HEARTS OF OUR PEOPLE
Five years in the making, Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists opens in June at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Five years in the making, Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists opens in June at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
By Joshua Rose In March of 2013 at the Heard Indian Market, Jill Ahlberg Yohe, then a curator at the Saint Louis Museum of Art, sat down in the booth of artist Teri Greeves and the two discussed something they had both noticed throughout their respective careers in Native art: specifically, while it is well-known that a majority of materials in museum collections across the country were made by women, neither could find any exhibitions that talked about this fact.
The conversation sparked action and soon the two started laying the groundwork for what would eventually become Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, an exhibition of 115 contemporary and historic works of art opening this month at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and then traveling to several other important venues across the country.
“Women have always been central to Native art though their contributions have largely gone unrecognized,” says Ahlberg Yohe. “This exhibition challenges prevailing assumptions in Native art scholarship, which for the most part has considered women artists to be anonymous. By contrast, Hearts of Our People delves into how the works on view are tied to the intricate personal and cultural histories of each
individual artist.”
The exhibition will include sculpture, video, digital arts, photography, textiles, beadwork, pottery, basketry and decorative arts drawn from MIA’S permanent collection and loans from 30 other institutions and private collections. Additionally, the museum has commissioned textile artists DY Begay and Anita Fields to create original pieces for the exhibition.
Once Greeves and Ahlberg Yohe sat down and started planning the exhibition, it became immediately clear that such a show of this magnitude would require input from a variety of people from many different professions, backgrounds and geographic areas. Soon, they formed an advisory committee of 21 Native artists and Native and non-natives scholars from across North America to “provide insights from a wide range of nations at every step in the curatorial process.”
“The way these exhibitions typically go is that one curator comes up with an idea, formulates the idea and then runs it by an ‘advisory committee’ then continues with their own plan,” says Greeves. “However, as a Kiowa person I know I can’t speak for everyone. An exhibition like this needed people to go back into their own communities, women with expertise and voice, to help answer the question what should this show be about? We asked one woman that question and she cried and said she had been waiting 30 years to hear that.”
Greeves and Ahlberg Yohe along with the advisory board eventually divided the exhibition into three major themes: Legacy, Relationships and Power. Legacy will “examine the ways in which Native women artists acknowledge their lineage, making works that simultaneously embody the experience of previous generations, address the present moment and speak to the future.” Relationships will explore the “concept that bonds exist between the human world to include animals, the weather, the earth and other entities the Western world does not often attribute with volition and agency.” Lastly Power will “encompass works created for diplomacy and influence, to empower others, and for the empowerment of oneself.”
Hearts of Our People is groundbreaking on a number of different levels, besides being the first major
exhibition to honor the artistic achievements of Native women. Along with the strong, active and continuing participation by the members of the advisory board, the exhibition has provided much-needed scholarship when it comes to discovering identifiable names of artists of many historic works.
“We went through more than 20 museum collections and documented all of them,” says Ahlberg Yohe. “We would take photos of what we saw and put them in a drop box for all the advisory board to see. What we found will certainly help progress scholarship in a variety of areas. Also, we looked for historic works that defy the stereotypes of the anonymous Native women. We looked through historic records, including a lot of good work done by scholars, to bring to light masterpieces from the 19th century made by individual woman artists who were actually known. Not anonymous but women of full dimensionality. And what we found were many artists who were also formidable members of their community.”
One of the more interesting discoveries made by Ahlberg Yohe and Greeves is that there were strong and active carvers in the Pacific Northwest, an art form traditionally thought of as being done by males. Artists such Ellen Neel and Freda Diesing were active in the middle decades of the 20th century and were very accomplished and highly regarded in their field.
“This was always considered a male domain because people tend to look at totem poles and more monumental pieces but there were also women carvers doing magnificent work at these times,” says Ahlberg Yohe. “But you have to remember that a majority of Northwest coast art was made by women, like blankets, clothing, and hats. So it makes sense that they were carvers too.”
For Greeves, the importance of this exhibition is that it will start the conversation about the role women have played throughout the history of Native art. The exhibition is not by any means the final word on the subject; rather it is only the first word. And, for all involved, a hope that it’s the first
of many.
“For me, this exhibition is an honoring,” says Greeves. “It’s not a celebration. It’s much deeper than that. It’s an honoring, in the way of an Indian person means that. We are happy. Our hearts are full. But this is serious business. In that honoring, there is also pain, among everything else that is in there. And there’s also respect. And the beauty of this show is that it begins and ends in Indian Country. The first Minneapolis and the last Oklahoma. The ending is as brilliant as the beginning.”
Greeves also sees this honoring as important but stresses that it isn’t meant to validate these art forms as that is something that wasn’t needed in the first place.
“It actually doesn’t matter,” says Greeves. “Native women back home create and make this world and they don’t need us to validate it. There is a value of what they do in the home communities and their ability to teach, to create is important. But this work wasn’t meant to be shown under glass, it’s meant to be danced in, to be ceremonied in. And that’s why I think it resonates within a broader audience. Because people feel the prayer coming through the work. Prayer resonates out from them, and not just the historic work but that contemporary work as well. And people feel that.”