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Indepth Arts News:
"Spirits of the Water: Native Art Collected on Expeditions to Alaska and British Columbia, 1774-1910"
2000-05-05 until 2000-08-13
Menil Collection
Houston, TX,
USA United States of America
he Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, some 1500
miles of present-day British Columbia and
Alaska—including the Kwakwaka’waku (Kwakiutl),
Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), and Tlingit—comprise an
elaborate weave of social and religious traditions and
superlative artistic skills, each cultural entity developed
within a fishing and gathering economy. This legacy is
the subject of the exhibition’s only U.S. venue.
Produced by cultures dating back 2,000 years, the
various objects in the exhibition—masks, helmets and
clubs, rattles and fishhooks, bowls and boxes, blankets
and combs—clearly are works of extraordinary power
and beauty. Their aesthetic merits, however, suggest a
mere subtext to their importance as icons of cultural
identity and vitality. Numbering approximately 150 and
drawn from the collections of the Museo de America in
Madrid, The Menil’s own holdings, and from other
museums and private collectors around the world, these
treasures were acquired through exploratory and trade
expeditions to the Northwest Coast.
Beginning in the 18th century, these journeys,
undertaken by Spain, Great Britain, Russia, the United
States, and Canada, yielded a wealth of geographical
and anthropological knowledge, as well as collections
of exceptional works of art and ceremonial pieces, part
of the prodigious output of the region's woodworkers,
weavers, and other craftsmen. Among the most famous
explorers were Alejandro Malaspina, I. G. Voznesenskii,
and Captain James Cook. Revisiting these major
historical explorations, Spirits of the Water demonstrates
how the art of the various cultures embraces the realms
of the spiritual and the practical, the ceremonial and the
utilitarian.
The exhibition has been organized by the Foundation
la Caixa, Barcelona.
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