An exhibit of the work of 15 Indigenous artists from across the country, Washington to Arizona and Oklahoma to New Hampshire and Maine, opened at Fruitlands Museum June 5 in the Native American gallery. Called “Echoes in Time,” the exhibit “celebrates belonging and connecting,” Fruitlands curator Shana Dumont Garr told the Press in a private tour of the gallery. These concepts emerge strongly as the contemporary artists respond to older artwork in the museum’s permanent collection.
Since it acquired Fruitlands in 2016, The Trustees of Reservations has been working to make the Native American gallery less ethnographic. With input from an advisory team of Indigenous people in 2019, several items were removed from the gallery, and a different perspective was adopted. Garr said the new interpretation emphasizes continuity, with the focus on the fact that native people are still here, despite efforts throughout history, particularly in New England, to erase them. In the works of these contemporary artists, there are echoes of their ancestry, some direct, others more subtle, but the art is also diverse and modern. The variety of styles makes for an exhibit that appeals to different sensibilities.
Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute), “Existence as Protest,” 2021. (Courtesy photo)
Entering the side door of the gallery, now the main entrance because of accessibility, one’s attention is immediately caught by a mural in red and black. It is the cragged, proud face of a Native American warrior, familiar as the classic, romanticized representation. But the technique used is very contemporary—an enlarged digital image attached to a thin board with wheat paste, almost like wallpaper. Garr calls it “street art,” such as one might see painted on the side of a building in an urban setting. The artist, Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute), has named the piece “Existence as Protest” and has, as Garr put it, “co-opted romantic images and made changes.” Elsewhere in the exhibit, Deal has panels of comic art depicting conflict between a Native American and a cowboy. One of the last panels shows the warrior with a knife saying, as he leaps toward a cowboy holding a rifle, “I’m gonna fight for what I wanna be.”
On the opposite wall is an amazing display by Mimi Gellman (Métis, Ashkenazi): 54 handmade paint brushes of varying sizes, all using items from nature, including pine cones and bear fur. They create a sense of rhythm and accumulation, and they represent a time-honored craft. They are also very much of the present, a product of the pandemic we all went through. Gellman teaches at a university in Vancouver, British Columbia, and during lockdown, she taught her students how to find natural materials and put them together to form brushes they could use.
In a corner is a structure, looking a bit like a shaggy igloo, made of strips of shredded paper. Every day of 2020, Summer Zah (Diné/Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Choctaw) had to fill out a form that asked about symptoms of COVID-19. Turning this negative reality into a positive one, she built a safe haven out of the shreds of those questionnaires. The inside “walls” are smooth, with wider strips woven together, the weaving, rooted in the past, becoming a calming ritual for her.
In keeping with the exhibit’s theme, and the new interpretation for the gallery, four artists were asked to choose pieces from the permanent collection to respond to, making a connection between their artwork and that of Native American artists of the past. Garr gave the idea further perspective when she said that those items, collected by Clara Endicott Sears in the early 20th century, were once owned by a community; they were separated to become part of the museum collection; and now they are rejoined with a community of people who are alive and who give them new relevance.
Theresa Secord (Penobscot), whom Garr calls a master basket-maker, chose several baskets from the Fruitlands collection and immediately identified them as resembling those of her ancestors. “She knew them,” said Garr. Secord’s own basket, “Heirloom Indigenous Woven Corn,” uses sweetgrass and ash wood for three ears of corn in a shallow basket, thin strips of the wood serving for the corn tassels. Her work is obviously newer, lighter, and more colorful, but, flanked by older baskets, it forms a continuum.
Moving into the larger room of the gallery, one is struck by the white wall space around each piece of art, allowing the viewer to focus on it. At the same time, the pieces form a connected sweep of patterns and bright colors. And on closer look, one is drawn to the two or three pieces that are obviously not contemporary and struck by how, though of a different time period, they are very much part of the whole.
An example of a complementary piece is a large black and white woodblock by Martin Begaye (Diné/Navajo) called “Neighborhood Watch,” in which a hawk perches on a branch, surrounded by a background of geometric pattern. Next to it is a late 19th-century Navajo rug with a pattern very similar to that in Begaye’s work but in bright, bold colors. One possible way of seeing this pairing is that the “neighborhood” is the Navajo nation, still safe and connected but also different.
Moving around a middle case, one sees a female figure in a red dress, with arms spread out, holding the edges of an off-white cape with rainbow stripes on the inside. This is an outfit made and worn by Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel (Ioway) for a performance during a Pride month. In the performance, Garr said, the cape is first wrapped around her like a straitjacket. Then she opens it up, like a colorful butterfly emerging and opening its wings. Garr interprets this as a celebration of the revitalization of Native culture and of the artist’s own journey to reconnect with it. Behind the figure, one can see the Navajo rug, its bands of color reflecting some of those in the cape. Flanking the figure are a blue and beige outfit of a female Native American and a large woven basket, both from Fruitlands’ permanent collection, the three contrasting but connecting.
The Fruitlands exhibit “Echoes in Time” showcases 15 Indigenous artists from across the country. (Courtesy photo)
Margaret Jacobs, an Akwesasne Mohawk of Salem, New York, echoes her ancestors’ work in steel—building a bridge from Canada that went through tribal land—with steel work of her own. Three chains hang on the wall. At the top of each is a wrench and at the bottom an item from nature—a cedar branch, an antler, a tobacco flower. Jacobs is connecting with her past and also showing a different journey, moving from industry to the natural world.
Unexpectedly, in March the exhibit, or more specifically its guest co-curator, artist Gina Adams, became the subject of a controversy (reported in the June 1 issue of The Boston Globe) that delayed the show’s opening and impacted everyone involved. “It’s been a challenging time but also an opportunity to learn and gain valuable input,” said Garr. Adams, whose work can be seen in several major museum collections, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Peabody Essex Museum, was accused by other Native American artists of falsely identifying as Indigenous because she is not enrolled in a tribal nation.
Amid the controversy, Adams ended up withdrawing her work from the exhibit. This concept of belonging is a new conversation for museums, said Garr, adding that she now has a “better understanding and is more attuned to the strong feelings about Native artists being accepted into a tribal community.” While the exhibit was on pause, Garr contacted all of the exhibit artists to talk about any concerns they had, and she used their input to make some changes to the exhibit storyboard “Objects of Belonging.” Of the controversy and its ramifications, Garr said, “We are giving it attention; we are working on it.”
