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American Indian Art? That's Baskets, Right?
New exhibit overturns preconceptions

Dona Gibbs (dlfgibbs)
Published 2008-08-09 03:42 (KST)

Warning. Any preconceived notions about contemporary American Indian art
should be checked at the door.

"Remix," the current exhibit of the National Museum of the American Indian
at the George Gustave Heye Center in lower Manhattan, is a challenging
show.

The subtitle is equally challenging, "New Modernities in a Post-Indian
World." That's just in case you didn't know what you were in for and might
be expecting feathers and beads.

The curators, Joe Baker and Gerald McMaster, both of Native American
ancestry and tribal members, chose a hip-hop term "Remix" to suggest what
is in store for the viewer.

Baker, in his essay for the show's catalogue, quotes Fab Five Freddy's
remix definition as "take a bit from here and a bit from there and bring
them all together … yet not forgetting history."

"Why," Baker writes, "are indigenous artists not allowed to celebrate the
present as other artists do?"

Fifteen works were chosen from native artists from Canada, the United
States and Mexico. They are as diverse as their creators. Each one bashes a
stereotype. Here are but a few examples.

There's the beautiful "Portrait in Motion," a film in which Nadia Myre
shows a canoeist paddling toward us on a mist filled lake. The ah-ha moment
comes in reading the catalogue description that the canoe is half
traditional construction and half aluminum.


Franco Mondini Ruiz also explores this half-half analogy. He decapitates
small china figurines of the type that no proper 1950s American grandmother
would be without. In place of the delicate Marie Antoinette hairdos and
wigs, he has attached molded clay pre-Columbian figures.

Luis Gutierrez uses the bright colors of traditional folk art, yet his work
encompasses darker themes, such as his struggle with multiple sclerosis.
Hector Ruiz's carvings explore what it means to be living on the margins of
the mainstream. The pieces call to mind "outsider" art.

Dustinn Craig's video shows us the Apache skateboarders. He writes, "Apache
kids with skateboards live dreams so large they will never dare to tell
anyone. Yet those dreams get a little smaller each year…" The video is
entitled, "Four-wheel Warpony."

There's a haunting series of photographs by Brian Miller. These explore a
strange relationship between a beautiful hitchhiker and the photographer.

"So what's so Indian about that," you may mutter.

The answer is, it isn't. After all, this is about artists stretching beyond
traditional expectations of what today's Indian is or may become.

While casual visitors could stroll though and "get it," they might leave
with a question, "Huh? What was that all about?"

My suggestion: buy the catalogue and sit in the light drenched, white
marble rotunda and read it. The exhibition will be a richer experience,
although no less challenging.

The George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American
Indian.
©2008 Dona Gibbs

The George Gustav Heye Museum is an example of a museum that's reinvented
itself. From its founding in 1922 by Heye, a wealthy New York financier,
it's had its up and downs. Until 1994 the collection was displayed and
housed in the upper reaches of Manhattan and in a facility in the Bronx
that was open only to scholars.

Heye had amassed over 800,000 objects, some perhaps by less than honest
means. Many of the items held religious significance for the tribes that
had produced them. Skulls, bones and war-trophy scalps were blatantly
offensive to newly sensitized museumgoers and Native Americans alike.

Native Americans had become more critical in how they were portrayed in
popular culture. More importantly, they became outspoken in their views on
their continued oppression, which came to a head during the early 1970s.
The standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and the occupation of the old
Federal prison at Alcatraz were front-page news in North America.

Worrisome economic realities loomed. Funding for the New York Museum of the
American Indian was tough to find, and it was obvious that the City
couldn't foot the bill.

H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire, offered $70 million. He wanted to
move it to Texas.
New Yorkers were outraged. True, they'd last seen the museum on a fourth
grade class trip, but who knows, they might just get back one day.

The idea was floated that the museum should merge with another New York
institution, The American Museum of Natural History.

Then the Smithsonian stepped in with another idea. They'd make the
Alexander Hamilton Custom House in downtown Manhattan available for part of
the collection with specialized exhibits while other permanent exhibits and
special exhibitions would be showcased in brand-new facilities. One was
planned for the Mall in Washington, D.C., and yet another, a cultural
resources center, was to be built in Suitland, Maryland.

The new Washington museum, the centerpiece of the National Museum of the
American Indian, opened with great fanfare in 2004 after five years and
$219 million in construction costs.

The building of the new museum was only one phase. Moving the art and
anthropological articles took careful planning. They were irreplaceable and
fragile.

The objects also had to be researched. A team of four people began the task
in 1994. Many of the over 800,000 objects had been stored in a warehouse
and had not been seen for years. The result was that over 2,000 objects
that were deemed especially significant to tribes, either human remains or
sacred items, were returned to 100 different native communities.

Ancestors' remains could be buried. Religious objects were restored to
those who saw them more than curiosities of the past.

The institution reached out to Native Americans -- tribal leaders,
community activists, artisans and artists, scientists and scholars to
remake the museum.

The dust was shaken off. The air was cleared.

That spirit has continued. And it's obvious at Remix.

What's the price of this glimpse into contemporary "Post-Indian" art? It's
free.

Reporter note: New York City is enjoying a record number of visitors this
summer from Europe and Asia. While the Empire State Building, the Staten
Island Ferry and the Statue of Liberty are on everybody's lists, there are
treasures, easily accessible to visitors that are not as well known but
also worthwhile. The National Museum of the American Indian in the
Alexander Hamilton US Custom House is such a place.