TAÍNO
NEW YORK—Across the Caribbean, there is growing
interest in the historical, cultural, and genetic legacies
of Native peoples. Over the past forty years, a diverse
Taíno movement has taken form, and increasing numbers
57
of individuals, families, and organizations are
affi rming their Native ancestry and identifying themselves
as Taíno. This movement challenges the
prevalent belief that Native peoples became
extinct shortly after European colonization
in the Greater Antilles, which are populated
by the racially mixed and culturally blended
societies of Cuba, the Dominican Republic,
and Puerto Rico, as well as other areas of the
Caribbean.
Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the
Caribbean, at the National Museum of the
American Indian, Smithsonian Institution,
July 28, 2018–October 2019, will explore the
rural roots of the Taíno movement and provide
insight into the legacy of Native peoples
throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean
islands and their American diasporas.
ABOVE: Portrait of a
Jamaican of Native descent.
Pedro Bluffs, Jamaica. 1892.
National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution, inv. 0425700.
LEFT: Petroglyph with
ancestor faces.
Taíno, Puerto Rico.
AD 1000–1500.
Stone.
National Museum of the American
Indian, Smithsonian Institution.
BELOW LEFT: Members of
the Concilio Taíno Guatu-
Ma-cu a Boriken in a Taíno
dance ceremony, areito.
Guayanilla, Puerto Rico.
March, 2017.
Photo: Teresita González-Crespo,
courtesy of the photographer, 2017.
FLOW OF FORMS/FORMS OF
FLOW: Design Histories between
Africa and Europe
HAMBURG—How can we shape a shared future for
design while taking the past into account? This is the
question that Kossi Aguessy asks and that serves as
the basis for the Museum für Völkerkunde’s current
exhibition, on view through August 19. While the
models used in pop culture to invent the future are
invariably Eurocentric, Aguessy wonders if non-Western
arts might, using their own cultural heritage
and aesthetics as a starting point, revolutionize the
question of design that is so central today, especially
amid increasing awareness that design draws upon
everything that constitutes our environment. The
exhibition elucidates the history of this context by
considering its constituents from a fresh and hitherto
unexplored perspective, notably in the fi rst section
of the show that juxtaposes early twentieth-century
African objects with European design pieces. Flow of
Forms goes beyond objects to investigate and refl ect
on the impact that a new history can have on social
or political change in communities, especially those of
rural Africa.
LEFT: Chief’s throne.
Tshokwe, Angola/DR Congo,
19th century.
Wood. H: 80.5 cm.
Collected by Leo Frobenius in 1905.
Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg,
inv. 4783:07.
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