Scenes from the Nelson-Atkins’ New American Indian Galleries

There was a bit of a disconnect between the slideshow and the text of my Wall Street Journal article today on the new American Indian galleries at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Only one of the objects that I mentioned in the piece, the Arikara shield, was in the slideshow.

So here's a photo essay with views of the galleries and more of the objects I mentioned (as well as a couple I didn't).

First, though, here's the star of the show who acquired for the museum about half the works on display---curator Gaylord Torrence, who, at the end of this post, will also have a star turn in a CultureGrrl Video from the Nov. 5 press preview:


Gaylord Torrence, Nelson-Atkins Museum's senior curator of American Indian Art

Here's the entrance to the galleries, with the Ojibwa buffalo-skin coat, on the left, that I discussed (and which Torrence analogized to the museum's celebrated Caravaggio). The cases, conceived by Rebecca Young, the museum's in-house design specialist, were fabricated by Laboratorio Museotecnico Goppion, the same Milan company responsible for encasing the "Mona Lisa." The galleries are actually more dimly lit (with dramatic lighting of the objects) than they appear here. I had to lighten the photo to make it legible:



Here's the late 18th-century Ojibwa coat---a cross-cultural object, patterned after an English officer's coat. Of the 18 known examples, it's the only one in an American public institution:



And here's a close-up of the intricate detailing on the shoulder. Women would have worked on the embellishments. Men would have fashioned the hide:



Here's the 70-inch-tall Northern Cheyenne feather headdress, c.1875, adorned with glass beads, ermine skin, silk ribbon and horsehair:



Next is the wooden Kwakiutl "Wild Woman" mask, ca. 1870. Fear of the mythical creature's presence in the woods, evoked by the mask's fierce features, was intended to keep small children close to home:



I referred to the important American Indian holdings of Ralph Coe, the former director of the Nelson-Atkins, as the "collection that got away." (He promised some 200 choice objects to the Metropolitan Museum, although he may have others left to give.) But here's one Coe piece that did go to the Nelson-Atkins and that was included in the new installation---an ingeniously designed painted wooden effigy chair, Heiltsuk, British Columbia, ca. 1865. A beaver's carved body adorns the seat; its tail rises behind to create a back support.



This is a work-in-progress collection with great strengths---Navajo textiles, Pueblo pottery, for example---but other areas that are barely or not at all represented. There's only one katsina doll at present---Hopi, ca. 1885:



But now let's turn it over to Gaylord, telling us about a Chilkat robe (dancing blanket), Tlingit, Southeast Alaska, ca. 1880-1900, by Mary Ebbetts Hunt: