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In a radical shift, artisans and leaders of indigenous communities were invited to be curators, offering a window into the intangible and private dimensions of Pueblo pottery.
By Patricia Leigh Brown
Claudia Mitchell, a potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, collects clay on a table between two sandstone rock formations, with a hammer and pickaxe at hand. First, thank Mother Clay, the Earth, in prayers and offerings that come with a pinch. of cornmeal, a small piece of turquoise and, always, water, the most valuable gift of the upper desert. She also thanks the women who came before her, especially her grandmother Lucy M. Lewis, a much-loved potter who worked until she was 80 and whose hands, elegant and soft after years of clay, never lost their grip.
In his own work, Mitchell, 57, incorporates pottery fragments from past generations that he digs up along the way and grinds them into powder to give his vessels extra strength before firing them. Thanks to his boats, “the spirit of all those other people is passed on ‘Back to life,'” he said. “Our afterlife and provide the long-term in ceramics. “
Today, he is helping to broaden the understanding of American art. In a major replacement for museums, Mitchell is one of 68 Pueblo potters, artists and cultural leaders invited to host the large component “Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first Native American exhibit organized through the community. All items were chosen through members of the Pueblo Pottery Collective, and the labels showcase the voices and perspectives of Pueblo peoples, beyond the classic taste of museum labels. (The exhibition, through June 2024, continues by appointment in a more intimate setting at the Vilcek Foundation in Manhattan, before heading to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Saint Louis Museum of Art. )
The concept for organizing the exhibition originated at the School of Advanced Research (known as SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a clinical resource center, university press, and artist residency program located in a historic adobe complex. His massive collection of Pueblo pottery, dating from 1050 to 1300, bureaucracy the backbone of “Grounded in Clay,” which debuted at the Santa Fe Museum of Indian Art and Culture last summer. “We think it’s very important that the rest of our people see the exhibition first. “said Brian D. Vallo, a museum representative and former governor of Acoma Pueblo near Albuquerque, who is curator of Vilcek’s exhibit.
The goal is to identify at least one curator from each indigenous community, said Elysia Poon, director of the SAR’s Indian Arts Research Centre. He contacted the Vilcek Foundation, which has its own extensive collection of ceramics, to partner with several organizers. I think they expected to end up with over 60,” he said. (Six conservatives are not from Pueblo communities; two of them are indigenous. )
To be successful among potential participants, Poon and his team visited Pueblo communities and handed out flyers about holidays and other cultural events. Each curator was invited to choose one or two terracotta works to perform as they see fit, through a handwritten essay, poem, or voice. recording. ” Traditionally, you come up with great themes and then choose pieces,” Poon said. “We did it the other way around. “
In this way, the exhibition proposes an alternative style to the Euro-American prestige quo, which excluded the communities of origin from the interpretation of their own draped culture, leaving this task to scholars who tend to consider the works through an impartial lens. of the history of art.
The rules developed through the SAR, now incorporated into the Met, constitute an ambitious replacement in practice in which museum professionals work alongside indigenous communities to document objects, conceptualize their narratives, and expand indigenous peoples’ access to collections. This strategy is being adopted through establishments such as Colthrough College’s Colthrough Museum of Art in Maine, which has been running with Indigenous netpainting partners on the existing exhibition “Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts and Village,” bringing Pueblos perspectives on Taos society. -American Band
“It’s exciting to have more voices in exhibition spaces,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, which trains young curators. “Conservatives are thought to have exceptional wisdom, but today, wisdom is also a matter of experience. The more reports we bring to those objects, the better.
He added: “Today’s curators only dialogue with works of art, they also dialogue and engage with communities. This is a basic change.
“Grounded in Clay” features indigenous curators from the 19 Pueblo communities of New Mexico, but also from Arizona (Hopi) and Texas (Ysleta del Sur Pueblo). “We’re excited about the opportunity to put those rules into practice,” said Dr. Patricia Marroquin Norby, associate curator of Native American art (Purépecha) at the Metropolitan Museum, who has collaborated with home communities since her arrival in 2020, providing insight into American Wing’s Diker Collection and in exhibits such as “Water Memories. “
But the scale of collaboration in “Grounded in Clay” is unprecedented, as many potters wear ancestral traditions. The exhibition offers other non-indigenous people a window into the intangible, personal and emotional dimensions of Pueblo pottery, “the literal vessel. “through which our people themselves, psychically, culturally and spiritually,” writes Dr. Joseph Aguilar, assistant tribal preservation officer of San Ildefonso Pueblo.
With more than 50 pieces, jars of water, conservation jars, bowls and jars of beans are as unique as human faces. Born of earth, fire and water, many remember the oranges, reds and beiges of the tables, cliffs and streams of the Southwest. Some feature intricate black-and-white zigzag patterns encouraged by clouds or lightning streaking across the sky, bringing the blessing of rain. Others celebrate turkeys, parrots or turtles with bright paintings. Centuries-old boxes show their age and wear: scratches, cracks, dents, cracks and footprints reveal how much they have been used and loved, as much as an oil-stained family cookbook.
