Franz Boas
(1858–1942)

Unknown photographer, Franz Boas posing for Hamat'sa life group figures, 1895, printed 2017, prints, Collection Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., installation view, EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke

Unknown photographer, Franz Boas posing for Hamat'sa life group figures, 1895, printed 2017, prints, Collection Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., installation view, EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke

The German anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942) is shown posing for a diorama of the Hamat’sa ceremony for the then U.S. National Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution)—a ceremony that is still important to the Kwakwaka’wakw community in Canada. Only undertaken by the initiated, the ceremony is a way to maintain balance between the human and the spirit world. Boas, in his quest to more fully represent Indigenous practices to non-Indigenous audiences, has positioned himself as the “wild” dancer emerging from the threshold of the supernatural, coming out of the mouth of the cannibal spirit Baxbaxwalanuxsiwae’.

Posted in Public Exhibition