Today we went to the Heard Museum, the quintessential Native American art and culture museum in the Southwest, possibly in America. It began in 1929 as the personal collection of Dwight B. and Maie Bartlett Heard in their own home. It has grown to over 40,000 items including a library and archive of over 34,000 volumes. There is also a shop, a coffee house and a cafe. The museum has over 130,000 square feet of gallery, classroom, sculpture gardens and performance space. To say that it is a marvelous collection is an understatement.
It is an art museum with major collections of jewelry, pottery, basketry, rugs, and katsina dolls spotlighting both the past and current styles. Unfortunately, I can get potteried and basketed out pretty fast and wasn’t sure if I wanted to look at 130,000 square feet of baskets and pottery. Just as a precaution, I had a Plan B, several other ideas for the afternoon if we got museumed out on baskets and pottery. Not to fear, however. We arrived at 10:00 in time for the first tour and didn’t leave until 4:30 when we made a futile attempt to beat the 5:00 rush. We did take 30 minutes to eat a lunch but thoroughly enjoyed our time there.
One of the reasons that we enjoyed it so much was that there were lots of stories about the artists and the tribes. We watched a short film about a small group of one tribe which lives at the bottom of the Colorado River, just down from the Grand Canyon NP. They talked about the feeling of community that they have living so far away from civilization.
NATIVE AMERICAN ART
The mudeum certainly held our interest. We actually began with two tours, one of the general collection and one highlighting the other exhibits. Good move because we learned a lot about the collections that you can’t learn by just touring and reading the information provided. For example, one of the best known of Native American Jewelry artists, Charles Loloma, began as a potter and painter but found his true passion in jewelry. He used outside influences and materials other than the traditional silver and turquoise such as ivory, gold, pearls, wood, and diamonds. Thus he was rejected by many museums and shows in America because he was not ‘Indian enough.’
He finally went abroad to find his clients, gained his fame and then returned to America. Now he is one of the most celebrated of Native American artists. Here is one of his bracelets. He has a design on the outside of course but also has a design on the inside in turquoise, towards the wearer, so the wearer can have some beauty also.
Here is one of the most stunning pieces in the Museum, the Art Fence, a stylized version of the very common ocotillo fence which you can find throughout this Southwest.
The Heard’s goal is to acquire the best of the best of Native American art in baskets,
pottery (by the way, the second one is actually black ink on a white clay surface),
jewelry(the silver bracelet is an overlay design where by the first layer of sterling silver is blackened and a second layer with the design in it is overlaid on the first blackened layer),
and rugs.
KATSINAS
Our guide led us through several areas with these items and then turned a corner and introduced us to the ‘WOW’ room, the room with hundreds of Katsina dolls. Now, how can I explain what a Katsina doll is? Let me start with what Katsinas are and even that explanation is a bit difficult: they are masked dancers in pueblo villages which represent the spirits, intermediaries between man and the gods.
The Hopi Katsinas live on the San Francisco Peaks of Northern Arizona near Flagstaff or on other peaks for six months of the year and in the villages of the tribe from late February to July. During the time they are in the villages they appear in dances. The dancers are, of course, Hopi men wearing masks and impersonating the spirits. Here is a picture of one of these dancers.
Many of the dances are seen only by the Hopis or their invited guests, very seldom do outsiders get to see them. In fact, some of the dances are so sacred that no one outside the tribe can visit them. In the Hubble Trading Post, which we visited in October, there were some pictures of these dances collected by Hubble but we were asked not to take pictures of these pictures, at the behest of the Hopis.
The dolls themselves are representations of these spirits and are made by Hopi fathers and uncles to give to their daughters or nieces. They are made of cottonwood tree roots and are objects to be treasured and hung on the walls of the pueblos to be a constant reminder of the Katsinas.
That is a very brief description of Katsinas. But here are several hundred of them. Note how intricately painted and designed they are. Below is a winged turkey with a mask. True works of art.
BOARDING SCHOOLS
Leaving the art side of the museum, we then ventured upstairs into a special exhibit about the Indian Boarding Schools which existed from the late 1800’s to the 1980’s and especially the Carlisle School, a boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The goal was assimilation of the Indian into White culture. Kids were taken from their homes, put on trains and shipped off to schools in Arizona, California and other states even as far away as PA. When they arrived, their hair was cut (horrifyingly, to an Indian, catting hair meant that someone had died), their clothes were replaced, they were given ‘white’ names and their ‘new’ life began. What a wrenching experience. Here is a picture of several of these students. Note that there are no smiles on their faces.
At Carlisle the commanding officer, Captain Richard Pratt ran the school as a military school with uniforms, marching, drills, eating on schedule in messes etc. 5 year old kids had to do this. Some of these kids didn’t see their parents or their homes for 5 or 6 years.
In more recent decades the boarding school program has been re-evaluated and the psychological damage to the children who went through it of the programs has been recognized.
On the other hand, I’m sure most of you have heard of Jim Thorpe who was one of the students at Carlisle. He is famous for winning the Olympic gold medals in 1912 for the pentathlon and decathlon. He attended Carlisle and played football under Glenn ‘Pop” Warner, one of the most influential coaches in early American football history.
The story is told that he was walking past some track and field athletes at the school and beat the high jumpers with a jump of 5’9” in his street clothes. They convinced him to join the track and field team where he competed but he also competed in lacrosse and - get this - ballroom dancing. He even won the 1912 inter-collegiate ballroom dancing championship. Can you believe that?
He then convinced Warner to let him play football and with him the team had a 27-6 record in 1912.
The boarding school exhibit was very moving but what made it even more poignant was that they had speakers interspersed throughout the exhibit with voices of students recounting their experiences at the schools.
BOLO TIES
Another exhibit that we enjoyed was the bolo tie exhibit. Now, how many of you know that the bolo tie is the official state neckwear of Arizona? How many of you ever thought that a state would have an official neckwear? Sure enough, that’s all true. Here are some examples of bolo ties.
My word, who’s this cute guy in a bolo tie? As a bit of disclosure here, this is a picture of our 7th grade class and I am the one in the lower left. Yes, Gary and I have known each other since 7th grade.
Along with the art at the museum were some social themes. Here are a few of them.
Some of the Native American reservations are in the middle of cities on prime development land and could sell this land for a small fortune. However, they would then have no homeland, a ‘home’ which has been theirs for centuries.
As the young leave the reservations for better paying jobs, there are fewer and fewer who can speak the native tongue, can practice the native arts and know the native ways. There are deliberate movements now to teach these to the younger generations rather than leaving it to chance that they learn these.
We know all about the Navajo CodeTalkers during WWII and their contributions to winning the war in the Pacific. But, the question is, why would they fight so hard for a country which had treated them so poorly? Well, remember, it WAS their country, long before it was America. We were surprised to learn that their contribution to the war effort was not revealed until 1968. Why? Possibly because their Navajo language was being kept in reserve for another war. Here is a picture of an American flag rug. Obviously not a rug for the floor but a rug to be hung on a wall as a work of art.
And, of course the struggles of the Native Americans to hold on to their lands, their homes and their culture in the face of the relentless movement of America settlers west was emphasized again and again.
Excellent museum which combines both great art along with social and historical themes. We thoroughly enjoyed our time here.
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