Interwoven: Native Californian Basketry Arts from the Missions Forward

Drawn primarily from mission collections, Interwoven presents over 50 baskets created by Native American Californians, including the world-renowned Chumash and Pomo weavers. With a focus on baskets made during the Mission era (1769-1830s) to the early 20th century, Interwoven includes functional baskets such as parching trays and cradleboards as well as baskets made exclusively for trade with Europeans, all demonstrating exemplary basketry arts. This remarkable collection represents numerous tribal traditions and reveals the complex artistic sensibilities, inventiveness and ingenuity of Native weavers working with natural materials. Baskets tell a remarkable story of cultural continuity and survival despite conquest, environmental interruptions, suppressive policies and huge population loss. The weavers’ knowledge of the environment and their exemplary artistry have been passed from generation to generation despite these historic and cultural intrusions.

Visit the USF website.

Photos courtesy of the University of San Francisco

Time Exposures: Picturing a History of Isleta Pueblo in the 19th Century

An exhibition currently at the Heard Museum looks at the history of New Mexico's Isleta Pueblo from the residents’ perspective, particularly focusing on the lasting effects of nineteenth-century events on their lives today. Time Exposures: Picturing a History of Isleta Pueblo in the 19th Century uses historic photographs and a variety of other media to tell the story of the pueblo and its evolution. It opens with a look at the cycle of the traditional year as it was observed in the mid-nineteenth century and then traces the arrival of the Americans, the ways this influx disrupted the Isleta way of life, and the cultural adaptations the Isleta residents were forced to make over time. Time Exposures will be on view until September 27, 2015.

For more information, visit the exhibition's official website.

View of San Augustine Mission Church  -  Unknown photographer, 1880

Ambrosio Abeita, photographed by A.Z. Shindler, 1868

Images courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution and Maxwell Museum of Anthropology

The 31st annual Marin Show: Art of The Americas

Open to the public on February 21–22, The Marin Show: Art of the Americas will celebrate its thirty-first year as the world’s leading show specializing in the art and culture of indigenous peoples from North, Central, and South America. Featuring more than 100 dealers, this event showcases a unique combination of antique Native American, Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, and contemporary American Indian art that attracts top dealers, passionate collectors, artists, and the culture-curious from across the world. 

For more information, visit the event's official website.

Turquoise, Water, Sky

The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe has opened a new long-term exhibition that draws on its collection of turquoise jewelry and related artifacts. Titled Turquoise, Water, Sky: The Stone and Its Meaning, it explores the importance of this delicately colored stone to the peoples of the American Southwest. While we generally associate it with jewelry, turquoise also has long had ritual importance and significant trade implications. Even its geology is addressed in this comprehensive survey.

View the official website.

Cuff by Angie Reano Owen

Encounters along the Missouri River: The 1858 Sketchbooks of Charles Wimar

An installation at the St. Louis Art Museum features the contents of two sketchbooks Wimar filled with drawings during his first trip up the Missouri. Encounters along the Missouri River: The 1858 Sketchbooks of Charles Wimar features the books’ small leaves, most with multiple images accurately rendered in pencil and carefully notated with names. These augmented photographs he took (now lost) and art objects he collected, all in an effort to add greater veracity to his paintings. On view until January 19, 2014.

View the SLAM website.

Curtis Reframed: The Arizona Portfolios

In the early decades of the 20th century, famed photographer of the American West Edward S. Curtis created and published a vast photographic record of North American Indians. These iconic images have generated controversy even as they have fascinated generations of viewers. Photogravures from the permanent collections of the Arizona State Museum and examples of the copper plates from the collections of the Center for Creative Photography are currently on view at the ASM in Curtis Reframed: The Arizona Portfolios, an exhibition exploring Curtis’s work with thirteen Arizona tribes from 1903 to 1928. Twenty images will be exhibited at one time, then rotated after six months, for a total of sixty over the life of the exhibit.

