I love that Little Bear... favorite thing of First Thursday.

It's an interesting subject. My special area of art interest, Australian Aboriginal art, was essentially created out of whole cloth in the early seventies, when Geoffrey Bardon gave some tribespeople acrylic paint and canvas, and encouraged them to start thinking of how to use their cultural iconography. It was, and is still, a complex process of deciding what secrets and personal stories can be told by whom, to whom, and in what way. But they managed to create an art that has spread across the continent, and is the source of the most most vibrant visual expressions anywhere on earth. But the subject of what you're allowed to tell still exists. These "primitive" peoples have turned out to be spectacularly adept at negotiating the white way of handing art, both culturally and aesthetically, even though they do get ripped off often.

I'm not sure I can cope with the touristic aspects of a white girl from Seattle adopting the cultural behaviors of vaguely "African" (what kind of African?) peoples, but I'm probably just being rude.

ARE YOU TRYING TO ENSLAVE ME WITH A GIFT? I WILL TAKE THIS ART I WILL NOT LET IT BE GIFTED.