From the Sanatorium to the Museum: The Circulation of Objects of Rehabilitation, 1930-1960

This paper traces the circulation of an object of rehabilitation: a loom-woven beaded band with a repeating pattern of yellow and purple stars and diamonds on a black background. It was made by a Chippewa (Ojibwe) patient at the Ah-Gwah-Ching tuberculosis (TB) sanatorium in Minnesota (also known as the Walker Sanatorium). The beaded band was then given to Beatrice Blackwood of the Pitt Rivers Museum by the Superintendent of the occupational therapy department of the sanatorium when she visited the region on a collecting trip in 1939. The belt is currently part of the permanent collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, but is not on display. Alongside the biography of this object, I analyze the role of women and women’s organizations in the circulation of Indigenous arts and crafts from TB hospital occupational therapy programs to museum collections in North America and beyond. Women and women’s organizations staffed hospitals and museums, and served as points of connections between them. Women who worked as nurses or occupational therapists received gifts from patients, and later donated them to museums; women worked at hospital gift shops and acquired objects there; Beatrice Blackwood and other women like her collected objects for museum or private collections and were involved in the production of knowledge about Indigenous people in North America. Objects of rehabilitation in circulation give insight into the role of women in teaching handicrafts as occupational therapy, producing markets for art and craft, and creating and curating knowledge about indigenous patients.