In the sixteenth-century Atlantic world, nature and culture swirled in people's minds to produce fantastic images. In the South of France, a cloister's painted wooden panels greeted parishioners with vivid depictions of unicorns, dragons, and centaurs, while Mayans in the Yucatan created openings to buildings that resembled a fierce animal's jaws, known to archaeologists as serpent-column portals. In Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic, historian Peter C. Mancall reveals how Europeans and Native Americans thought about a natural world undergoing rapid change in the century following the historic voyages of Christopher Columbus. Through innovative use of oral history and folklore maintained for centuries by Native Americans, as well as original use of spectacular manuscript atlases, paintings that depict on-the-spot European representations of nature, and texts that circulated imperfectly across the ocean, he reveals how the encounter between the old world and the new changed the fate of millions of individuals. This inspired work of Atlantic, European, and American history begins with medieval concepts of nature and ends in an age when the printed book became the primary avenue for the dissemination of scientific information. Throughout the sixteenth century, the borders between the natural world and the supernatural were more porous than modern readers might realize. Native Americans and Europeans alike thought about monsters, spirits, and insects in considerable depth. In Mancall's vivid narrative, the modern world emerged as a result of the myriad encounters between peoples who inhabited the Atlantic basin in this period. The centuries that followed can be comprehended only by exploring how culture in its many forms-stories, paintings, books-shaped human understanding of the natural world.

This exciting new investigation explores the rich variety of indigenous arts in the US and Canada from the early pre-contact period to the present day. It shows the importance of the visual arts in maintaining the integrity of spiritual, social, political, and economic systems within Native North American societies and examines such issues as gender, representation, the colonial encounter, and contemporary arts. Basketry, wood and rock carvings, dance masks, and beadwork, are discussed alongside the paintings and installations of modern artists such as Robert Davidson, Emmi Whitehorse, and Alex Janvier.

Fifty years ago, Canada celebrated its hundredth anniversary of Confederation. At Expo 67, in communities across the country, we celebrated our coming of age as a modern, bilingual, bicultural nation-a place where anyone from any culture could thrive. But beneath the applause and the cheerful music was a darker note. In his public address at the festivities, Chief Dan George lamented what Canada's centennial did not celebrate: the colonization and marginalization of Indigenous peoples who lived on these "good lands." Now in the year of Canada's 150th birthday, we honour a new understanding of our past. We have begun-at long last-to share in a process of national reconciliation and to come together to reimagine our contribution to a global future. Artists give form and meaning to both the land and the invisible landscape of the spirit, both the past and the future. The works of Canada's artists-both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, historical and contemporary-invite us to see our country and our place within it with new eyes. This book celebrates their visions, as well as the good lands we have shared and shaped for millennia that, in turn, have shaped us.

The largest known collection of ledger art ever acquired by one individual is Mark Lansburgh's diverse assemblage of more than 140 drawings, now held by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and catalogued in this important book. The Cheyennes, Crows, Kiowas, Lakotas, and other Plains peoples created the genre known as ledger art in the mid-nineteenth century. Before that time, these Indians had chronicled the heroic achievements of their warriors and chiefs on rock, buffalo robes, and tipi covers. As they came into increasing contact with American traders, the artists recorded their experiences in pencil and crayon drawings on paper bound in ledger or account books. The drawings became known as ledger art.
This volume presents in full color the Lansburgh collection in its entirety. The drawings are narratives depicting Plains lifeways through Plains eyes. They include landscapes and scenes of battle, hunting, courting, ceremony, incarceration, and travel by foot, horse, train, and boat. Ledger art also served to prompt memories of horse raids and heroic exploits in battle.
In addition to showcasing the Lansburgh collection, "Ledger Narratives" augments the growing literature on this art form by providing seven new essays that suggest some of the many stories the drawings contain and that look at them from innovative perspectives. The authors--scholars of art history, anthropology, history, and Native American studies--touch on such themes as gender, social status, sovereignty, tribal and intertribal politics, economic exchange, and confinement and space in a changing world.
The Lansburgh collection includes some of the most arresting examples of Plains Indian art, and the essays in this volume help us see and hear the multiple narratives these drawings relate.

