Molly H. Mullin begins her study of the "social construction of value in relation to the patronage of American Indian art in New Mexico from the early twentieth century to the present day" (p. 3) with a story. It concerns Amelia and Martha White, wealthy sisters from the East who moved to Santa Fe in 1923. They are said to have paused there on a cross-country road trip to have their hair done, and impulsively purchased property that eventually was bequeathed to the School of American Research, a scholarly institution. As Mullin points out, the story is really about "common perceptions of relationships between women and history," (p. 11) in which significant historical results achieved by women are perceived as a consequence of "feminine" whim rather than deliberate intent. Even more interesting is that the White sisters did indeed settle in Santa Fe based upon "feminine" motives: those of Bryn Mawr-educated advocates of women’s rights who were seeking a place other than a man’s home where they could make a difference. They went in search of an America where their roles were not pre-scripted, and their quest for a meaningful personal identity, through their "discovery" and promotion of New Mexico as a site of authentic national identity, ultimately helped to redefine Americanness itself.

In addition to offering liberation, the America that the White sisters were looking for also offered greater "authenticity" than the rest of the increasingly homogenized, and therefore culturally debased, nation. Greater tourist travel, made possible by mass production of automobiles (the very vehicle that took the Whites to New Mexico), had opened many previously inaccessible areas to the public. However, sophisticated travelers such as the Whites, or their classmate, journalist Elizabeth Sergeant, connected the new world to the old by describing Southwestern light as "Greek" or a village as having "a sort of ascetic pathos that suggests Palestine" (p. 52). Such allusions to places traditionally associated with "spiritual inspiration and elite knowledge" (p. 51) asserted both Sergeant’s cultural authority and the authority of the Southwest as a source of unique "American" culture – a claim that was bolstered by archaeological and anthropological investigations of American Indian civilizations during the 1920s.

American Indians had inhabited for millennia the area that became the state of New Mexico in 1912, but although they became early subjects of interest to ethnographers, their creative activities and products began to achieve wide visibility outside the region only in the early twentieth century. Eastern artists had been some of the first outsiders to appreciate the area, among them Edward S. Curtis, who photographed Indians there in 1903, and painters such as John Sloan, Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, and Andrew Dasburg, who had visited or settled in Santa Fe and Taos by 1920. Many of these artists prized Indian art, but ongoing financial support and the creation of a market for Native artworks became a project of wealthy newcomers such as the White sisters. Marketing Indian art, as Mullin points out, "provided a means by which patrons could actively attempt to influence ‘the public taste,’ expressions of cultural and regional difference, and ultimately the national identity" (p. 96). The White sisters and others organized regular, quality-controlled Indian Markets, complete with (non-Indian) judges and prizes, and even opened a store that sold Indian arts in New York City. Their aim was not only to encourage Indian artists and to preserve traditional forms and styles, but also to promote Indian art as "art, not ethnology" (p.91). Along with artists such as John Sloan, they were among the organizers of the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts that opened at the Grand Central Art Galleries in 1931, and was hailed as the "first truly American art exposition" (ibid.).

The Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts marked the first time that Eastern art critics and viewers had an opportunity to experience Southwestern art in depth, but it also marked the culmination of a process, begun earlier in the century, of redefining personal and national identity through the redefinition of the value of Indian art. It is this process that is naturally of greater interest to Molly Mullin, who is an anthropologist. She provides extensive biographical information about individuals, such as the White sisters, who were involved in the process, and she brings the story into the present through interviews with survivors and visits to contemporary Indian Markets. She explicates the assumptions that led outsiders to assume that they had the authority to judge and market Indian culture, but she also tests her own assumption that this colonization was inherently unwelcome as well as her own privileging of some of the White sisters’ activities over others (in an engaging Epilogue called "In the Dog Cemetery"). This highly readable and informative book thus provides personal as well as political and theoretical perspectives on important questions of value and culture in the formation of Americans and concepts of American identity.

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