Information and images courtesy of the Arizona State Museum

Native American Art Sale at Bonhams

Bonhams will present a sale of fine Native American art and artifacts in San Francisco on December 9. The lots will include a range of works from traditional cultures across North America, one of the major highlights of which is an exquisite Okvik ivory head (pictured below).

View the online catalogue.

Ivory head  -  Okvik culture, Alaska  -  200 BCE–100 CE

Image courtesy of Bonhams

Dena'inaq' Huch'ulyeshi: The Dena'ina Way of Living

Dena'inaq' Huch'ulyeshi: The Dena'ina Way of Living is the first major exhibition ever presented about the Dena'ina Athabascan people, who are largely unknown even in their ancestral homeland of Alaska. Recently opened at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, this groundbreaking show sheds important light on the Dena'ina culture through film, life-size recreations, images, hands-on learning stations, audio and more than 160 artifacts on loan from museums across Europe and North America.

View the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art

Identity and Inspiration

Identity & Inspiration, currently on view at the Philbrook Museum of Art, features nearly 200 objects that reflect the motivations influencing the artists’ creative processes, from the desire to preserve tribal traditions to incorporating new materials and producing work for new audiences. Other influences include the challenge to push boundaries by generating innovative forms and designs, and incorporating movements like Pop Art and even social commentary in their pieces. Throughout the exhibition of exceptional works of art, the focus is on the individual artists who are inspired by a various sources, and who in turn inspire us through their creativity and virtuosity.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Images and information courtesy of the Philbrook Museum of Art

Red, White and Bold: Masterworks of Navajo Design, 1840-1870

On view now at the Denver Art Museum,  Red, White and Bold: Masterworks of Navajo Design, 1840-1870 presents about fifty of the greatest examples of Navajo textile design. Drawing from the DAM collections, other museums, and private collections, this exhibition will surprise and delight museum visitors with the bold use of color and sophisticated design sensibilities. Showing works created as prestige shoulder blankets, this exhibition will explore the designer’s eye in pattern development and layout—and especially highlight the effect the textile would have as it was worn draped around a human form to enhance the stature and visibility of the wearer.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Poncho, ca. 1850

Installation view

Images courtesy of the Denver Art Museum

Visiting with the Ancestors

What happens when museum objects go home for a visit? The Blackfoot shirts at Pitt Rivers Museum, collected in 1841, express Blackfoot culture and beliefs. In 2010, Pitt Rivers staff took them home to Canada for a visit so that contemporary Blackfoot people could learn from them and strengthen cultural knowledge and identity. This small exhibition includes three of the shirts and quotes and photographs from the reunions with Blackfoot people.

View the exhibition's official website.

Shirt with war honors  -  First half of 19th century

Image courtesy of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Les fils de l'oiseau-tonnerre

The Native American tribes dwelling on the Eastern coasts of North America were the first peoples on that continent to encounter European explorers at the end of the fifteenth century. They are often associated with images of tipis, totem poles and feathered headgear, but these images are misleading. Les fils de l'oiseau-tonnerre, a new exhibition at the Musée du Nouveau Monde in La Rochelle, France, explores the cultural differences between the tribes that lived in the area between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. With more than a hundred objects from private and public collections, the exhibition explains how and where a wide variety of peoples lived, their religious concepts, and their interactions with other tribes as well as with Europeans. Les fils de l'oiseau-tonnerre is the first of a series of five installations focusing on Native American tribes, from East to West, that will be shown in the Museum in the coming years.

For more information, visit the exhibition's official website.

Native American Art Auction at Bonhams

On June 3, Bonhams and Butterfields of San Francisco will hold a large sale of fine antiques and artifacts from indigenous tribes across North America.  Comprising over 5,000 lots, the assemblage will offer Southwest ceramics and carvings, Eskimo ritual items, and much more. 

For more information, view the online catalogue.

