The role of museums in creating national and local cultural and political identities. This detailed examination focuses on the artists and museums of Oaxaca, Mexico: a city and province celebrated worldwide by tourists, collectors, and art historians for its polished black pottery, colorful carvings of animals, fine textiles, world class museums and galleries, archaeology, and famous contemporary artists. Selma Holo looks in particular at how individuals and groups at national, regional, and local levels use museums to advance a particular view of history and identity. She clearly explains the way Mexico"s pre-Columbian past has been represented, who has contested it, who holds the rights to Oaxaca"s archaeological treasures, who has the authority to narrate the country"s cultural history, who creates new museums and new mythologies about national and local identity, and many other intriguing subjects. 30 b/w illustrations.