Acknowledgments

Townsend, Richard F.

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Acknowledgments

Richard F. Townsend (Editor)

Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest

This book and the exhibition it represents belong to an ongoing series at the Art Institute of Chicago concerning the art, architecture, and ritual geography of ancient Indian traditions in the Americas. The remarkable ceramic art of Casas Grandes, produced between A.D. 1280 and 1450 in desert communities of Chihuahua, Mexico, and adjacent parts of southern New Mexico, Arizona, and far southwestern Texas, has remained almost unknown and unexplained in terms of its significance in the …

Author

Richard F. Townsend (Editor)

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00030.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14381

Acknowledgments

This book and the exhibition it represents belong to an ongoing series at the Art Institute of Chicago concerning the art, architecture, and ritual geography of ancient Indian traditions in the Americas. The remarkable ceramic art of Casas Grandes, produced between A.D. 1280 and 1450 in desert communities of Chihuahua, Mexico, and adjacent parts of southern New Mexico, Arizona, and far southwestern Texas, has remained almost unknown and unexplained in terms of its significance in the continuous Southwestern tradition of design and decoration that leads back from the present over two thousand years to preceramic basketry and even to Archaic-era pictographic imagery of three thousand five hundred years ago. Our approach to the present selection of Casas Grandes masterpieces is to examine their form and symbolism in the context of this long sequence of images, comparing and contrasting the vessels with other outstanding examples from the series of Southwestern styles. The aim is not simply to “fill in the blank,” but to probe for answers concerning the character of artistic and cultural synthesis and invention in this ancient tradition, and the transmission and adaptation of basic ideas and images having to do with a religious charter—widely shared by Indian peoples in the Americas—linking the activities and structures of human society to the larger order of nature. In approaching these and related issues, we seek to portray the dynamic role of the visual arts in processes of cultural continuity and change. As this project has developed, the opportunity to see and study original works of the highest quality has been a vital, determining experience.

The writing and publication of a book of this kind and the organization of any exhibition are the result of a complex team process. The idea of Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest emerged over a dozen years ago in conversations with my highly discerning and knowledgeable friends Ed and Betty Harris, and with Ken Kokrda, an inveterate Southwestern traveler, photographer, and teacher of ceramics, and his wife, Christine; their deep appreciation of this “undiscovered” ceramic tradition was infectious and compelling. Visits to public and private pottery collections soon followed, including those of the generous Charles and Marjorie Benton, Nancy Florsheim, and Dennis and Janice Lyon, all of whom have been especially encouraging and forthcoming, deepening my understanding and appreciation of the extraordinary scope, variety, and quality of the Southwestern ceramic arts. The artist, teacher, and collector Don Crouch must also be gratefully acknowledged in this respect, for Don grew up on the Texas/New Mexico border, and was among the first to perceive the aesthetic importance as well as the historical value of Casas Grandes pottery. Finally, I wish to thank Barbara L. Moulard of Arizona State University for her very informed and discerning contribution to this catalogue. I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, in forming this project.

At the Art Institute of Chicago I must offer special thanks to our former director, James N. Wood, for his faithful interest as the vision and plans for this exhibition and book were developed. Our new director, James Cuno, has been no less forthcoming; his warm support has continued as the catalogue was prepared and sent to press and as the exhibition’s gallery plans were drawn. Dorothy Schroeder, Associate Director for Exhibitions and Museum Administration, as ever applied her pragmatic expertise and her wide experience, for which we are particularly thankful. In the Department of Publications, the advice and friendship of Executive Director Susan F. Rossen, the insightful professionalism of Associate Director Robert V. Sharp, and the rigorous vision and exacting attention of Production Coordinator Sarah E. Guernsey have been essential to the happy outcome of this volume. To their expertise must be added the meticulous editorial care of Elizabeth Stepina, the fine computer skills of Shaun Manning, and the perseverance and graceful management of Photo Editor Sarah Hoadley. We have the Chicago design firm of the Grillo Group, Inc., to thank for the elegant visual flow of this catalogue.

In the Department of African and Amerindian Art, I am particularly grateful to Barbara Battaglia, Secretary and Assistant to the Curator, for her astonishing organizational skills, painstaking manuscript preparation, and invaluable attention to all matters great and small that must be addressed with accuracy and aplomb in the complex business of forming an exhibition. I am equally appreciative of and unfailingly impressed with the tact and management skills of Departmental Specialist Ray Ramirez, who with unvarying good humor and care undertook the demanding work of coordinating the exhibition installation, supervising the safe movement and handling of the valuable art objects, and attending to the no-less-demanding process of handling the works of art for the catalogue photographs. Special Projects Research Assistant Elizabeth Pope has ably met a wide variety of tasks, ranging from researching and writing captions for the exhibition objects, assisting with the compiling of the exhibition’s database and timeline, preparing bibliographic entries, and gleaning comparative illustrations from a variety of sources, to helping review the catalogue essay texts. Her positive and efficient approach has added immeasurably to the outcome of this project. Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Curator of African Art, also provided valuable counsel, while generously and ably attending to many ongoing departmental matters when I was otherwise engaged.

