MUSEUM NEWS
38
ABOVE: Chief’s robe.
Salish, British Columbia.
Before 1828.
Mountain goat wool, woolly dog hair,
plant fi ber, black bear hair (?), local
and possibly imported dyes.
124 x 178 cm.
Kulttuurien Museo, Helsinki, inv. VK-1.
Photo: Markku Haverinen.
BELOW LEFT: Gelede mask.
Yoruba, Nigeria.
Wood, pigment. H: 48.3 cm.
Charles Derby Collection.
Courtesy of UMCA.
BELOW: Fred Wilson
(b. 1954, United States),
Untitled (Malawi), 2009.
Acrylic on canvas. 68.9 x 101.9 cm.
Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, courtesy
Pace Gallery.
Courtesy of UMCA
The Fabric of Our Land:
Salish Weaving
VANCOUVER—For generations Salish peoples of British
Columbia, Washington, and Oregon have been
harvesting the resources of their territories and transforming
them into robes of rare beauty and power.
Symbols of identity, these acted as legal documents
and were visible signifi ers of knowledge holders and
respected individuals. Today most are stored away in
museums around the world, and these masterworks
are rarely seen. They have much knowledge to share
and many stories to tell. Musqueam representatives
asked the Museum of Anthropology at the University
of British Columbia to create an exhibition of these
rare and important textiles to inspire weavers and
share part of this rich legacy with the public at large.
The result was The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving,
which will be on view until April 15, 2018.
Salish weavers selected ten nineteenth-century
blankets to be part of this unique exhibition. These
were brought back for the occasion to their region of
origin from Finland, Scotland, England, and the eastern
United States. Together they form a once-in-alifetime
opportunity to experience the unique design
of Salish blankets up close and to learn the rich history
and signifi cance of weaving in this region. The exhibition
is a journey through the past two hundred years
of Salish weaving, from the early 1800s through to
today’s vibrant renaissance.
5 Takes and 42 Flags
AMHERST—The University Museum
of Contemporary Art at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
is presenting a duel exhibition,
5 Takes on African Art / 42
Flags by Fred Wilson. It features
African art drawn from the collection
of Charles Derby, a UMass
alumnus and Northampton resident
who has been collecting African art
since the 1970s, in tandem with an
exhibition Flags of Africa by the
renowned African American artist
Fred Wilson. A contemporary
focus is brought to the exhibition
by involving Fred Wilson to “respond”
to the historic collection of
African art. The student curators
of the project come from different
fi elds of study, bringing a multiplicity of viewpoints.
The exhibition presents the objects on display not only
as visually compelling works of art in their own right,
but also as objects of encounter that can “tell” stories
about the broader social contexts and often fraught
global histories through which they have journeyed. In
Wilson’s “Flags of Africa” response to these objects,
the artist strips color from fl ags of present-day African
countries, leaving only the graphic stripes, stars,
crescents, and shields, applied in black acrylic paint
directly on raw canvas. All of the nations identifi ed by
these paintings were European colonies, and Wilson
is clearly asking questions about the function of fl ags,
what they signify, and to what extent these made-up
symbols represent the people, history, and geography
that was delineated by a colonial master. The exhibition
will be on view until April 29, 2018, with a hiatus
from December 11, 2017–January 22, 2018.