Necklace Date Unknown

This necklace was created anonymously out of shell and beads, and now resides in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Without a known date of production, it is difficult to assess this necklace's status in its own time. Indigenous peoples in what is now North America have long worked with shell to produce wampum. The careful crafting and collecting of valuable materials, suggests that the wearer of the necklace would have been someone with a high social status in their community. Today we are accustomed to seeing Indigenous artifacts in a museum setting. However, it would be beneficial to know more about how this necklace made its way into the museum's collection. Was it donated by a family or acquired through anthropological fieldwork? These are the kinds of questions that help us to better understand the politics of representation when it comes to non-western art.