Director’s Foreword

Wiles, Stephanie

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Director’s Foreword

Stephanie Wiles

Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art

~Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art marks a milestone in the display and interpretation of Native American art at Yale University. It is the first exhibition to bring together Indigenous North American art from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and...

Author

Stephanie Wiles

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20484

Director’s Foreword

Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art marks a milestone in the display and interpretation of Native American art at Yale University. It is the first exhibition to bring together Indigenous North American art from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Yale University Art Gallery, and it seeks to encourage continued dialogue about the University’s relationship with Indigenous peoples and their art.

This long-awaited exhibition and publication are the culmination of three years’ work by a team of talented and dedicated student curators—Katherine Nova McCleary (Little Shell Chippewa–Cree), B.A. 2018, and Leah Tamar Shrestinian, B.A. 2018, with Joseph Zordan (Bad River Ojibwe), B.A. 2019—working in close and productive collaboration with Kaitlin McCormick, the former Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Art and Curation, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Gallery, now Curator of Western Ethnology at the Canadian Museum of History, Quebec, as well as with staff members from all three Yale institutions.

The exhibition showcases spectacular examples of basketry, beadwork, drawings, photography, pottery, textiles, and wood carving from the early 1800s to the present day. The curators highlighted as many Indigenous North American nations as possible, emphasizing the diversity of the artworks while identifying four themes that unite them: “Place,” the connections that Indigenous peoples have to their lands; “Nations,” the power of objects as expressions of sovereignty; “Generations,” the passing on of artistic practices and traditions; and “Beings,” the relationships that artists and nations have to animals, plants, and cosmological beings. This catalogue presents these four sections and their attendant objects, while the introduction, written by two of the curators, provides a survey of the history of Indigenous art on campus and further elaborates on the methodology employed while planning and installing the exhibition.

Several other authors have made significant contributions that have added immeasurably to the present publication. We are grateful to Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, the Medicine Woman and Tribal Historian of the Mohegan Nation, for her thoughtful preface, “Belonging to the Trail”; and to Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone), Professor of History and American Studies in Yale’s Department of History, and Summer Sutton (Lumbee), Ph.D. candidate, Yale School of Architecture, for their essay describing the work happening at Yale’s Native American Cultural Center, which provides a permanent space on campus for the display of Indigenous art and for knowledge sharing and community programs.

Seeking the advice of Indigenous scholars, community members, and artists has been a key part of this project—and will continue to be important as we consider future steps for teaching with, researching, and writing about Yale’s collections of Indigenous art. We are therefore thankful to all those who have given their time and knowledge, especially the members of the Advisory Council on Native Arts and Cultures, which was convened in April 2019 by the Beinecke, the Gallery, the Peabody, and Yale’s Department of the History of Art with the purpose of advising the museums on campus on their relationship with Indigenous art.

In addition to collaborating with Indigenous nations to create an exhibition respectful of the artists and their artwork, the curators also sought to emphasize the ongoing presence of Indigenous nations by highlighting the work of contemporary artists: Julie Buffalohead (Ponca; cat. 81), Clarence Cruz (Ohkay Owingeh; cat. 9), Richard Hunt (Kwakwaka’wakw; cat. 73), Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Norwegian, and Austrian; cat. 82), Maria Martinez (P’ohwhóge Owingeh [San Ildefonso Pueblo]; cat. 63), Les Namingha (Hopi and Zuni; cat. 11), Wallace Nez (Diné [Navajo] and American; cat. 86), Justin Scott (Mohegan; cat. 83), Robert P. Tenorio (Santo Domingo Pueblo [Kewa]; cat. 66), Dominique Toya (Jemez Pueblo and American; cat. 10), Marie Watt (Seneca; cats. 7–8), and Will Wilson (Diné [Navajo]; cats. 20–25). As the curators write in the “Nations” section of the catalogue, “These artists have played a vital role in the continuation of Indigenous sovereignty.” With the inclusion of these objects, the curators not only achieved their goal but have also given us the opportunity to appreciate the exciting work of some of the best Indigenous North American artists working today. Additionally, they have provided the Gallery, and the University more generally, with a road map to a more inclusive future through a more thoughtful and nuanced view of the past. For this, we are all grateful.

For lending their objects to this project as well as their time and expertise, we are indebted to E. C. Schroeder, Director of the Beinecke and Associate University Librarian, and David K. Skelly, Director of the Peabody and the Frank R. Oastler Professor of Ecology. We all aspire to sharing and displaying Yale’s collections more broadly across campus. This exhibition provided us with an opportunity to better understand how interdisciplinary collaborations can support the University’s vision for “one Yale” and how we can more nimbly work across physical and intellectual boundaries to take advantage of the extraordinary resources under our purview.

Finally, for their financial support of the exhibition and publication, we are grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Jane and Gerald Katcher Fund for Education, and the Nolen-Bradley Family Fund for Education.

Stephanie Wiles
The Henry J. Heinz II Director
Yale University Art Gallery

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