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Natural History, Oct, 2004

Opening October 30, 2004, at the American Museum of Natural History, Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest celebrates the beauty, power, and sybolism of modern Native jewelry arts with more than 500 pieces of dazzling contemporary and historic Native American jewelry and artifacts. The exhibition also presents recent totem sculptures, traditional and modern masks, and photographs and videos of Northwest Coast and Southwest rituals that are strongly connected with the sociological beliefs of the tribes represented.

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Artwork presented in the exhibition comes from the Northwest Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Nisga'a, Tlingit, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Haisla, and Coast Salish tribes, and the Southwest Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, Santo Domingo, Apache, Taos and other Pueblos, and other tribes. These magnificent pieces show how techniques, materials, and styles have evolved as Native American jewelers have adapted to technical, societal, and commercial changes, transforming traditional craft into a full-fledged mode of artistic expression.

Groups of spectacular jewelry and objects introduce visitors to the key themes in the exhibition, such as cultural continuity over time and distinct regional styles. Motifs transferred to jewelry from other art forms are represented in masks and blankets.

Cosmological and societal context is generated within the exhibition space by a section divided into an inner and an outer circle. The inner circle displays jewelry together with masks, headdresses, pottery, and other historic objects to explore the roles of seasonality, cosmology, shamanism, and mythology in the Northwest and Southwest cultures.

The outer circle displays objects and stories relating to community forms: clans, moieties, and house groups. This section contrasts the two geographic regions but also presents similar community rituals that pervade both territories. The roles of men and women as they relate to jewelry-making are also explored in this area.

The final section of the exhibition explores further commonalities between the two geographic regions, displaying artifacts from the Northwest Coast and the Southwest that suggest intriguing parallels in the past and illustrate mutual influence in the present. Similarities in historical pieces whose creators were separated by hundreds of miles of rugged terrain are little understood, but contemporary objects show how recent meetings of artists from these regions have enriched and inspired new directions for each other's work.

A video display shows dramatic images of the land and communities while artists whose work is represented in the exhibition discuss art--jewelry-making in particular--as a way of passing on tradition, sharing ideas between the geographic areas, and teaching those outside their communities about their living cultures.

Totems to Turquoise honors a rich, complex, and diverse art form; the foundations of which lie in thousands of years of culture and experience. "Both the Northwest Coast and the Southwest feature an uninterrupted tradition of extraordinary indigenous artwork and iconography: transformed into jewelry, this tradition achieves a powerful cultural continuation," said Peter Whiteley, Curator of North American Ethnology in the Museum's Division of Anthropology and co-curator of Totems to Turquoise.

"This is above all an exhibition about connections," noted Lois Dubin, lecturer, author of several authoritative books on Native American jewelry, and co-curator of Totems to Turquoise. "These connections range from sacred to pragmatic, ancient to contemporary, macro to micro, and Native to non-Native."

Advising artists are Jim Hart, a Hereditary Chief of the Haida Nation and an accomplished carver and jeweler, and Jesse Monongya, a highly regarded Navajo and Hopi jeweler whose inlay work is considered to be among the finest today.

TOTEMS TO TURQUOISE

Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest October 30, 2004-July 10, 2005 Gallery 3, third floor

2004 Ad

Natural History, Oct, 2004

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