Polychrome storage jar - Hopi

Chief's blanket  -  Navajo

Transformation mask - Yup'ik

Information and images courtesy of Bonhams

The American Indian: Art and Culture between Myth and Reality

This winter, De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam is presenting an exhibition showcasing Native American artistic traditions. Exploring seven different geographical regions, the exhibition paints a picture of the rich and diverse arts and cultures of North American peoples. More than two hundred works of art and artefacts will transport visitors to the prairies of the Midwest, the plains around the Great Lakes, the shores of California, Canada’s west coast, and the homes of the Navajo and the Inuit. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam

They Wove for Horses: Diné Saddle Blankets

It is no secret that the Navajo (who call themselves the Diné) excelled at weaving. While most of their textiles were produced for trade, they had a strong tradition of producing saddle blankets for their own horses. These weavings span the duration of Navajo weaving from the first half of the nineteenth century to the present. The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture is currently presenting They Wove for Horses: Diné Saddle Blankets, an exhibition that examines innovation and continuity in this quiet but important indigenous tradition. It also looks at the variety of weaving techniques employed as well as the range of yarns from which these blankets were formed.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe

La Nuova Frontiera

Through December 9, the Palazzo Pitti of Florence presents The New Frontier. History and Culture of the Native Americans, a major exhibition highlighting works from the collections of the Gilcrease Museum of Oklahoma. Featuring tribal objects as well as American paintings and photographs, the show is being held as part of the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci.

Visit the exhibiton's official website.

Images courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum and Palazzo Pitti

A Song for the Horse Nation

Opening on October 29 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC is the major traveling exhibition A Song for the Horse Nation, which presents the epic story of the influence of horses on the indigenous cultures of North America. Through an array of 122 historic objects, artwork, photographs, songs and personal accounts, the exhibition traces the changes horses brought to travel, hunting, and war, and the ways in which Native American tribes celebrated generosity, exhibited bravery, and conducted ceremonies.

This exhibition first opened at the museum's George Gustav Heye Center in New York on November 14, 2009 and was on display until July 10, 2011. The Washington version doubles its exhibition space to 9,500 square feet and features fifteen new objects, including a hand-painted, nineteenth-century Sioux tipi depicting battle and horse raiding scenes.

View the exhibition's official website.

Horse mask  -  Blackfeet, Montana  -  ca. 1830s

Horse mask  -  Lakota, South or North Dakota  -  ca. 1860s

Painted hide robe  -  Blackfeet, Montana  -  Mid-1800s

Sash heddle  -  Ho-Chunk, Nebraska  -  ca. 1862

Shield with cover  -  Comanche, Oklahoma  -  ca. 1875

Quilled bag  -  Lakota, South or North Dakota  -  ca. 1870s

Information and images courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Katsina in Hopi Life

On view until June 23, 2013 at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles is Katsina in Hopi Life, featuring remarkable katsina (kachina) dolls from the Autry's Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection.  Katsinam (the plural form of katsina) are spiritual beings who represent all aspects of life and travel to be with the Hopi people of Arizona six months of the year.  Told from the Hopi perspective, this exhibition shares the unique relationship the Hopi have with the katsinam, focusing on the values, lessons, and encouraging messages learned from them.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Pusukíntaqa-Kooyemsi  -  Drummer-Mudhead Katsina  -  Hopi, Clayton Kaniatobe  -  2007

Patang  -  Squash Katsina  -  Hopi, R. Phillips  -  1990s

Pangwu  -  Mountain Sheep Katsina  -  Hopi  -  1960s

Kooyemsi  -  Mudhead Katsina  -  Hopi, Duane Tawahongva  -  Circa 1999

Kòoninkatsina  -  Havasupai Katsina  -  Hopi  -  1900s

Töövkatsina  -  Antelope Katsina  -  Hopi  -  Circa 1930

Hemiskatsina  -  Hopi, Kayquopieuh  -  Circa 1990

Information and images courtesy of the Autry National Center