Grace Nicholson was one of the early American collectors of indigenous art. In 1914, when the Montclair Art Museum acquired part of her vast collection – now more than 4,000 objects – it set the institution on an important course that is today being realized.
For decades, that collection was displayed in one of the museum’s galleries. But in the past three years, there were internal conversations happening about taking the museum in a new direction and giving more space to indigenous voices. A restructuring resulted in a new executive director, the creation of an Native American advisory council, and a new curator, Laura Allen, who, among other things, was tasked with creating a new exhibition that would shake up the local art world.
This was the origin story of Interwoven Power, an exhibition three years in the making comprising more than 50 contemporary and historic indigenous works in a newly renovated gallery. The museum is not concealing its ambition to be one of the preeminent collections of indigenous art with an emphasis on Eastern Woodlands tribes and the show’s opening certainly made a powerful statement.
More than just an exhibition, Ira Wagner, the executive director, said the new show marks a “new chapter” for the institution.
“For me personally, working on this project has been an incredibly moving experience,” Wagner said. “I learned more about the works in our collection — the truths, often painful, of our shared history and the vibrancy and resilience of native people.”
Perhaps no artwork embodies the spirit of taking up more space than Eric Paul Riege’s 11-foot-earrings for a Native American god that dangle from the ceiling. The thought of a giant deity sitting squarely in the gallery set the tone for the entire exhibition.
“Maybe his ears are as big as the ceiling and his head is as big as the building,” said Riege, a Diné weaver, said about the imagined owner of the leather-and-faux earrings. “One thing my mother told me is that earrings are listening just as much as your ears do – they hold on knowledge.”
In addition to works by contemporary artists, visitors will see the museum’s collection of historical artworks in a whole new way. Often in anthropological exhibitions, Allen said, the indentification card describes an object impersonally as a “Kiowa fan,” for example, without acknowledging the artist. This “removes the individuality of the artist” in the minds of the viewer, Allen said. The museum is now following in the footsteps of other institutions in changing the way the art is displayed to emphasize its provenance.
“This museum has always held up these works for their aesthetic values and cultural values – they were always presented as art on par with non-native work,” Allen said. “One of the strategies that we implemented here is to highlight that each work was made by a particular artist – you’ll see the designation ‘the artist once known.’”
“We may not have their names today because of the legacy of colonization, but they were known in their communities,” Allen said.
One such work was a pair of leather moccasins – on loan from Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art – that was made by an unknown artist for Charles Journeycake, a leader of the Lenape (also known as the Delaware tribe) who organized an uprising in the 19th century. The metaphor of walking in another person’s shoes comes to mind here while the worn soles conjure the long journey that the tribe was forced to undertake, relocated to reservations in the Midwest.
“The tribe experienced waves and waves of displacement,” said Allen, who met Journeycake’s great-great-granddaughter Roberta Campbell Lawson at a café in downtown Tulsa. “The tenacity of that generation, and how it is felt through her lineage, moved me.”
Despite the long distance traveled by the Lenape, many native plants and animals that exist in their ancestral homelands are still significant to the tribe and appear as symbols on ceremonial clothing. One of those species is the wild turkey and a standout artwork is Rebecca Haff Lowry’s cape made of turkey feathers.
“Turkey feathers are the most common feathers used in making capes, according to the writing of Dutch colonists,” Lowry said. “The reason people stopped weaving is because the wild turkey population was almost decimated during colonial times.”
Not many know that the Delaware tribe was relocated to what is traditionally Cherokee land. It can be difficult for indigenous people to know their ancestry without research, according to artist Holly Wilson.
Wilson – who was standing near a map that charts the scattering of the Lenape to different places in the Midwest – used her pointer fingers to explain where her Delaware ancestors traveled and at what point her lineage splinters, landing her mother’s side in one part of Oklahoma and her father’s in another part.
Wilson is foremost a sculptor and I was interested to hear her perspective on figurative sculpture. The summer of George Floyd’s death was marked by conversation about not only about race but also about art as well – particularly sculptures. Public monuments that protesters believed promoted a caste system were being torn down. I asked Wilson what she thought about the future of figurative sculpture and whether the art world needed to move away from it.
“I can’t imagine not seeing a figure in art,” she said. “When you look at history, you have photographs and sculptures to look at people through time.”
For Wilson, who has both indigenous and European ancestry, the way to reconcile controversial works of art isn’t to hide them away in the basement of art museums, but to create a contemporary dialogue with them. This was the inspiration for her new installation in the rotunda that interacts with William Couper’s 1896 marble statue by draping a decorative fringe that is used in the Delaware tribe’s dancing ceremonies.
It is the first artwork visitors encounter in the exhibition. The statue depicts a Grecian woman weaving together a victory wreath for a hero. There are some who might wish to banish all of Couper’s works because of his association with Confederate monuments. But Wilson decided to curtain the statue with this woven material, emphasizing the similarities in weaving cultures.
“We really have more similarities than differences – especially in the way we care for our families,” Wilson said. “The important thing is showing both histories.”
