Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: I'm April Wallace, the features editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. And today I'm here with Mindy Bisaw and Jamie Powell of Crystal Bridges. If you both would mind introducing yourselves and telling us what your expertise is.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Okay, I'll go first. Hi, I'm Mindy Bisa. I am the director of research fellowships and university partnerships and curator of american art at Crystal Bridges. I am the co curator of this exhibition with Jamie, and my background and expertise is in western art. So I moved here from Cody, Wyoming. I've been thinking about Art of the west for a long time, and about three, four years ago now, Jamie, it's hard to keep track. I called Jamie and said, I have this idea for an exhibition and I need a co curator, and would you consider doing this? And so I'm gonna turn it over to Jamie. Who actually said yes.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Thankfully, I did. I did. And now we're in the thick of it. So, my name is Jamie Powell. I am a citizen of the Osage Nation, and I serve as the associate director for curatorial affairs and curator of indigenous art at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.
My expertise is in native north american art, specifically in material culture and historic collections of the Plains region, but also contemporary native and indigenous art. And it has been a pleasure to work with Mindy and with crystal bridges on this project that has been challenging and exhausting in a really good way. And I think it's an exciting moment for us, but also our field to kind of dig into some of these really complicated questions around, you know, what it means, what american art means, and how we're trying to redefine it in different ways. And I expand the conversations we're having within museum spaces.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. So tell me the heart of things for knowing the west. What was the idea behind the exhibit, and what did you want people to understand about american art?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Also talking about the title. So we called this exhibition knowing the west. And I should say that Jamie and I have a seven member curatorial advisory council who also were very influential for shaping the themes, thinking about big ideas, and creating the checklist. So this came from conversations with them. And Scott Manning Stevens had once said, you can't get around the myth of the west. You're just going to have to embrace it. And so we started with the notion that everyone knows the west to some extent, whether they've learned it in popular culture, books, maybe they live in the west. They grew up in the west. They have deep experience with the west. There are so many different ways of knowing the west. We wanted to start there, embrace all of the preconceived notions, the experience, and then add on to that. As a curator that thinks about western art, what has bothered me a bit is that it's so often taken out of context. These are artists that may have journeyed to the west in the 1850s, sixties. They go back to New York, paint what their perception is of the west or what their audiences perceive of the west, but without any of the context. Albert Biershet went to the west. He collected native american art from, who knows? Could have been people that he met, from trading posts, from all of these things, brought them back to his studio. But we don't think about Albert Biershet in the context of native american art. But that's what his studio looked like. So to bring back these dialogues and conversations were really important to thinking about building context. And I'll say one more thing before I turn over to Jamie. Another aspect of this that the advisors really embraced was we wanted to hold historic art and periods accountable. So often in exhibitions, we've seen trends lately where contemporary artists are really brought in to build on the diversity or offer new perspectives. And we felt it was really important to do that with historians art. So really looking at the 19th, early 20th century and having those conversations and dialogues through artwork from that time, that builds the context, yet really addresses how relevant this is today. But doing that through interpretation, multiple voices, and the objects themselves. Jamie, what would you add?
[00:05:12] Speaker C: I think that was a great answer, and I don't need to add anything.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: So by the myth of the west, it's this very big thing. Our ideas of what America was before it was more people coming in from Europe and settling these places. And so I assume that when you say the myth, it's the ideas that we've had from, like, tv and other types of media. You know, those first preconceptions from, like, if you're not. Even if you're not from the US thinking that we're all cowboys, maybe, you know, because of how we've been portrayed for years and years. Is that kind of what you mean?
[00:06:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I think in a. In a large way it is that, you know, kind of there are these kind of, like, popular. Like, in the popular imagination, our ideas of the west are largely shaped by media representations. And, you know, there's. We wanted to kind of disrupt the binary of cowboys and Indians and also the idea of the west as a masculine place that was built by men.
And so we've done, you know, we've really worked hard to include as many named women artists, native and non native artists, as much as we can, to show that these women were vital to the creation of not only the west, but of the nation. And in addition to these popular representations that we see in film and television, or that people were seeing in kind of these, like, novels and these caricatures that were created, it's also part of a nation building project. The myth of kind of manifest destiny, or the idea that the west was an empty, vast space that was meant for the United States to colonize is also something that we wanted to challenge in this. And to say that is part of our history. But if we did a little bit deeper, we can say, okay, that was a political or rhetorical strategy that was being utilized, and art played a big role in kind of helping to make popular or to help mainstream Americans see the west as a space that was meant for them to go and settle in.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: So tell me about the works that you have in the exhibition. How many are there, and what is the variety?
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, it's so vast. We're in the midst of installation right now, and so every time one object takes a little bit longer than I think it's going to, to put on the wall, I'm like, why do we have more than 120 objects in this exhibition?
So it's very rich and varied. So 120 objects, native and non native artists. And that blend of those conversations is so important. So, as Jamie mentioned, more than half of the exhibition is comprised of art made by women artists. More than half is art by native american artists.
There are textiles, baskets, pottery, paintings, sculpture, saddles. Never thought I would say that in an exhibition I curated. But thanks to one of our advisors, Michael Grauer, he said, you know, you can really tell a lot of stories through Saddles. These very things that you're trying to say about intercultural exchange. And many artists from lots of different backgrounds making a single form in that single form of five saddles will be able to tell those rich stories. So saddles in the exhibition, prints, watercolors, cradle boards, beadwork. I mean, it's just boysenheid.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Don't forget the toys.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. Toys. So they're really. I think there is going to be something for everyone to have that kind of visceral response and really gravitate to, and then there'll be something right next to that that they thought, wow, I've never seen this before. I've learned a lot in putting this exhibition together. So.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Jamie, do you have a few standouts in your mind of interesting or unexpected objects.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I think one of the most exciting pieces in the show is the winter count that opens the exhibition. And when we were working with our curatorial advisory committee and thinking about kind of what parameters are we going to put on this show? We can't tell an expansive history of the west from, you know, the beginning of time to today.
You know, as Mindy mentioned, we wanted to kind of hold ourselves to this, you know, a more historic moment and to not ask contemporary artists to kind of do the heavy lifting of responding to this and, you know, telling more critical stories. We wanted to be able to. To do that through the works themselves. And as we were talking about, how do we frame this? The idea of using a winner count and this northern plains tradition of marking time and marking significant events in community really rose to the four and helped us frame the show and kind of how our visitors enter the show from the perspective of indigenous historians who were kind of marking time and insignificant events. And so kind of even just the shift of not using the date of the completion of the transcontinental railroad or the end of the indian wars or these kind of dates that we mark in western history as significant, but using this object in this document as the parameters and the framing device for the show is really exciting. And I've never seen it in person before. Mindy's now seen it because she's there for installation.
And.
Yeah.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Jamie, will you tell April more about what a winter count is? Because when I have been chatting with individuals and I say, oh, this winter count is wonderful.
It takes them a little while, but then they'll say, can you explain what a winter count is? So it marks time. This particular example is from 1785 to 1922. So it's 130 years of history, a single picture for each year. So, Jamie, add to that.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: Yeah. So the winter count in this exhibition was created by Joseph no two horns. And what's really interesting is that it is really a communally created document to mark time and to mark important events in the community. And so what would happen is, you know, people would come together and talk about, you know, what was the most important thing that happened this year within our community, and then there would be an image, or what people might call a glyph created to kind of mark this year. And so one year it was the year the stars fell, and there are images of stars, and it was when there was a meteor shower.
Another year, maybe it was a disease that came through. And so there's a year where, like, smallpox is depicted, and that was devastating. To communities or to that particular community. And so it wasn't always, you know, what you might think was marked. Sometimes it was like the year the crops were really abundant, and so there'll be an image of corn for that year, but it really wasn't decided by a particular individual, but it was really kind of this, like, communal understanding of, okay, this is what was significant in this year. And so in that way, it's not marking time in a linear way, but in a more kind of holistic and communal manner of these are the events that kind of define our times. And I think that is really relevant to us today. Right. Because there are these important moments in all of our lives where we can say, like, I knew what I was doing when that happened, you know, for instance, 911, or, you know, even more recently, Covid in 2020. Like, we all kind of remember, you know, what our lives were at that moment. And so there are these histories that we share together and, you know, rather than particular dates marking time, thinking about how events mark time. And it really played into kind of the oral history of traditions of northern Plains communities and how, you know, these histories were passed down and how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation. And that's something that we hope to also encourage our visitors to think through. And I'll pass it back to Mindy, maybe to talk about the community engagement space within the exhibition.
Yeah.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: We used the winter count as inspiration to think through. How do we also engage with the audiences that are coming through the museum and through the exhibition? And so in one space, there's a chance to rest, to sit down, and then also engage with whoever you came with. So in your small community, as well as perhaps chat with those next to you. And we're asking individuals to think about what is the most important thing that happened with you and your family and your community this year. How would you capture that moment? In a drawing and on these large rolls of paper, you can really leave your drawing, and you could talk to the individuals who are sitting next to you. It's a large table for twelve to 15 people and see how what's important in your family and community relates or works with what's important for someone else's. So it's also a way of connecting across community.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. I was thinking, as you described the winter count, how we have photo of the year in many publications, and how beneficial it would be on a smaller scale, like within one town, to talk about locally what was most important, because that's such a good exercise to think about you know, maybe even solutions for things that are ongoing.
So I love that engagement. I'm glad that you have it.
Mindy, was there one or two works that stood out for you? I know it must be very hard to choose with so many.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yes, it is very hard.
I will go back to and again, because I'm right in the midst of installation, one of the initial contexts, or I would say concepts for the exhibition, going back to the example of Albert Biershet that I mentioned earlier. So there's a large painting in the exhibition of Yosemite, unknown to us from the Gilgamesh. It was from the 1870s. And in thinking through, how do we. It has one or two little animals in the painting, no figures, but it's a grand landscape, lots of drama going on in the mountains and the light and the clouds and thought, how do we help visitors understand?
When Albert Biersha went to the west, he was engaging with a lot of people. A lot of people had to help him get there. He might have ridden partially on train, but then it wasn't an unpopulated space, despite the way he's representing it. So we have borrowed baskets, one from Jamie's collection, the hood, by, in particular Elizabeth Hickox and her daughter Louise. Or Louisa.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: Louisa.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Louisa.
And placed these baskets in front of the beer shot painting. And so it's very difficult in the exhibition to see one without the others.
And so thinking about the people who lived in the space where Biershet is painting for generations and generations before he came to see Yosemite. And how do you repopulate those landscapes and create that context for even the way he saw the actual landscape would have been with people and with people with him at that same time. He wasn't by himself out in the wilderness. And so these moments of dialogue are really what is exciting at this moment in seeing the exhibition coming together. So it's almost hard for me to talk about one object without another. The winter count is one of those that is a standalone, but everything else really sings in those dialogues. And so valise by Nellie Tubear gates next to shoes made by a Lakota woman and how these objects are coming together where a painting might be on, like right behind you or right next to you. So that's what's exciting for me to see at the moment.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. I love that. Love those.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: I'm sorry, I misspoke. It is Louise. Sorry. There is another. There is a Louisa. And that's Louisa Kaiser.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Right. And she's right.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: Whose basket is next to Louise and Elizabeth? Hickox.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Okay. Very good.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:33] Speaker C: So it's, you know, it's really beautiful to see these works in conversation and to think about people who are living at the same time, kind of spending time in the same landscapes and the different works that were produced from those places based on their own individual knowledge, experience, training, and relationship with the land.
And I think that's something that we can all relate to. And it's actually one of the things that I love about working in museums and why I love working with art, because we can all come to an interaction with a work of art and have a completely unique experience that is based on our lives and our understandings of the world and our place within it.
And that doesn't take away from, you know, what the artist meant or what other people get from it, but it adds to. And when you put them in conversation, you start to begin to kind of add to your own understandings and expand your own knowledge, you know, and it's not. It's not a push to. We're not pushing people to rethink anything or to try and change their minds, but what we really hope that people get out of this is, you know, additional understandings that they can. They can be additive, and they can expand their understandings of the west and of, you know, american art in general.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Mindy, is there anything that you're hoping people will get out of it as well?
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Same as what Jamie said. And I think the other part of this is, I would say, is the relevancy piece. So despite the fact that most of these objects in the exhibition have been made more than 100 years ago, they're so lively and full of life today. And so the exhibition design is bright colors, not dusty browns, but rather purples and roses. And one of them, I don't know, it's kind of almost a tutti frutti type of color, that they're unexpected. They're meant to feel really fresh. And today, and the objects in those colors and in the way that they are individually celebrated, I think all the objects really stand on their own. Despite what we're talking about with these conversations, they're vibrant. And so to feel like this is also part of what is happening today, that we are still part of these histories that have happened in the past.
And with the interpretation in the exhibition, we've invited many different voices, even in the catalog. I think we have 21 authors in the catalog. And just to also show the different perspectives and pieces of relevance, Shawndean Brown, for example, spoke about who's a Danae scholar spoke about a Danae weaving in the exhibition. So showing not just cultural relevance, but also this is someone thinking and working today that's able to really offer a perspective for the rest of us that we might not have. So those conversations, I think, are really important as well.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Well, this has been really lovely, and I really can't wait to see it. And before you said that about color, I didn't realize that I had something in my mind, a preconceived notion about what would be there on view. But I'm excited to see all the art and the objects and see what it has to hold.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see you when you come to the press preview, correct?
[00:24:30] Speaker A: That would be great. Yes.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Okay, perfect.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:33] Speaker C: And I also just want to give a shout out to the third member of our curatorial team, Larissa Randall, who has been the third leg in this stool, chopping up the exhibition and making sure that it comes to fruition and, you know, having her perspective and, you know, as an emerging scholar and now someone who's in a graduate program, you know, kind of pushing us to kind of challenge our own training and our own understandings and has just been really wonderful. And, you know, I think speaks to the power of kind of mutual learning experiences that can happen when we work across generations and across disciplinary training and fields of study.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Sounds like a very collaborative experience and that you've gotten different things from everyone who's involved. Well, thank you both so much. I appreciate the work that you've put in on this, and I'm sure we will all enjoy it very much.
