MUSEUM news INDIGENOUS BEAUTY Seattle—Drawn from the celebrated Native American art collection of Charles and Valerie Diker, Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection at the Seattle Art Museum features 122 masterworks representing tribes and First Nations across the North American continent. These captivating objects convey the extraordinary breadth and variety of Native American experience in North America. The exhibition shows the deep historical roots of Native art and its dynamism, as well as the living cultures and traditions of Native American groups through to the contemporary era. Indigenous Beauty emphasizes three interrelated themes—diversity, beauty, and knowledge—that relate both to the works’ original contexts and to the ways in which they might be experienced by non-Native visitors in a contemporary museum setting. The range of work represented includes ancient ivories from the Bering Strait region, Yup’ik and Aleut masks from the Western Arctic, Katsina dolls of the Southwest pueblos, Southwest pottery, sculptural objects from the Eastern Woodlands, decorative clothing from Eastern and Plains tribes, pictographic arts of the Plains, sculpture and weaving of the Northwest Coast, and Western baskets. A fully illustrated catalog presenting new research about the objects in the exhibition is edited by curator David Penney and features contributions from a number of renowned experts. Indigenous Beauty can be seen in Seattle until May 17, after which it will travel to a number of other North American venues. In conjunction with Indigenous Beauty, the museum is also presenting Seattle Collects Northwest Coast Native Art, a complementary exhibition of sixty Northwest Coast Native works drawn from local private collections, also on view until May 17. Iconic masks, wood sculpture, argillite carvings, and weavings reveal the unique styles developed over generations from pre-contact to the present by Native artists living along the Pacific coast and its inland waterways. Together these investigate the broad range of interest in collecting that embraces what is unique about the Northwest. Above: Mat. East Kalimantan, Borneo. C. 1950–1970. Rattan palm (calamus caesius) or rotan sega, natural dyes. Honolulu Museum of Art, gift of the Christensen Fund, 2001, inv. 10443.1. Pipe bowl. Muscogee (Creek) (?), Georgia or Alabama. C. 1780 Wood, brass (?), ferrous nails (?), tin. L: 15.2 cm. Diker no. 531. American Federation of Arts. Julian Scott ledger Artist B, Twelve High-Ranking Kiowa Men, ca. 1880. Pencil, colored pencil, ink on paper. 19 × 30.5 cm. Diker no. 059 LD. Situlilu (Rattlesnake) Katsina. Zuni, New Mexico. 1910–1930. Cottonwood, pine, gesso, pigment, horsehair, cornhusk, cotton. H: 36.8 cm. Diker no. 835. PLAITED POWER Honolulu—Weaving traditions used to make mats throughout the Pacific—makaloa from Hawai’i, i’e toga from Samoa, sese from Vanuatu, kabae (male dance mat) from Kiribati, jaki-ed from the Marshall Islands, as well as examples from the rainforests of Borneo, Philippines, and the Solomon Islands—are being highlighted in Shifting Values of Plaited Power, on view at the Honolulu Museum of Art through August 9, 2015. Drawn from the museum’s collection, the mats in the show highlight the region’s skilled weaving traditions. They are often ornamented with patterned, abstract designs or adorned with added fringe, feathers, or bits of yarn, each distinctive ethnic and regional identifiers. Respected and coveted as heirloom items, the common denominator between these weavings from far-flung islands is hand plaiting, done without a loom and originally made only of natural fibers such as pandanus (pandanus tectorius), rattan (calameae), and other sedge grasses. In day-to-day life, these mats were used to create barriers, to insulate floors and walls, or for sleeping. On formal occasions, some were used for receiving honored guests. Others may have been charged specifically for marking ceremonies and rituals, worn around the hips as body adornment, displayed as a sign of wealth, offered in gift exchanges, conveyed as economic currency, or presented in the investiture of chiefly titles. Though the styles differ, this is a tradition that unites the islands of the Pacific and much of Indonesia.
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