinctively Canadian preference for compromise and tolerance for ambiguity. Phillips dissects seminal exhibitions of Indigenous art to show how changes in display, curatorial voice, and authority stem from broad social, economic, and political forces outside the museum and moves beyond Canadian institutions and practices to discuss historically interrelated developments and exhibitions in the United States, Britain, Australia, and elsewhere. Drawing on forty years of experience as an art historian, curator, exhibition critic, and museum director, she emphasizes the complex and situated nature of the problems that face museums, introducing new perspectives on controversial exhibitions and moments of contestation. A manifesto that calls on us to re-imagine the museum as a place to embrace global interconnectedness, Museum Pieces emphasizes the transformative power of museum controversy and analyses shifting ideas about art, authenticity, and power in the modern museum.

Ruth Phillips' profile page

Ruth B. Phillips is an art historian specializing in North American Aboriginal art and a former director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology.

"Museum Pieces is eminently readable - written simply and elegantly. There is no other book that covers forty years of Canadian museology with such historical depth and theoretical thoughtfulness." Jennifer Kramer, anthropology, University of British Columbia

"Ruth Phillips is one of the most well-respected and senior figures working in the domain of contemporary museum anthropology and critical museum studies. The great strengths of this volume are the author’s careful research, her unique position within the events described, and the temporal depth of the analysis that traces important questions of indigenous representation in detail over decades. Uniting fine-grained analysis of exhibitions within a broader framework of political action and a social context of individual actors is an exemplary methodology for museum studies. This broad and extremely rich book presents a sustained argument for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of representational politics in museums." Haidy Geismar, anthropology and museum studies, New York University

"Ruth Phillips has been a key maker and shaper of new curatorial and institutional cultures but is also certainly the finest commentator on the progress, in fits and starts, of the museum world over the last thirty years. While the debates have suffered a surfeit of rhetoric, Museum Pieces is full of insight and clarity. This is the best guide to the shifting sands of the museum world." Nicholas Thomas, Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge