Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2018 / No.17 i Native American Art Magazine

Museum of Indian Arts & Culture awarded $460,000 SANTA FE, NM The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a $460,000 grant to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture to support the redesign and reinstallation of MIAC’s permanent exhibition Here, Now and Always. The visual narrative tells the story of the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest through rarely-before-seen items from the museum’s collection, and includes 800 of the 75,000 objects in the museum’s collection. The exhibition goes on view in 2020. Orlando Dugi selected for Phoenix Fashion Week bootcamp PHOENIX, AZ Phoenix Fashion Week announced Orlando Dugi to participate in the Emerging Designer Bootcamp leading up to the premier showcase at Talking Stick Resort. One winner will walk away with a $10,000 prize. Dugi will launch his spring/summer 2019…

DENVER, CO In Denver Art Museum’s cross-departmental exhibition Stampede, visitors are invited to discover and consider the role of animals in art, and Eyes On: Julie Buffalohead, on view in the museum’s Logan Gallery, is a natural complement. “Julie uses animals to illustrate political and social commentary,” says Denene De Quintal, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow in American Indian Art at Denver Art Museum. “She’s an amazing artist, and it’s great to see people gravitate to her paintings in the gallery. People really relate to them, and conceptualize what the works mean in their own ways. They allow viewers to come to their own conclusions.” This is the first major exhibition for the Ponca artist after a nearly decade-long break from painting. “The starting point was that I wanted…

Native American artists received international accolades well before they gained widespread recognition in their country of origin. On Sunday, August 14, 1954, in the presence of thousands of spectators at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial and via live broadcasts over Voice of America, French consul Paul Coze officially bestowed the Palmes académiques on 12 Pueblo, Navajo and Apache artists. This prestigious award, one of the highest French decorations, was created in 1808 by Napoleon to recognize the meritorious contributions of educators and artists in the promotion of culture and civilization. Coze, after first greeting the honorees in Navajo, announced: “It is a pleasure, on my part, to represent my government in recognizing the artistic achievement of the Indians of America.” Former Santa Fe Indian School teacher Dorothy Dunn, who was…

SANTA FE, NM On the corner of Lincoln Avenue and San Francisco Street, right there on the southwest corner of the Santa Fe Plaza, there’s a spot where you can stand that has an awe-inspiring view. Down San Francisco is a nearly perfect view to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Look to the northeast and you can see the Palace of the Governors through the trees and past the obelisk monument. But the kicker is looking up Lincoln toward the federal court house. Lincoln rises gradually as it moves away from the Plaza, and if it’s the third weekend in August not an inch of pavement can be seen in that quarter mile as tens of thousands of people browse booths that line either side of the…

ALBUQUERQUE, NM The Great Southwestern Antique Show celebrated its 20th year of showcasing valuable and historic artwork and artifacts from more than 150 dealers across the country, making for a truly memorable experience. The 2018 show, which ran August 3 through 5, displayed an eclectic mix of fine art, ethnographic art, textiles, and an expansive collection of Navajo weavings, Pueblo pottery, Plains beadwork and jewelry, among other art forms. A crowd-pleaser this year was the special exhibit Fashionistas of the Frontera, which showcased striking New Mexico women’s costumes, jewelry, shoes and accessories, dating from the late 1800s to the early 20th century. The charity Sneak Preview on August 3 raised approximately $12,000 to benefit New Mexico PBS arts programming. “We are most proud of the monies we raise each year…

DENVER, CO On November 10, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers will host its next Arts of the American West sale, featuring an array of Native American and Western art that will total approximately 500 to 600 lots. Included in that will be 60 items from the Estate of Steve and Peggy Fossett. People will recognize Steve’s name as he was a businessman and modern-day adventurer. In 2002 he became the first person to circumnavigate the world solo in a balloon without stopping or having to refuel, and he set other records as a balloonist, sailor and fixed-wing aircraft pilot. The Fossett items that will cross the block in the Arts of the American West sale will come from the couple’s Beaver Creek, Colorado, home. According to Rachel Enright, the consignment manager of…

Native American art, when shown at a museum, tends to land in ethnographic galleries, or galleries devoted to indigenous people from around the world, including areas curated with Aboriginal, African and Asian materials. Some art museums don’t show Native American materials at all, instead opting for the local natural history museum to lead that charge. The American galleries, the thought goes, are more for John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam and Andrew Wyeth, and less for Navajo weavings, beaded war shirts and Nampeyo pottery. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is taking a different approach October 4 when it unveils Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection. The exhibition will be proudly presented in the museum’s American Wing, an appropriate context given Native American’s sustained presence in North America…

ALBUQUERQUE, NM Albuquerque’s newest museum will showcase one of Native America’s oldest art forms. The Zuni Fetish Museum will display historic and contemporary examples of Zuni fetishes and explain their creation and the meaning behind them. This will be the first museum dedicated to a single Native American art form. For the Zuni, fetish carvings are part of their religious practices. For collectors, they are talismans, designed to bring certain blessings to the possessor. For example: bear fetishes bring the gift of health; mountain lions draw strength and protect travelers; and frogs and turtles help bring the greatest blessing in the arid Southwest, rain. A primary goal of the museum is to provide Zuni artists the chance to view carvings by both their ancestors and their contemporaries. The museum will…

TAOS, NM Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953) visited the Southwest in 1883 and returned to visit Taos in 1893. Studying at the Académie Julian in Paris he met Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960) and Bert Geer Phillips (1868-1956). He also met Eanger Irving Couse (1866-1936). Sharp’s tales of the West inspired Blumenschein and Phillips to tour the area. When a wagon wheel broke outside of Taos, Blumenschein took it into town on horseback to be repaired. He wrote, “No artist had ever recorded the New Mexico I was now seeing. No writer had ever written down the smell of this air or the feel of that morning’s sky. I was receiving…the first great unforgettable inspiration of my life.” He decided to settle there and was soon joined by a group of fellow…

When they were living in Denver, Karla and Jean-Michel Rendu would take advantage of any opportunity to drive down to Santa Fe. “We’d park the car, we wouldn’t even unpack and we’d head right downtown for the shops and galleries.” Today they have retired in Santa Fe on one of those out of the way dirt streets in a part of town that, between 1912 and World War II, was a center of creativity in art and literature. Their home was a mecca but by the time they discovered it, it was long past its prime, with plants growing through the walls and an unsightly spa room added to the rear. “It was a total wreck,” Karla says, “but it was the only house available in the area we wanted…

TUCSON, AZ In Diné tradition, the umbilical cord is buried in the earth to connect the child to the earth and to the ancestors. Shonto Begay’s connection to the earth deepened as he tended goats and watched the subtle changes in nature, both tangible and intangible. He says, “The land is quiet and sacred, but its stories are always audible. Anyone can pass into it—into a kinship with it. With patient eyes and quiet mouth we see more from that communication.” He began to draw what he saw and felt. Drawing and creating worlds saved him after he was spirited away to a government boarding school, set up to erase all traces of children’s Native heritage. He was rounded up with other boys, without their parents’ knowledge, and was given…

CINCINNATI, OH From prehistoric items to contemporary artwork, Cowan’s Auctions’ September 21 American Indian & Western Art sale features items that will appeal to a breadth of collectors. Featured will be beadwork, textiles, pottery, paintings and sculpture, as well as the final pieces from the Collection of Jan Sorgenfrei. Another standout of the sale will be the Southwestern Art & Pottery Collection of William H. Saunders, M.D., and Putzi Saunders. “Their collection consists of both 19th-century and contemporary art,” says Danica Farnand, Cowan’s director of American Indian art. “Many of the contemporary works were Indian Market award winners. Richard Ebelacker, Al Qoyawayma, Nathan Youngblood and Tammy Garcia, are some of the artists.” The expected top lot of the sale, and from the Saunders collection, is a rare Pueblo painted buffalo…

In 1958, Oscar Howe submitted a painting to the Philbrook Indian Annual to be judged by a panel of his peers. The piece was roundly rejected, deemed too abstract to be Native art. In response, Howe wrote a letter to the jurors that has resounded throughout the subsequent decades, saying, “Who ever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian art indeed…Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and only the White Man knows what is best for him?” A new, comprehensive exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art titled Art for a…

SEATTLE, WA The suburban enclave where James Johnson lives is quiet and cookie-cutter, lined with townhome upon identical townhome bathed in hues of beiges and tans in a corner of Gilbert, Arizona. It isn’t the sort of neighborhood in the metro Phoenix desert where one would expect to find a creative studio cranking out work rooted in Indigenous Alaska; pieces carved of mighty red and yellow cedar trees from the temperate rainforest and adorned in paintings of seafaring animals like salmon, whale and otter. But it became that place when, 12 years ago, Johnson packed up and moved from the cold so that he could help take care of his ailing mother. Just like the neighborhood outside, Johnson’s living space and studio garage are neat and organized. Silent. His home…

SANTA FE, NM While the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market actually only takes place on the third weekend of August, for two days, the entire month of August is filled with both historic and contemporary Native art activities and events. Three of these that stand out over everything else are the Objects of Art Santa Fe, the Antique American Indian Art Show and Whitehawk Antique Indian & Ethnographic Art Show. All three bring dealers from across the country to Santa Fe, with booths filled with everything from old pawn jewelry to historic Navajo textiles to Maynard Dixon paintings. It’s pure delight for art lovers. This year’s shows saw record attendance and major sales. The Antique American Indian Art Show, which opened Tuesday night, August 14, celebrated its fifth birthday by…

LOS ANGELES, CA The American Indian Arts Marketplace, hosted by the Autry Museum of the American West, takes place this year on Saturday and Sunday, November 10 to 11. The largest Native art fair in Southern California, this event showcases 200 prominent Native American artists representing more than 40 tribes, and includes artwork from categories like sculpture, pottery, beadwork, basketry, photography, paintings, jewelry, textiles, wood carvings, mixed media and more. The marketplace itself is vast, and casual attendees and avid collectors alike can browse works from some of the most renowned artists in the American Indian art community. In addition, be sure not to miss other activities going on over the weekend, including poetry readings, artist demonstrations and cultural performances. “We view our market as a place where the non-Native…

DALLAS, TX Etahdleuh Doanmoe (Hunting Boy) is considered to be a master of ledger art, with his drawings of his time in captivity at Fort Marion by the U.S. Army being among the most powerful. During Heritage Auctions’ June 26 sale of ethnographic art, a bound book of 33 images by the Kiowa artist crossed the block, as well as two additional pieces. The book, which had a presale estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, sold to an in-house buyer for $396,500, becoming the top lot of the sale, which generated more than $1 million. “The book itself was featured in the catalog with an essay written by Mike Cowdrey. Mike explained what was happening in each of the 33 drawings,” says Delia Sullivan, Heritage’s senior specialist of ethnographic art. “He…