A Little Bit of Southwest Art

This post is a bit late.  Dec. 31, a new friend and I went to the Arizona State Museum located on the Campus of Arizona University.  It was a good day to go because the college students were still on break and parking around the college was free. The attraction was a small exhibit of photography of Southwest Indians by Edward S. Curtis.  I had read who Curtis was in studying American Indian history.  So when the opportunity came to actually see some of his art, I was glad to have the chance.  Edward S. Curtis was a professional photographer in the East.  He took an avid interest in the history and plight of the American Indian as white settlers pushed West.  So he felt the Indian was a dying race and would soon be totally gone.  He wanted to take the opportunity to preserve their history through pictures before they really were gone.  So in 1898, he headed West. A story is that it took him a long time to convince the Indians to let him take their picture.  The Indians, especially the elderly, were very superstitious and believed that when the flash went off, the camera box stole their soul.  When a few of the younger chiefs let themselves be photographed and saw that they did not change in any way after all, the rest came around and agreed to be photographed.  Curtis did mostly head shots and captured the personalities of the Indians.  When you look at the portraits you wonder what the stories are behind the eyes. They are the old beautiful brown photographs that show perfect shading and light to capture the details.  It was really interesting and I hope I can find some of his photographs of the Northwest Indians.

 

 

The museum houses a permanent collection of American Indian baskets and pottery.  The basket collection is one of 25,000. The history dates back as far as 6,000 years.  The pottery collection is 20,000 whole-vessels, which doesn’t include the other thousands of fragments that have been excavated, date back 2,000 years.  Just the size of some of the vessels and the intricate designs and shapes of them and the baskets, as well, are all so symmetrically perfect that it boggles the mind. How did they do it? They didn’t have books with written instructions and pictures and they didn’t have paper of plastic templates to cut from!  Quite impressive!

There is also a permanent exhibit area that tells the history of the Southwest Indians thru story and various displays.  It, too, was very nicely done.  We enjoyed taking in this bit of history.  I have really become interested in the history of the American Indian since we have traveled out West so many times.  So the museum was a nice treat.