A River Apart presents multi-vocal perspectives on the pottery of Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos, located along the central Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico. Separated by a great river, Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos shared a ceramic tradition for centuries until increasing contact with outsiders ushered in tumultuous changes that set the pueblos on divergent paths. Cochiti Pueblo more freely modified its traditional forms of painted pottery to appeal to new markets while the Santo Domingo Pueblo shunned the influences of the tourist trade and art market, continuing an artistic trajectory that was conservative and insular. A River Apart brings together a distinguished a team of anthropologists, artists, and art historians from Native and non-Native perspectives to examine the pottery traditions of the two Pueblos and decipher what discoveries can be made and identities established through these representations of material culture. As the essays reveal, the pottery represents more than anthropology's artifacts and art for the marketplace. From the pottery we learn much about the pueblos' history, myths and legends, communities, and the artist's responses to influences from the outside world. This volume is a fascinating case study in how cultures develop; how art, culture and community are interwoven; and how art is created, interpreted, valued, bought and sold. This publication is companion to an exhibition to open at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (Museum of New Mexico) in Santa Fe in Fall 2008 and featuring over 200 Santo Domingo and Cochiti pots. A River Apart is a valuable addition to the libraries of those interested in Pueblo Indian pottery, Native American arts andculture, and southwestern history and anthropology.

The tragic death of Wilson Duff at the age of 51, cut short the life of one of the leading experts on the arts and cultures of native peoples of the Northwest Coast. An anthropology professor at the University of B.C., his death, by his own hand, terminated his uncommonly perceptive research into the philosophy and psychology of Native art. Bird of Paradox consists of unpublished works by Duff which present his unique theoretical ideas that contribute to art scholarship, as well as creative writings and poetry which expose his emotional experiences with and feelings toward Native art and culture. Editor E. N. Anderson has provided detailed introductory material recounting Duff's life and work, and puts Duff's final contributions in the context of Northwest coast life.

For hundreds of years, American artisanship and American authorship were entangled practices rather than distinct disciplines. Books, like other objects, were multisensory items all North American communities and cultures, including Native and settler colonial ones, regularly made and used. All cultures and communities narrated and documented their histories and imaginations through a variety of media. All created objects for domestic, sacred, curative, and collective purposes. In this innovative work at the intersection of Indigenous studies, literary studies, book history, and material culture studies, Caroline Wigginton tells a story of the interweavings of Native craftwork and American literatures from their ancient roots to the present. Focused primarily on North America, especially the colonized lands and waters now claimed by the United States, this book argues for the foundational but often-hidden aesthetic orientation of American literary history toward Native craftwork. Wigginton knits this narrative to another of Indigenous aesthetic repatriation through the making and using of books and works of material expression. Ultimately, she reveals that Native craftwork is by turns the warp and weft of American literature, interwoven throughout its long history.

Members of the Daimyo Hosokawa family served the shogun from the Muromachi Period (1333-1568) as samurai. But the Hosokawa achieved fame not only for their success as warriors. As patrons of the arts and artists across the centuries, they enlarged and cared for an exclusive collection which this volume presents through exquisite pieces. The Hosokawa name stands not only for military achievements but also for famous poets, scholars and artists whose passion lay in particular in No theatre and the tea ceremony. It is a passion that still applies today. Continuing the tradition, Hosokawa Morihiro, a former Prime Minister of Japan, has devoted himself since his retirement from politics to the creation of tea ceramics and calligraphy. Through some 85 magnificent objects, including weapons, splendid armour, China-ink drawings and paintings, ceramics and lacquer work as well as theatre masks and costumes, the volume reveals the glittering panorama of a samurai family between martial elitism and artistry.

