The visitor who continues straight ahead when passing through the transition from the World of Us to the World of Not Us encounters the art of an America that Lévi-Strauss unified in his imagination. There is no North, Central and South. There is no high and low culture, no empires, no rise and fall. Mexico is with Brazil, Peru is with the Northern Plains, the Eastern Woodlands are beside the Andes. The objects in the cases are organized in visual pattern groups. Each object is placed and aligned to emphasize pattern similarities or variations. Symmetry is emphasized by the way each statue, vase, pipe, axe and pedestal is presented. Along the edge of one case, a video screen presents a series of photos of stone and ceramic objects which transform into each other through the aid of computer morphing. The text by anthropologist Emmanuel Désveaux explains: “They make transformational groups, tokens of the uniqueness of Amerindian artifacts: even before being instruments in themselves, they are regarded as instruments of meaning.”

I can see it is the same human mind that fashioned them both, that chose this material and this form to adorn the neck. And it is the same human mind looking through my eyes at these ornaments…

The largest of the glass cases at the end/beginning of the collection contains a group of head ornaments on stands. The label is a Lévi-Straussian transformation: “From Crown to Halo.” The label reads, in part, “The famous headdress of the Plains Indians is a fine example of the synthesis between the crown and the halo.” The halo of feathers beside it has the label “Diadème d’enfant, Bororo, don Claude et Dina Lévi-Strauss (Mission ethnographique au Brasil, 1935-36).” Beside this is a panel that presents the Bororo birdnester myth, the text that Lévi-Strauss chose as the key myth in his four-volume Mythologies. It is a story of incest, quest, and transformation. Nearby cases present sets of paddles, clubs and rattles with a text explaining their common properties — supporting contact across distance — also explained by the birdnester myth.

Yet some geographical and cultural boundaries are maintained. As I continue backwards from the end, I reach a case containing only objects collected by Lévi-Strauss in Brazil: small ornaments and objects made from shell, sticks, animal teeth and gourds. And turning the corner, I am facing two early nineteenth-century oil portraits by George Catlin of Plains Indian dignitaries. These men are dressed in buffalo robes or deerskin shirts, with feather roaches and headdresses covering their heads. Their necks and breasts are draped with claw necklaces, beads and shell or metal gorgets. I have crossed from South to North America.

But the Frenchman has made his point. After looking at the necklace collected from the Brazilian natives who slept on the ground and dressed only with penis sheaths, I am seeing America differently. I have seen Catlin’s paintings a hundred times, in books and on the walls of other museums. But now for the first time, I can see this necklace made from the enormous claws of a grizzly bear almost lost in the layers of robes, beads, gorgets, medals and face paint. It is a hundred years, several language groups and thousands of miles away from the tiny delicate teeth of the necklace I have just left around the corner. I can see it is the same human mind that fashioned them both, that chose this material and this form to adorn the neck. And it is the same human mind looking through my eyes at these ornaments and paintings, rattles and clubs, and finding them beautiful.

— November 2008-January 2012