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History and the Art Museum: An Exhibition Review

identifying the particular style and quality of an object. In the 196os, scholars increasingly turned to an interdisciplinary approach, seeking to understand objects in light of historical events. Most clearly demonstrated by John Kirk's American Chairs, the examination and analysis of colonial artifacts began to focus on the concept of regionalism.1 Furniture, architecture, gravestones, ironwork, silver, and other locally produced objects were explained as the product of a regional aesthetic that grew out of particular historical circumstances. Even the preference for imported ceramics, glass, and textiles was attributed to a regional consciousness. The intellectual underpinning for many regional studies of material culture has been the linguistic work of Hans Kurath.2 Drawing from his divisions of regional dialects, decorative arts scholars have sought corresponding parallels in material expression as well as political, religious, and literary endeavors. Such an approach assumes that all varieties of cultural expression are interrelated; however, few decorative arts scholars have questioned this assumption and therefore looked critically at the regional paradigm. An alternative model of culture, one that accepts diversity within a specific area, is more difficult to uncover and explain. The difference between a monolithic regional model of study and a more dynamic one is best understood by the different uses of regionalism. The former uses regionalism as an end unto itself. A scholar using this approach looks for a set of similar or related things to prove the desired presence of regionalism. The more dynamic model uses regionalism as a way of organizing research material and is not primarily intended to discover regional attitudes. In fact, it might reveal that different groups of people had different preferences depending on the period of analysis, the particular type of object, or the material of which it was made. Two recent exhibitions demonstrate well the differences in the use of regionalism. "New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century," the 1982 exhibition and its accompanying catalogue produced by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, used regionalism as the arena of analysis but found a rich and varied cultural pattern. "New England Begins" identified various cultural systemsEuropean, London, regional English, transplanted English, and native American-and demonstrated with material evidence how they interacted in sevEdward S. Cooke, Jr., is assistant curator of American decorative arts and sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.