Winner, 2018 Canadian Museums Association Award of Outstanding Achievement in EducationShortlisted, 2018 Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Best Atlantic Published Book AwardNunatsiavut, the Inuit region of Canada that achieved self-government in 2005, produces art that is distinct within the world of Canadian and circumpolar Inuit art. The world's most southerly population of Inuit, the coastal people of Nunatsiavut have always lived both above and below the tree line, and Inuit artists and craftspeople from Nunatsiavut have had access to a diverse range of Arctic and Subarctic flora and fauna, from which they have produced a stunningly diverse range of work. Artists from the territory have traditionally used stone and woods for carving; fur, hide, and sealskin for wearable art; and saltwater seagrass for basketry, as well as wool, metal, cloth, beads, and paper. In recent decades, they have produced work in a variety of contemporary art media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, video, and ceramics, while also working with traditional materials in new and unexpected ways. SakKijAcjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut is the first major publication on the art of the Labrador Inuit. Designed to accompany a major touring exhibition organized by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of St. John's, the book features more than 80 reproductions of work by 45 different artists, profiles of the featured artists, and a major essay on the art of Nunatsiavut by Heather Igloliorte. SakKijAcjuk -- "to be visible" in the Nunatsiavut dialect of Inuktitut -- provides an opportunity for readers, collectors, art historians, and art aficionados from the South and the North to come into intimate contact with the distinctive, innovative, and always breathtaking work of the contemporary Inuit artists and craftspeople of Nunatsiavut.

This description is for the Inuktitut edition. Nunatsiavut, tanna Inuit nunakKatigengituk Canada-mit pitalauttut namminik kavamamik 2005-imi, sanaKattajut sananguatausimajunik adjiKangitunik nunatsualimamit Canadamiungutlutik ammalu ukkiuttatop KikKanganettuk Inuit sananguataumajut. Silatsualimami siKinganeluattuk inigijautluni Inutuinnanut, tamakkua satjugiamit inuit Nunatsiavummi iniKainnatut napattop killingani, ammalu Inuit allanguattingit ammalu sananguatingit Nunatsiavummit pitasongunginnatut adjigengitunik ukiuttattumi ammalu ukiuttattoKattangimmijuk pigutsianginnik, taikkunangat atuKattasimajut takuminattunik sanagalagiamik suliagijanginnit. Allanguattet nunanganit piusituKanginnit atuKattasimavut ukkusitsajannik ammalu Kijunik sananguagiamut; amilinnik, tuttujannik, ammalu Kisinik atuttausonik sanaKattajut; ammalu tagiulinnit ivinik sanaKattamijut, ammalugiallak allasajannik, kikiatsajak, Kallunattajak, sapangak, ammalu alakkasajannik. MannaKammik, sanagalasimavut sanajaunginnatunik takugatsausongutlutik, ilautillugit minguattausimajut, allanguattausimajut, nenittausimajut, adjiliuttausimajut, taggajaliuttausimajut, ammalu maggalinnit, atautsikut atutlutik piusituKannik atunginnatamminik nutangutlutik ammalu nigiugijausimangitunut piusitKatlutik. SakKijajuk: Allanguattausimajut ammalu sananguatausimajut Nunatsiavummit sivulligijauvuk angijotluni nuititausimajuk allanguattausimajunit Labrador Inunginnit. Sanajauluasimajuk angijummagimmik apvitattitaulluni takugatsauniattilugit akKisuttausimajuk taikkununga taijaujunut The Rooms Pravinsikkut Allanguattausimajunik Takujapvinganut St. John's-imit, atuagak pitaKalangavuk ungatani 80-nik sanajaugesimajunut 45-init adjigengitunit sananguatinut, kinakkoningit iluanemmijut sananguatet, ammalu angijummagik allataumajuk sananguatet pitjutigillugit Nunatsiavummit allasimajuk Heather Igloliorte. SakKijajuk pivitsaKattisijuk atuatsiKattajunut, katitsuiKattajunut, allanguattinut piusituKaujunut, ammalu katitsuiKattajunut sunatuinnanik sananguatausimajunit siKinittini ammalu taggatinni takujagiattulakKut taikkununga adjiKangitunut, sanajautsiasimajunut, ammalu takuminattusiavannik suliagijausimajunut Inuit sananguatinginnut ammalu allanguattinginnut Nunatsiavummit.

