Possessions: Indigenous Art / Colonial Culture / Decolonization

A timely reexamination of European engagements with Indigenous art—and the presence of Indigenous art in the contemporary art world.

The arts of Africa, Oceania, and Native America famously inspired twentieth-century modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Max Ernst. Was this a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated? Or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation?

What might a “decolonized” art history look like? Over the last half-century, scholarship emer...