{"id":793,"date":"2008-06-03T08:55:30","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T12:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=793"},"modified":"2008-06-03T08:56:59","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T12:56:59","slug":"words-you-never-expected-to-see-in-the-same-sentence-rastafari-culture-at-the-smithsonian-institution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=793","title":{"rendered":"Words You Never Expected to See in the Same Sentence: Rastafari Culture at the Smithsonian Institution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/slideshow\/2008\/05\/10\/arts\/design\/20080510_RASTA_SS_index.html\"  target=\"_blank\" title=\"Blood clot exhibit!\"><img src=\"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/screen3.jpg\" title=\"Blood clot exhibit!\" alt=\"Blood clot exhibit!\" align=\"middle\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When I saw that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/05\/10\/arts\/design\/10rast.html?pagewanted=all\"  target=\"_blank\">Smithsonian is running an exhibit &#8217;til Nov. 8 on Rastafarianism<\/a>\u2014\u201cDiscovering Rastafari!\u201d is the horrible title\u2014my first thought was this: I&#8217;d have given my eyeteeth to have heard the ensuing comedy of errors when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.printthis.clickability.com\/pt\/cpt?action=cpt&amp;title=Smithsonian+Magazine+%7C+Arts+%26+Culture+%7C+One+Love%3A+Discovering+Rastafari%21&amp;expire=&amp;urlID=25519752&amp;fb=Y&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smithsonianmag.com%2Farts-culture%2Fdiscover-rastafari-200801.html%23&amp;partnerID=253172\"  target=\"_blank\">white, Ivy League-bred curators<\/a> negotiated with Rastas for artifacts.<\/p>\n<p>Then, it occurred to me that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/slideshow\/2008\/05\/10\/arts\/design\/20080510_RASTA_SS_index.html\"  target=\"_blank\">everything in the show<\/a> is probably already owned by white Brits.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s this question, which <em>The New York Times<\/em>, itself, raises: Why is this exhibit in the Smithsonian&#8217;s Museum of <em>Natural<\/em> History?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>the Rastafari exhibition does not really belong in the same museum as paleontological finds and collections of insects and gems. That placement is a relic of the 19th-century conception of the natural history museum as a temple devoted to exotic \u201cnatural\u201d cultures and objects \u2014 evolutionary predecessors of the scientific West.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How unexpected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I saw that the Smithsonian is running an exhibit &#8217;til Nov. 8 on Rastafarianism\u2014\u201cDiscovering Rastafari!\u201d is the horrible title\u2014my first thought was this: I&#8217;d have given my eyeteeth to have heard the ensuing comedy of errors when white, Ivy League-bred curators negotiated with Rastas for artifacts. Then, it occurred to me that everything in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,44,33,58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}