Object History 127 FIG. 8: Proposed Seahawks logo redesign by Marvin Oliver. After an illustration in the NorthWest Indian News, September 1975. FIG. 9: Kwakwaka’wakw, mask from fig. 4 in its open form. H: 91.4 cm. Photo courtesy of the Hudson Museum, University of Maine. mask is paired with the Seahawks logo, the only work in the exhibition by a non-Native artist. Since Seattle is on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish and is named for a prominent Duwamish/ Suquamish (Coast Salish) leader, Chief Sealth, it might have been more appropriate for the NFL to have taken inspiration from a Coast Salish design. Still, the journey of this Kwakwaka’wakw mask has been a fascinating one, and we cannot help but wonder what other artists it may inspire in the future. I would like to thank my students for their initial enthusiasm; the Bill Holm Center and Burke Museum staff, especially Katie Bunn-Marcuse and Cathy Morris, for their enthusiasm and help with the blog; Gretchen Faulkner for her generosity and assistance with our research on the mask, which is ongoing; and Jonathan Fogel for sharing his research on the Betty Parsons Gallery exhibit, also ongoing. NOTES 1. The mask was first publicly identified in an article titled “The Seahawk Helmet Scrimmage” by Neil Modie, which ran in the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, October 10, 1975. 2. See Viola Garfield, The Seattle Totem Pole. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980; and Kate Duncan, 1001 Curious Things: 1001 Curious Things: Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Native American Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. 3. Bill Holm, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, UW Press 1965 4. See Pauline Hillaire, A Totem Pole History: The Work of Lummi Carver Joe Hillaire. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press; 2013. 5. The logo was unveiled on June 17, 1975, and trademarked under USTM serial number 73080791. 6. Eldon Barrett, “Seattle Grid Team Will Be ‘Seahawks,” UPI wire story, June 1975. 7. See Emmett O'Connell, “The Time When the King County Arts Commission Complained About the Cultural Insensitivity of the Seahawks Logo,” Olympia Time (olywa.blogspot.com), November 28, 2013. 8. NorthWest Indian News, September 1975. Contemporary Coast Salish artist Shaun Peterson recently posted a video featuring his own rendition of the Seahawks logo using Coast Salish design elements (see fig. 7). 9. Robert Bruce Inverarity, Art of the Northwest Coast Indians, University of California Press, 1950. 10. It should be noted that the characteristic painted number for the Museum of the American Indian is not visible on this object. 11. Lebel’s notebook in which he documented many of these acquisitions, primarily Yup’ik masks, is preserved in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, inv 70.2007.11.1. 12. Patrick Wilcken. Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Father of Modern Anthropology, Penguin, 2010. 13. Betty Parsons Gallery, Northwest Coast Indian Painting, New York, 1946, p. 3. 14. The archive for the Betty Parsons Gallery is held by the Smithsonian. The documents in it have been digitized but the photos have not. A request for photo documentation is pending. 15. If the mask was included in the 1946 Parsons Gallery exhibition, it would make sense that it would have been prominent enough at the time to have attracted attention for this purpose. 16. The mask still bears Stafford’s collection number, 70PS02. 17. It was LACMA cat. no. Ex85.43 while in Symbols of Prestige. The catalog cites Stafford as the owner, but it was then part of the Palmer estate.
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