SEATTLE — A beautifully beaded Apsaalooke child’s jacket from the 1880s. Carvings, pottery, baskets, drawings, dolls and masks.
It’s a collection of American Indian art that you otherwise might have to travel the continent to see and a diverse array of artworks you wouldn’t often see all together.
People have just six more weeks to view this major exhibit at Seattle Art Museum.
“Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection” and the museum’s accompanying “Seattle Collects Northwest Coast Native Art” are displayed through May 17.
Barbara Brotherton, curator of American Indian art for SAM and a scholar well known to tribal artists in Snohomish County, said the exhibit affords a rare opportunity for art lovers in the region.
While people living near the Salish Sea have good access to art from coastal tribes, a collection such as the Diker gives viewers a chance to see native art from throughout North America.
Charles and Valerie Diker’s collection is well preserved and in fine condition. It’s difficult to comprehend that most of what is displayed is well over 100 years old. The Dikers originally collected modern art and later developed a passion for American Indian culture.
Selections from the collection previously were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
This first touring exhibit, organized by the American Federation of Arts, features 122 masterworks from the collection, representing tribes and first nations from across the United States and Canada.
Much of the work displayed in the show at SAM is from the 1800s, after contact with Euro-American fur trappers and traders. Glass beads, obtained in trade, play a big part in some of the decorative clothing. Pen and ink is used in drawings of battles with the U.S. Cavalry.
“Indigenous Beauty” emphasizes three themes — diversity, beauty and knowledge. Organized into 11 clusters, the exhibit shows common formal and functional qualities based on geographic and cultural factors.
Other highlights include a 100-year-old Yup’ik mask from the Arctic with fish, seal, bird and human hand elements; black clay pots from the 1930s by a Pueblo couple Julian and Maria Martinez of New Mexico; and, from the Great Lakes region, a 200-year-old wood cup decorated with beaver motifs that had been threaded on an Ojibwa man’s belt.
The complementary exhibit of 60 Northwest Coast works, drawn in part from local private collections, involves traditional and contemporary pieces that include masks, wood sculpture, jewelry, argillite carvings and weavings by artists living along the Pacific coast and its inland waterways.
Contemporary highlights include a series by Makah artist Greg Colfax of five silk-screen prints that tell the story of “The Hunter and the Wolf” as well as Tlingit artist Preston Singletary’s works in glass and Bill Reid’s silver jewelry. Be sure to see the traditional Coast Salish bowls and baskets, drums and masks.
In addition, don’t forget to descend one floor to see the museum’s permanent collection of Northwest Coast Indian art.
The catalog for “Indigenous Beauty” is for sale at the museum and includes essays by Brotherton and many other American Indian art scholars.
While the quality and diversity of the older art in this touring exhibit is tremendous, one can’t help but be saddened that the people who first bought or traded for these pieces long ago did not bother to record the names of the artists.
This fact makes contemporary American Indian art even more special, because these artists are receiving the attention they deserve.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
“Indigenous Beauty” at SAM
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., Seattle. Open 10 a.m. Wednesdays through Sundays and until 9 p.m. on Thursdays. More information is at www.seattleartmuseum.org.
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