ART on view 70 FIG. 8 (below): Ernest Smith (1907–1975, Seneca). The Council with Tadodaho When the League was Formed. Tonawanda Reservation, New York. 1936. Watercolor on paper. 55.2 x 46.4 cm (frame). Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester, NY, cat. no. 36.359.4/MR 616. on contemporary Iroquois art, the show modestly disavows any claim to an encyclopedic treatment of the subject. As its title suggests, its intent is to lead viewers on an exploratory tracking expedition through the centuries. It does so through the display of more than 500 works from some sixty lenders in the United States, Canada, and Europe, including rarely seen seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Iroquois works from the National Museum of Denmark, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the Kunstkamera in Saint Petersburg, and various institutions in Great Britain and Germany. Objects collected by Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) and preserved in Albany, Rochester, and Copenhagen have been reunited for the first time in this exhibition. As in most other indigenous North American societies, “art” was not an autonomous domain in Iroquois culture. Visual forms were produced by men and women according to the prevailing division of labor by gender, with men producing mostly representational images in pictographic drawings or carving them from wood or stone, whereas the women’s work was focused on pottery, basketry, and textiles along with associated decorative techniques such as porcupine quill appliqué or moosehair false embroidery. While Western concepts of art were adopted by the Iroquois in the course of four centuries of contact with the newcomers, the old holistic approach was maintained (and to some extent also revived) with respect to many traditional forms, such as the carved or braided masks used in healing ceremonies. Out of respect for present Iroquois concerns, the exhibition does not include any False Face masks, even though these are regarded by segments of the Western “tribal arts” community as the hallmark of Iroquois art. However, their existence and significance are acknowledged in two historic Iroquois drawings. Good use is made of the fact that for two centuries Iroquois artists have produced works in Western genres reflecting their own traditions and identity as well as their own past and present. These range from David Cusick’s illustrations for his Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations (1827) to Jesse Cornplanter’s drawings from the early 1900s and Ernest Smith’s watercolors and paintings for the Seneca Arts Project of the 1930s to a host of contemporary artists. These works may not share the same style and vision, but they all derive from a rootedness in an Iroquoian intellectual tradition. While the exhibition outlines Iroquois history and culture in a FIG. 6: Jesse J. Cornplanter (1889–1957, Seneca), Iroquois Dancer, Cattaraugus Reservation, New York, U.S.A., 1901. Watercolor on paper. 18 x 25 cm. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, cat. no. 997-26- 10/74611 (Harriet Maxwell Converse Collection). FIG. 7 (left): Natasha Smoke Santiago (Mohawk), Emerging Corn (ó:nenhste). 2012. Densite, acrylic, corn husks. H: 40.6 cm. Property of the artist. FIG. 9: Ryan Rice (Mohawk), Lunchbox with images of the Four Kings. C. 2000. Metal box, painted. W: 19.1 cm. Property of the artist.
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