In the glorious period of great sailing ships, New England mariners brought back treasures from far lands. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, grew out of the East India Marine Society's desire, in 1799, to protect such "curiosities" in a museum. Later additions, including modern Native American works, have since filled out the collection. This book commemorates the opening of a new permanent gallery for Native American art. Three excellent essays introduce the history of collecting in general, the growth of collections of Native Americana, and the evolution of the Peabody Essex. Another essay on modern Native American art points the way to the future. Following are 119 glowing plates of the individual objects, with extensive notes on each. Each geographic area represented is defined with a short essay. Though limited to one collection with some thin spots (e.g., there's little pottery or Southwest work, and not much from the Northeast tribes, who evidently seemed too commonplace to 18th- and 19th-century New Englanders), this is a good overview of Native American art. For larger public school libraries and art collections. Gay Neale, formerly with Southside Virginia Community Coll. Lib., Alta.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Uncommon Legacies celebrates the power, significance, and exceptional artistic quality of one of the most important collections of early Native American art. Assembled in the course of trade and missionary activities beginning in the late eighteenth century, the spectacular examples illustrated provide a rare opportunity to observe the creativity of Native artists in response to their interactions with non-Natives. Included here are magnificently illustrated chapters on the art of the American Southeast, the Northwest Coast, the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes, the Plains, and South America.
Since the 1860s the Peabody Essex Museum has displayed its Native American collections at various times as historical, archaeological, ethnological, and, most recently, as art objects. Recognition of Native American art as ìartî did not occur until the mid-1930s. Prior to that time, it was considered artifact or craft, ìcuriosityî or ìprimitive art.î
There are more than 400 Native American cultures, each with its own distinct artistic tradition yet always open to the adoption of new forms of expression and materials in response to ever-changing conditions. Since art is created within the context of a given culture at a given time, a more complete understanding of specific objects requires an understanding of the culture in which they were created.
The works presented here are expressive of worldviews, beliefs, and ways of being within each Native American community. While every group has its own approach to the creative process, each generation has to determine what values to express through the arts and how best to express those values.
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