The Eugene and Clare Thaw collection of American Indian art

Magazine Antiques, July, 1995 by Gilbert T. Vincent

New galleries exhibiting the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art - one of the most important private collections assembled in the last fifty years - will open to the public on July 15. The galleries are an addition to the Fenimore House Museum, the art gallery of the New York State Historical Association, which was built in 1932 on the site of Cooper's original tenant house at Fenimore Farm, his lakeside property.

Few collections of American Indian art have been formed by connoisseurs, such as the Thaws. Their first purchase was made in 1987 to furnish their house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Clare Thaw was attracted by the floral designs and beadwork representations of the American flag on an early twentieth-century Athapaskan pillow sham. When the Thaws found a picture of their new purchase in The American Indian, The American Flag, the catalogue of a 1976 exhibition,(1) they began to search for Indian art that used the American flag as a motif. They concentrated on objects that appealed to them, eventually amassing a total of fifty-four. This stimulated them to acquire a larger collection of Indian art, which now numbers more than six hundred items.

The Thaws' long-time familiarity with the art world enabled them to educate themselves about American Indian art in a remarkably short time. They knew knowledgeable museum curators and directors, acquired a large library on the subject, visited exhibitions in North American and European museums, studied auction catalogues, and became familiar with the galleries of dealers specializing in American Indian art. They focused on American Indian objects as art, not as cultural, ethnographic, decorative, or craft objects. They were interested in the aesthetic qualities of an object, favoring the mellow patina of age, rarity of form, and over-all condition. In addition to a connoisseur's approach, they expanded their conception of the collection to include historical documentation and geographical distribution across North America, from prehistoric Alaskan carvings to a horse medicine bag made by a living Plains Indian artist.

As early as 1991 the collection began to overwhelm the tables and walls of their house, at which point the Thaws decided to share it with the American public. They selected the Fenimore House Museum partly because of the quality of its existing art collection and ties with James Fenimore Cooper, and partly because of the museum's extensive educational programs. Once the choice was made, the Thaws began collecting objects that would be more appropriate for the scale of a museum than a private house. The result is a superb assemblage that is truly representative of the finest artistic skills of the American Indians.

One of the oldest objects in the collection is the polar bear carved from walrus ivory shown in Plate VI, which dates to between 100 and 600 A.D. and was excavated from the Point Spencer region of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.(2) Even today Eskimos respect the power, ferocity, and hunting skills of the polar bear, this representation of which probably served as an amulet for a prehistoric hunter. The combination of the stylized internal organs and the naturalistic extended neck and snarling mouth make this one of the finest surviving carvings made by the Ipiutak culture.

Also from Alaska is the large wooden mask shown in Plate III, which is thought to be one of a group of masks collected in the Kuskokwim River region in 1911 by Adams H. Twitchell, a trader in Bethel, Alaska. It may have been used in an important shamanistic drama enacted at that time. Probably one of a pair, it represents Doologiak, the raven, a significant figure in the creation beliefs of the Eskimos and their southern neighbors, the Tlingit. The raven was also important to native whalers, and this mask may have been used in ceremonies connected with the whale hunt. The concentric wooden hoops are believed to represent the different cosmic levels in the Eskimo religion and are a distinctive feature of masks from the Kuskokwim and lower Yukon rivers.

The unique formline design tradition and refined workmanship of the Northwest Coast Indian cultures appeal a great deal to the Thaws.(3) One of the most unusual of the twenty-five Northwest Coast masks and frontlets in the collection is that of Noohlmahl (fool dancer) (Pl. I.). Noohlmahl is derived from a long Kwakiutl tradition. He appears satirically at ceremonies as a lord chamberlain, carefully watching for any transgression of protocol and reacting wildly to a misstep by a dancer or the use of an improper name. Drooping eyebrows, a greatly exaggerated nose with runny nostrils, and matted hair are characteristics of Noohlmahl, who is given a distinctly feline cast in this mask and half a dozen others. Such masks are thought to have originated from Quatsino, a remote coastal village on Vancouver Island in Canada, and may have been inspired by carvings of lion's heads on European and American trading ships.

Northwest Coast craftsmen developed a particular method of making chests, boxes, and occasionally rectangular dishes (see Pl. XI) used to serve food at ceremonies. The method involved cutting three V-shaped channels across the width of a board that was then steamed and bent into three right-angle corners. The ends of the plank were sewn together to form the fourth corner. The sides were then carved with symbolic images in the formline style. The dish shown, bearing the image of a whale, must have been used for many years to serve seal or candlefish oil, standard condiments at feasts, for it is completely saturated. The extreme curves of the high sides a distinguishing feature of this dish and are a visual representation of the bountiful hospitality of the host.