Over the course of his career, artist Paul Dyck (1917-2006) assembled more than 2,000 nineteenth-century artworks created by the buffalo-hunting peoples of the Great Plains. Only with its acquisition by the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West has this legendary collection become available to the general public. Plains Indian Buffalo Cultures allows readers, for the first time, to experience the artistry and diversity of the Paul Dyck Collection - and the cultures it represents. Richly illustrated with more than 160 color photographs and historical images, this book showcases a wide array of masterworks created by members of the Crow, Pawnee, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, Dakota, Kiowa, Comanche, Blackfoot, Otoe, Nez Perce, and other Native groups. Author Emma I. Hansen provides an overview of Dyck's collection, analyzing its representations of Native life and heritage alongside the artist-collector's desire to assemble the finest examples of nineteenth-century Plains Indian arts available to him. His collection invites discussion of Great Plains warrior traditions, women's artistry, symbols of leadership, and ceremonial arts and their enduring cultural importance for Native communities. A foreword by Arthur Amiotte provides further context regarding the collection's inception and its significance for present-day Native scholars. From hide clothing, bear claw necklaces, and shields to buffalo robes, tipis, and decorative equipment made for prized horses, the artworks in the Paul Dyck Collection provide a firsthand glimpse into the traditions, adaptations, and innovations of Great Plains Indian cultures.

This richly illustrated book explores the contested history of art and nationalism in the tumultuous last decades of British rule in India. Western avant-garde art inspired a powerful weapon of resistance among India's artists in their struggle against colonial repression, and it is this complex interplay of Western modernism and Indian nationalism that is the core of this book. "The Triumph of Modernism" takes the surprisingly unremarked Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta in 1922 as marking the arrival of European modernism in India. In four broad sections Partha Mitter examines the decline of oriental art and the rise of naturalism as well as that of modernism in the 1920s, and the relationship between primitivism and modernism in Indian art: with Mahatma Gandhi inspiring the Indian elite to discover the peasant, the people of the soil became portrayed by artists as noble savages. A distinct feminine voice also evolved through the rise of female artists. Finally, the author probes the ambivalent relationship between Indian nationalism and imperial patronage of the arts. With a fascinating array of art works, few of which have either been seen or published in the West, "The Triumph of Modernism" throws much light on a previously neglected strand of modern art and introduces the work of artists who are little known in Europe or America. A book that challenges the dominance of Western modernism, it will be illuminating not just to students and scholars of modernism and Indian art, but to a wide international audience that admires India's culture and history.

"This is a much needed, important collection-a goldmine of sources for scholars and students. The texts articulate the key Primitivist aesthetic discourses of the period, offering crucial insight into the complex and always changing nexus between culture, politics, and representation. Because of the breadth of the materials covered and the controversies they raise, this anthology is one of the all too rare volumes that not only will provide reference materials for years to come but also will feature centrally in classroom discussions."--Suzanne Preston Blier, author of "African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power

"For almost a century art historians have fretted about the notion of primitivism in the arts. This comprehensive-in both senses of the word-anthology is a peerless source of the history of responses to works categorized as 'primitive.' In its range, the book touches upon all the troubling questions-formal, anthropological, political, historical-that have bedeviled the study of the arts of Oceania, Africa, and North and South America, and provides the grounds, at last, for intelligent pursuit of keener distinctions. I regard this book as a superb contribution to the study of Modern art; in fact, indispensable."--Dore Ashton, author of "Noguchi East and West

