SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO.- "The Collecting Spirit: A Santa Fe Tradition," offering insight into the disparate collecting tastes of Santa Feans, opened in the Lloyd Kiva New Gallery at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. The exhibition remains open until January 11, 2004.
“The Collecting Spirit” honors the legacy of Lloyd Kiva New, who believed in “the emergence of the Indian artist as an individual.” The post-1970 works on exhibit indicate contemporary trends in Native art today.
“Among the collectors spotlighted in ‘The Collecting Spirit’ are serious students of technical processes and historical antecedents,” said guest curator Kathy Chase. “They are intellectually engaged and speak with knowledge, authority and a genuine passion about the artistic evolution and creative enthusiasm of the artists-some who have become their friends.
“Among the artist featured in the exhibition are those who create the unexpected,” added Chase.
The collector-artist relationship often is a symbiotic one, sometimes characterized by friendship, often distinguished by a mutual exchange of cultural perspectives, and always distinguished by a shared delight in the florescence of creativity.
The more than 40 selections in the show range from fanciful and lighthearted clay sculpture by Elizabeth Abeyta to a free blown glass bowl by Tony Jojola. The largest piece is a “1974 Triumph TR6, Souped-up Designer Car” that was painted and decorated by Dan Namingha, Hopi; Jeanette Ferrara, Isleta; Teri Greeves, Kiowa; Marcus Amerman, Choctaw; Upton Ethelbah Jr., Santa Clara/White Mountain Apache; Oreland Joe, Navajo/Ute; Laura Fraqua-Cota, Jemez; Jamie Okuma, Luiseno/Shosone/Bannock; David Wayne Nez and Connie Gausson, Picuris/Navajo.
While collectors who value the respect for tradition implicit in the Native American cultures appreciate the spiritual overtones found in much of this work, they also respond to traditional art that elicits a contemporary response. The TR6, for example, has Native American imagery bumper-to-bumper: a bronze mustang hood ornament, a corn maiden image hanging from the rearview mirror, and a beaded gearshift knob and steering wheel cover.
“A Collecting Tradition” echoes the teachings of respected Indian arts educator Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee, 1916-2002), who was distressed because by the mid-20th century Native American artistic expression in the Southwest had become caught in a web of stereotypes that dictated what the public "expected" Indian art to look like. The champion of the Indian artist as an individual said, “Let’s see that the young Indian realizes the values of his great and wonderful traditions as the springboard for his own personal and creative ideas."
New was dedicated to helping Native individuals find their true creative voice, through cultural traditions if they chose to, but also through opening themselves as well, to any artistic tradition that inspired and animated their creativity. His work was furthered by a strong community of intelligentsia that began gathering in Santa Fe in the early 1900s. Writers, educators, artists, aesthetes and scientists who were drawn to the beauty of this high desert of Southwest were equally fascinated by the region’s indigenous Native cultures, as well as by the well-established mix of European, Mexican and Anglo-Americans, some with community ties more than three centuries old.
From this group of Santa Feans came a collecting spirit, and from that spirit comes a willingness-perhaps a new tradition-to lend their artwork to the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture for an exhibition designed to engage the broader public in the myriad manifestations of contemporary Native American Art.