“Good looks created in clay are as imperfect as we are, but it has a purpose,” writes Antonio R. Chavarria (Kha’p’o Owingeh/Santa Clara), curator of ethnography at the Museum of Art and Culture of India.
Chavarria recalled over the phone a bowl of glowing micaceous with a crusty edge made by his grandmother and the arguments that broke out over who could requisition it as morning cereal. For the show, he was attracted by a polished black stone water jug with an upper neck. and widened edge. ” I see the upper neck and the neck of this pot, in the way its edge escapes,” he wrote. “I see my grandmother in the good looks of the earth. “
Black tableware is often obtained by a process of embossing cooking, cow or sheep manure to modulate the flame; The lack of oxygen, combined with the smoke, will turn the warm bowl of red clay into a rich black.
An impressive example that welcomes visitors to the Met is a monumental “grandfather” vessel with iridescent ebony skin by Lonnie Vigil (Nambe Pueblo), a finished potter. He began building it from reel to reel on his ’50s red formica kitchen table: an “architectural feat. “it becomes more poignant by the fact that it is balanced through hand and touch, and not through machine,” writes Nora Naranjo Morse, an artist and poet who is also a curator.
“People ask, ‘How did you make such a great pot?He told me Vigil. No he has an answer. He said he had entered “a dream space. “
In an interview with the Vilcek Foundation, Brian Vallo said his paternal grandmother, Juana Vallo, painted her vessels with crushed black hematite, a mineral, with wild spinach paste as a binder. It was a total day to collect the mud. ” Grandpa would say that if you go in with a very natural mind, the clay will be less difficult to remove,” Vallo said. For the show, he chose an Acoma water jug painted with Zuni-inspired birds that his grandmother would call “Zuni. “Fat Tails. ” In Acoma, women collected rainwater in cisterns naturally on the most sensitive part of the table, then balanced the pots with bulbs on their heads, “basically carrying a cloud,” she said.
In Pueblo culture, vessels mark vital life events. They welcome young children and commemorate a loss. “It’s great to have many on hand,” observes Mitchell, the potter, “because you never know when your journey will continue. “”.
For “Grounded in Clay”, Northrough also commissioned 4 new Pueblo artists in other media; These works show the commercial and environmental exploitation of indigenous sacred sites. “Yupkoyvi,” through photographer Michael Namingha, for example, is a strangely pink composition in silkscreen and teeth with hand-applied sand. These are ancient sandstone slabs in Fajada Butte in Chaco. Canyon, a place of the ancestral Puebloan culture, erected to measure solstices and equinoxes, which has been irrevocably altered by pedestrian traffic of tourists and archaeologists and commercial exploitation.
Community curators can provide recommendations to museums when finding culturally sensitive items in their collections or items protected by federal repatriation laws. Vallo said that in Vilcek he saw a ceremonial bowl. He asked the organization to return him to the Tesuque People, which is the base. “I sense it’s being used again,” Vallo said.
Repatriation through the Peoples is not desired, he added. Some communities “will not repatriate items that deserve never to have left,” he said. “They would say they have lost the essence of what made them sacred. “” At the end of their journey, the communities of origin will participate in the elaboration of a “solid plan for the control of these elements”.
Until then, the infusion of Pueblo voices and life stories in the exhibition has been profound for artists like Rose B. Simpson (Kha’p’o Owingeh/Santa Clara), the outstanding sculptor who works in a variety of media and comes from a long matrilineal line of clay artists (her exhibition “Counterculture” is lately at the Whitney Museum of American Art).
Indigenous peoples and their histories have been “looked down upon and objectified,” he said, adding that an exhibition like this can give an object back “its life and identity. “We move from extraction to respect. This visualization is amazing because it initiates this process.
As curator, she chose a black water jug from Santa Clara (circa 1880-1900) with a damaged rim. ” I felt we had a lot in common,” he said. Living in a post-colonial and genocidal context, we still have fragments of a confusing history. “
At the School of Advanced Research, Simpson sat alone in a quiet room with the vessels. “It makes you aware that those vessels are watching you,” he said. “It was great to meet them and get to know them, and now they’re giving other people a chance to meet them. These vessels will see visitors as much as visitors will see vessels.
Anchored in clay: the spirit of village pottery
Through June 4, 2024, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. , (212) 535-7710; metmuseum. org. Take position by appointment until June 2, 2024 at the Vilcek Foundation, 21 East 70th Street in Manhattan; (212) 472-2500; vilcek. org.
An earlier edition of this article erroneously stated the age of potter Claudia Mitchell. He is 57, 59 years old.
An earlier edition of this article erroneously expressed the call of a curator at the Museum of Indigenous Art and Culture. This is Antonio R. Chavarria, Anthony.
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