BAKERSFIELD, CA.- The Kern County Museum presents Images from Native Life: California Baskets and And the Photographic Images of Edward S. Curtis, through April 17, 2005. Images from Native Life: California Baskets And the Photographic Images of Edward S. Curtis pairs the outstanding California Native American basket collection of the Kern County Museum with Edward S. Curtis’s photogravures From Blair-Murrah Exhibitions. These photogravures are from the artist’s twenty volume work, The North American Indian, produced between 1907-1930. Curtis’s work with the Native people of our nation is considered by some to be “one of the most significant and controversial representations of traditional American Indian culture ever produced.”

Curtis’s work in California portrays many Native peoples including the Yokuts, Wailaki, Wappo, Maidu, Niwok, Chukhansi and Yaudanchi. His portraits reveal the artist’s commitment to produce a permanent memorial to the Native peoples. His landscapes capture lives closely attuned to nature in even the most practical or mundane objects. In Curtis’ work there is an implicit comment on the inherent integrity of Native culture.

The Curtis portion of the exhibition will be on public display through April 17, 2005. The basket portion will remain through November 6, 2005.