FIG. 8 (top): Headdress. Shasta, California. C. 1900. Flicker feathers, string. L: 125.7 cm. Bowers Museum, inv. F85.16.5. FIG. 9 (above): Cog stone. Southern California. Pre-contact, Milling Stone Horizon (c. 6500–1500 BC). Stone. D: 7.6 cm. Bowers Museum, inv. 80001. 89 American portraits by Edward Curtis, the Bowers inquired if the Guangdong Museum would be interested in exhibiting actual Native American art. The Bowers had recently assembled such an exhibition from its collection and traveled it to Colombia’s Museo del Oro in Bogotá under the title Traditions and Transitions: Tribal Art of North America, so the show was effectively ready to go. Staging this exhibition had not been a calculated endeavor. Instead, the opportunity had come up organically during a visit to the Museo del Oro in 2010. A discussion of similarities between shamanic imagery of a Pre-Hispanic Colombian stone carving on display there with a rattle made by an unknown Haida carver from the Northwest Coast became the catalyst for an exchange of exhibitions between the two museums. With the purpose of informing one another of their respective indigenous heritages, Sacred Gold: Pre-Hispanic Art of Colombia was brought to Southern California in exchange for Traditions and Transitions, the first exhibition of Native American artwork to be presented in Colombia. Traditions and Transitions was shaped to highlight creativity and ingenuity in the art-making practice over a long period of time. An array of Navajo blankets and rugs ranged from the museum’s First Phase Chief Blanket to a Wide Ruin-style rug from 1980. Hopi katsinam dolls demonstrated innovations in carving. An 1890 Shalako Mana katsina doll (fig. 3) exemplified a break from an earlier, more rigid, carving tradition. This katsina exudes dynamism, even in comparison to a fully articulated Mudhead katsina doll carved approximately fifty years later. Using California baskets and Southwest pottery as examples, the exhibition also sought to convey the intimate relationship between artist, the sourcing of materials, and the transformation of these materials into beautiful works of art. Two lustrous blackware ceramic pieces, a large double-spouted wedding vase by artist Margaret Tafoya (fig. 7) and a plate with a repeating feather design by Maria Martinez, were especially notable to the Colombians, who have their own version of blackware ollas, dishes, and bowls used for serving and cooking. Prized artworks from the museum’s archaeological collections, including cog stones, a stone bowl inlaid with shell, and another carved with scalloped designs, were placed in the exhibition to establish the longstanding presence of ancient peoples in the Americas. More recent works of art in the exhibition were selected to affirm the continued lineage of art making, including works that provocatively question the boundaries of what traditional art is. Such is the case for a soapstone carving by Inuit artist Abraham Pov, created during a government-sponsored carving revival in the 1960s, and a wood with shell inlay potlatch bowl (fig. 13) by the artist Don “Lelooska” Smith, of mixed European and Cherokee heritage, who was granted carving rites by his adopted tribe, the Kwakiutl of British Colombia. Many of the underlying themes of the exhibition resonated with the Colombian audience familiar with an indigenous past, especially the ramifications of colonization and sensitivities to issues concerning native people today. This was evident by the inclusion of members from the Wounaan del Chocó indigenous community at the exhibition’s inauguration. Later, dialog during a public lecture about the commonalities between cultures, such as the sacredness of the pipe, were shared by an audience member who called for more unification of indigenous FIG. 10: Pipe bowl. Great Plains. C. 1880. Slate, catlinite, lead. L: 13 cm. Bowers Museum, inv. 86.30.18.
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