MUSEUM NEWS
84
ABOVE: Bird stone.
Ohio. 2500 BC–AD 400.
Banded slate.
Penn Museum, gift of Francis C. Macauley,
1890, inv. 2523.
LEFT: Effigy bottle.
Scott or Mississippi County (?),
Missouri. 13th–15th century.
Terracotta. H: 45.7 cm.
Penn Museum, purchased from Edward
Drinker Cope, 1892, inv. 11584.
TOP: Feather headdress.
Lakota (Sioux), North or
South Dakota. C. 1900.
Eagle feathers, down, felt, porcupine
quills, red cloth, glass beads, yarn,
ermine skins, horsehair. H: 66 cm.
Eugene and Clare Thaw
Collection, Fenimore Art Museum,
Cooperstown, NY, inv. T0060.
ABOVE: Globular basket,
titled Beacon Lights. By
Louisa Keyser, Dat So La
Lee (c. 1831–1925).
Washoe, Carson City,
Nevada. Made July 1,
1904–September 6, 1905.
Willow, western redbud, bracken
fern root. D: 28.6 cm.
Eugene and Clare Thaw
Collection, Fenimore Art Museum,
Cooperstown, NY, inv. T0751.
Moundbuilders
PHILADELPHIA—The Great Pyramids in Egypt, Stonehenge
in England, and the city of Teotihuacan were
all built long ago but are famed the world over. Less
well known but also extraordinary achievements are
the earthen mounds that dot the landscape of North
America, from the East to the Midwest to the South.
These rise seventy to 100 feet in height and some are
more than 5,000 years old. The sizes, shapes, and purposes
of these mounds have varied greatly over time
and geographical location. Some have been used for
burials, others have been centers of trade and community
gathering, and still others have served as the
foundations for important buildings or activities, especially
of a sacred and ritual nature. Many thousands of
mounds have been discovered,
from those at Cahokia,
the massive Native American
city outside Saint Louis, Missouri,
to smaller mound sites
like Smith Creek in Mississippi,
where the Penn Museum currently excavates.
Moundbuilders: Ancient Architects of North America,
an exhibition at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia
until December 2017, tells the often enigmatic
story of more than fi ve millennia of Native American
moundbuilding activity through photographs, archival
excavation records, and more than sixty artifacts excavated
at mound sites. The exhibition includes worked
stone objects believed to be used as weights on spear
throwers; ceramics such as pots formed in the shape
of human effi gy fi gures; and seashell items including
pendants and gorgets. The latter bear sacred designs
associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex—
a system of signs and symbols shared among
different groups living hundreds of miles apart in the
years between AD 1000 and 1500. This group and
their predecessors have been relatively
little studied, and much remains to be discovered
about these fascinating ancient
peoples and their remarkable art forms.
The Thaw Collection
NEW YORK CITY—Eugene V.
Thaw has long been recognized
as a leading dealer and collector of
Old Master drawings and paintings
as well as contemporary art.
Having started a gallery on West
44th Street after WWII, he moved
his business to Madison Avenue
in 1962 and developed it into a
place of international repute, representing
famed artists and selling
to institutions such as the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the
Museum of Modern Art. His personal
passion had long been Old
Master, Renaissance, and German
Expressionist art, but also came to
include Eurasian antiquities. Thaw
and his wife, Clare, fi rst began acquiring
indigenous American art in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1987.
From the outset, they approached
American Indian material culture
as fi ne art, applying the same exacting standards of
connoisseurship that they applied to other areas of
their collection. They have engaged in a thirty-year
quest to assemble exceptional works of art produced
by cultures throughout North America. In 1991 the
Thaws decided to share their collection with the
American public by donating it to the Fenimore Art
Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is on
permanent view. They have continued to add to their
donation there ever since.
American Indian Art from the Fenimore Museum:
The Thaw Collection, at the Met until October 8,
2017, highlights thirty-eight Native American masterworks
from the Thaw Collection drawn from the holdings
of the Fenimore. It features landmark creations
in a range of media by gifted artists across North
America—from the Arctic to the Southwest and the
Eastern Woodlands to the Pacifi c Northwest—and encompasses
close to 1,200 years of artistic tradition and
innovation. Thaw is an honorary trustee of the Met,
and he and Clare are benefactors to many New York
City arts institutions, including the Morgan Library
and Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, as well
as their own charities. Now in his ninetieth year, this
exhibition honors Thaw’s contributions to the Met and
to the city as a whole.