Decentering Durham

Abstract

This section of the AICRJ special issue on fraud looks back to a 2017 group conversation (first published in First American Art Magazine no. 19 (Fall 2017): 84–89) as four Native American scholars and artists respond to the then-traveling retrospective exhibit Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World in light of Durham’s long-standing claims to Cherokee identity. In “Decentering Durham,” Chiricahua Apache scholar Nancy Marie Mithlo argues that, “Cultural institutions continue to accept his platform, and, in doing so … deny Indigenous cultural sovereignty to name our own members and leaders.” Roy Boney Jr., a Cherokee artist, discusses Durham’s appropriation of the writings of historic statesman Zeke Proctor in “Not Jimmie Durham’s Cherokee.” In a “Walk-through at the Hammer,” Luiseño-Diegueño performance and installation artist James Luna (1950–2018) muses on the aesthetics of Durham’s work and the value of community belonging. Summarizing the 2017 perspective in “A Chapter Closed?,” artist and editor America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) hopes that, “after a multigenerational, multi-tribal effort … art historians and curators will cease … positioning [Durham] as our representative in academic literature.”