As always, the Museum Registration Department played an indispensable role in scheduling the safe transportation of the objects and keeping all records for incoming and outgoing things; I am thankful to Director Mary Solt and to Darrell Green, Registrar for Loans and Exhibitions, for their care in these essential arrangements. John Molini, Michael Kaysen, and Michael Hodgetts of Museum Registration–Packing also fulfilled important roles in safely receiving, uncrating, and repacking the objects, for which we are especially thankful. We are most thankful to Craig Cox and the Installation Staff of Museum Registration for the safe handling and presentation of the works of art. The Department of Conservation, under the direction of Frank Zuccari, had the responsibility of inspecting the objects and preparing condition reports on all exhibition materials, and Senior Conservator of Objects Barbara Hall and Associate Conservators of Objects Suzanne Schnepp and Emily Heye carried out these minutely detailed inspections with unequaled observation and exacting attention. Similarly in Graphic Design, Photographic, and Communication Services, Senior Photographer Robert Hashimoto and Photographer Robert Lifson took the clear and well-composed pictures of the exhibition objects depicted in the present catalogue.

One of the distinct pleasures of preparing a gallery presentation is to be able to work closely with Joseph Cochand, Senior Exhibition Designer in the Department of Design and Construction; his imaginative and elegant installations complement the shapes and graphic imagery of the vessels on exhibition. Many in the Department of Museum Education, under the direction of Robert Eskridge, merit special thanks for their dedicated work in helping to carry the meaning of this project to our diverse local, national, and international audiences. My warm appreciation also goes to Eileen Harakal, formerly Vice President for Audience Development and Public Affairs, John Hindman, Associate Director of Public Affairs, and Chai Lee, Assistant Director of Public Affairs, for their promotion of this project to a wide audience. In the Department of Protection Services, special thanks go to Executive Director Ray Van Hook and his staff for their diligent and thorough safekeeping of the works of art. I also most respectfully acknowledge the Department of Physical Plant under the direction of William Caddick: the carpenters, painters, electricians, and custodians whose exceptional professionalism is so reassuringly evident when the exhibition gallery stands ready at last—all have my special thanks. I particularly applaud the artful lighting of Dennis Ball, whose unequaled touch brings out the form and expressive character of the works of art arrayed in gallery cases.

Beyond these many talented individuals there are others far too numerous to name, including museum curators, university professors, archaeologists, artists, collectors, and tribal cultural preservationists in this country and abroad, who, in their different ways, are engaged in salvaging American antiquity. All are involved in disclosing and acknowledging the cultural achievement of peoples who first inhabited this continent and who formed its earliest civilizations. The voices of these diverse colleagues offer a broad background of ideas and themes for what is here attempted.

In conclusion, I am especially grateful for the generosity, knowledge, and friendship of those who, years ago, first brought the Southwest and its art and cultural heritage to my attention and imagination. It was in 1961, at the invitation of John and Mac Watson of Santa Fe, that I first traveled north from my home in Guadalajara, Mexico, to spend several days in the magnificent landscape of the upper Rio Grande valley. It was a place at once familiar and unfamiliar. The soft contours of adobe villages and the massive churches with rustic altarpieces and sculptures much simplified yet more fiercely intense than those of the motherlands to the south; Spanish spoken with curious archaisms mixed with English; and, most surprising of all, the disciplined ceremonial dances in Pueblo Indian towns, with the rise and fall of deep choral singing and the ongoing rhythmic heartbeat of drums—these living sights and sounds seemed oddly closer to sixteenth-century pictorial manuscripts and early Spanish descriptions of Aztec Tenochtitlan than anything I had seen before in central highland Mexico. And then, in the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, there were the shelves of ancient and historic Pueblo pottery: ollas and dough bowls of ample proportions, warm earthen colors, and bold geometric designs that seemed to capture something essential about the sense of place in this region. So it is to the hospitality and lasting friendship of the Watson family, and the shared artistic interest and support of my wife, Pala, who soon joined the Southwestern adventure, that my thanks are also presented. The indigenous art of this region has remained of lasting interest, and, many years later, when the opportunity arose at the Art Institute of Chicago to form the present exhibition, I responded enthusiastically to the prospect.

Richard F. Townsend, Curator
Department of African and Amerindian Art
The Art Institute of Chicago

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