"An extraordinarily useful and complete collection of primary documents, many translated for the first time into English, and almost all unlikely to be encountered elsewhere without serious effort. Its five sections, each with a lively and scholarly introduction, reveal the diverse views of artists and writers on primitive art from Matisse, Picasso, and Fry to many far less known and sometimes surprising figures. The bookalso uncovers the politics and aesthetics of the major museum exhibitions that gained acceptance for art that had been both reviled and mythologized. Recent texts included are all germane. This book will be invaluable for any college course on the topic."--Shelly Errington, author of "The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress

"An exceptionally valuable anthology of seventy documents--most heretofore unavailable in English--on the ongoing controversies surrounding Primitivism and Modern art. Insightfully chosen and annotated, the collection is brilliantly introduced by Jack Flam's essay on the historical progression, contexts, and cultural complexities of more than one hundred years' ideas about Primitivism. Rich, timely, illuminating."--Herbert M. Cole, author of "Icons: Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa

"Reconstructing Tascalusa's Chiefdom" is an archaeological study of political collapse in the Alabama River Valley following the Hernando de Soto expedition.
To explain the cultural and political disruptions caused by Hernando de Soto's exploration deep into north America, Amanda L. Regnier presents an analysis of ceramics and a novel theory of cultural exchange, which argues that culture consists of a series of interconnected models governing proper behavior that are shared across the belief systems of communities and individuals. An approach not often applied to archaeological research, ceramic study serves as a test of whether historic cognitive models can be extracted from ceramic data via cluster and correspondence analysis. In addition, the summary of Late Mississippian sites includes a chronology of the Alabama River from approximately AD 900 to 1600, which previously has only existed in manuscript form, and a summary of excavations at major Late Mississippian sites along the Alabama River.
The results of the study demonstrate that the Alabama River Valley was settled by populations migrating from three different geographic regions during the late fifteenth century. The mixture of ceramic models associated with all three traditions at Late Mississippian sites suggests that these newly founded towns had a distinct mix of ethnically and linguistically diverse populations. Based on the archaeological record, the polity controlled by Tascalusa appears to have been both multiethnic and newly formed. Perhaps most significantly, Tascalusa's chiefdom appears to be a pre-contact example of a coalescent society that emerged after populations migrated into a new region from the deteriorating Mississippian chiefdoms in their homelands.

A Hopi Indian will tell you that a kachina is a supernatural being who is impersonated by a man wearing a mask. Small wooden dolls carved in the likenesses of the various kachinas are used to help to teach Hopi children the tribal religion and traditions. Each child receives a doll made especially for him by his male relatives. He treasures the doll and studies it so that he can learn to recognised and respect the host of spirit kachinas that people the Hopi world. Kachinas are difficult to classify because different Hopi pueblos have different ideas about their appearance and their functions. The late Dr Harold Colton identified 266 different kinds of kachina dolls, and in this book he describes the meaning, the making, and the principal features of all of them.

For centuries, women artists of the Wendat First Nation of Wendake in Quebec have created artworks of intricate design and complex meaning in moosehair and quill embroidery. Their work records and transmits ancestral knowledge across generations of artists and remains a vibrant and important practice today. Breaking new ground in Indigenous art histories, Wendat Women's Arts is the first book to bring together a full history of the Wendat embroidery art form. Annette de Stecher challenges the historical anonymity of Indigenous women artists by arguing for their central role in community history and ceremony. Through their art, these women played an important part in the diplomatic strategies that advanced the sovereignty of their nation, work that was an extension of their position of authority in their families and clans. Chiefs and community members wore finely embroidered attire as a brilliant focus of ceremonial events, a tradition that continues today. Women artists also supported their community economically as their embroidery was a souvenir of choice for European collectors. In vibrant illustrations, this book reconstructs the rich repertoire of Wendat embroidery now dispersed in collections throughout the world. Wendat Women's Arts combines a depth of historical understanding with a keen knowledge of contemporary Wendat artists, demonstrating that the story of Wendat women is one of cultural strength, innovation, resilience, and success.

Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America explores how close, collaborative looking can discern the traces of contact, exchange, and movement of objects and give them a life and political power in complex cross-cultural histories. Red River coats, prints of colonial places and peoples, Indigenous-made dolls, and an Englishwoman's collection provide case studies of art and material culture that correct and give nuance to global and imperial histories. The result of a collaborative research process involving Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors, this book looks closely at the circumstances of making, use, and circulation of these objects: things that supported and defined both Indigenous resistance and colonial and imperial purposes. Contributors re-envision the histories of northern North America by focusing on the lives of things flowing to and from this vast region between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, showing how material culture is a critical link that tied this diverse landscape to the wider world. An original perspective on the history of northern North American peoples grounded in things, Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America provides a key analytical and methodological lens that exposes the complexity of cultural encounters and connections between local and global communities.

No present without the past. No equality without feminism.Nekt wikuhpon ehpit chronicles the sources, inspiration, and personal circumstances that have shaped Shirley Bear's visual art, poetry, and political activism and presents the integral relationship amongst these important activities in her life.Countering the invisible silent status ascribed to Indigenous women by patriarchal history and convention, Bear's primary focus has been the recovery of the feminine role in the ancestral life of First Nations culture. Featuring more than 30 reproductions of her work with essays by Terry Graff, Susan Crean, and Carol Taylor, Nekt wikuhpon ehpit both depicts and examines the essential feminine imagery of Bear's work in their symbolic, archetypal, or representative forms.Shirley Bear's work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her writing has been featured in several anthologies, including Kelusultiek: Original Women's Voices of Atlantic CanadaandThe Colour of Resistance. She received the New Brunswick Excellence in the Arts Award in 2002.

Following on from the success of the exhibition Before Time Began, Fondation Opale is taking on a new challenge with a show that juxtaposes contemporary Aboriginal art with prominent examples of contemporary art created in a Western and Asian tradition. This beautifully illustrated catalogue includes more than eighty works by over 54 artists from two separate collections, both of which are outstanding in their own right: the collection of Aboriginal art belonging to Berengere Primat and the contemporary art collection amassed by Garance Primat. The works play off each other with powerful effect. Insightful pairings suggest an underlying unity, a merging of mankind, heaven, earth, and the whole cosmos. The Aboriginal artists represented include: Rover Thomas, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Judy Watson, Sally Gabori, Emily Kame Kngwarrey, Paddy Bedford, Nonggirrnga Marawili, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, and John Mawurndjul. The artists working in the Western and Oriental traditions include: Jean Dubuffet, Kiki Smith, Anselm Kiefer, Sol Lewitt, Yayoi Kusama, Giuseppe Penone, and Anish Kapoor. Published to accompany an exhibition at Fondation Opale, Lens - Crans Montana, 14 June 2020 - 4 April 4 2021.

Art for a New Understanding, an exhibition from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opening this October, seeks to radically expand and reposition the narrative of American art since 1950 by charting a history of the development of contemporary Indigenous art from the United States and Canada, beginning when artists moved from more regionally-based conversations and practices to national and international contemporary art contexts.This accompanying book documents and expands on the histories and themes of this exciting exhibition. This fully illustrated volume includes essays by art historians and historians and reflections by the artists included in the collection. Also included are key contemporary writings-from the 1950s onward-by artists, scholars, and critics, investigating the themes of transculturalism and pan-Indian identity, traditional practices conducted in radically new ways, displacement, forced migration, shadow histories, the role of personal mythologies as a means to reimagine the future, and much more. As both a survey of the development of Indigenous art from the 1950s to the present and a consideration of Native artists within contemporary art more broadly, Art for a New Understanding expands the definition of American art and sets the tone for future considerations of the subject. It is an essential publication for any institution or individual with an interest in contemporary Native American art, and an invaluable resource in ongoing scholarly considerations of the American contemporary art landscape at large.