When Native American clothes, war clubs and masks are displayed in museums, they are usually grouped in categories drawn from anthropology and archaeology.
While this makes items easy to group together — by period, function or material from which they are made — it also makes their value as individual artworks hard to see.
In "Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art," which opens this Saturday, the Peabody Essex Museum has organized a show of indigenous artwork according to a concept common to many Native American cultures.
Shape-shifting describes a metamorphosis from human into animal form. In the context of this show, it focuses on Native American art as dynamic and various, constantly renewing its materials and messages.
"We've embraced this concept because we really want to invite and incite actual changes in the perception and appreciation of Native American art and culture," said Lynda Hartigan, the James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes chief curator at the museum.
Shape-shifting is invoked by four themes through which visitors are asked to compare artists from different centuries, working in different media.
One theme, "changing," emphasizes the ways native artists have embraced or adapted to change, whether in their living conditions, the media they work in or their sense of tradition.
It includes such items as a cape made by an Unangax woman from the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, a garment that was designed to be sold to Russian fur merchants who had forced her people to labor in settlements. The woman adapted a lightweight Unangan raincoat, traditionally made from animal skins and worn while hunting, to resemble the overcoats she had seen Russians wear.
The gallery also includes a video installation by contemporary conceptual artist Nicholas Galanin, an Alaskan of Tlingit and Aleut ancestry.
"Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan (We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care)," from 2006, presents two black and white videos, each five minutes long, in which a single dancer performs.
In one video, a break dancer in casual clothes performs to traditional Tlingit drumming and chanting, while in the second, a Tlingit dancer in native dress performs to a throbbing techno beat.
By contrasting performances that are mirror opposites, the videos draw attention to what is contained in a culture and the means by which it is contained.
The other themes the show asks audiences to consider are "locating," or notions of place, home and belonging; "knowing," which emphasizes the many different world views possessed by indigenous artists; and "voicing," which emphasizes the individuality of artists who are often presented as anonymous, or merely representative.
The show is framed by two works that, through sheer size, draw attention to the purely physical presence through which artworks communicate.
At the beginning, "Theatre de Cristal" by Kent Monkman, a Cree born in 1965, is a ceiling-high tepee made of strung beads that extend and amplify a crystal chandelier in its center. A parody of a Western movie projects on a bearskin rug on its floor.
The installation, where the synthetic and authentic are equally at home, asks the viewer to consider the history and associations from which ideas about Native Americans have been constructed.
Hanging from a ceiling at the end of the show, "Cetology," a whale skeleton more than 40 feet long, is made of white, plastic lawn chairs.
The skeleton draws a connection between the means of mass production through which some whale populations have been decimated, and by which marine parks and museums of natural history re-create experiences of nature for a mass audience.
The piece was created in 2002 by Brian Jungen of the Dunne-Ze Nation in British Columbia.
"He brings his Native American sensibility to his artwork," said Karen Kramer Russell, curator of Native American art and culture at Peabody Essex Museum.
The sculpture contains no overt references to indigenous themes or cultures, Russell said, but rather asks whether themes important to Native American artists are universal, and important to us all.
If you go
What: "Shapeshifting, Transformations in Native American Art"
Where: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem
When: Saturday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, April 29
More information: 866-745-1876, www.pem.org
