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.

In the late 1920s, a group of young Kiowa artists, pursuing their education at the University of Oklahoma, encountered Swedish-born art professor Oscar Brousse Jacobson (1882-1966). With Jacobson's instruction and friendship, the Kiowa Six, as they are now known, ignited a spectacular movement in American Indian art. Jacobson, who was himself an accomplished painter, shared a lifelong bond with group member Stephen Mopope (1898-1974), a prolific Kiowa painter, dancer, and musician. Painting Culture, Painting Nature explores the joint creativity of these two visionary figures and reveals how indigenous and immigrant communities of the early twentieth century traversed cultural, social, and racial divides. Painting Culture, Painting Nature is a story of concurrences. For a specific period, immigrants such as Jacobson and disenfranchised indigenous people such as Mopope transformed Oklahoma into the center of exciting new developments in Indian art, which quickly spread to other parts of the United States and to Europe. Jacobson and Mopope came from radically different worlds, and were on unequal footing in terms of power and equality, but they both experienced, according to author Gunloeg Fur, forms of diaspora or displacement. Seeking to root themselves anew in Oklahoma, the dispossessed artists fashioned new mediums of compelling and original art. Although their goals were compatible, Jacobson's and Mopope's subjects and styles diverged. Jacobson painted landscapes of the West, following a tradition of painting nature uninfluenced by human activity. Mopope, in contrast, strove to capture the cultural traditions of his people. The two artists shared a common nostalgia, however, for a past life that they could only re-create through their art. Whereas other books have emphasized the promotion of Indian art by Euro-Americans, this book is the first to focus on the agency of the Kiowa artists within the context of their collaboration with Jacobson. The volume is further enhanced by full-color reproductions of the artists' works and rare historical photographs.

Inseparable from its communities, Northwest Coast art functions aesthetically and performatively beyond the scope of non-Indigenous scholarship, from demonstrating kinship connections to manifesting spiritual power. Contributors to this volume foreground Indigenous understandings in recognition of this rich context and its historical erasure within the discipline of art history. By centering voices that uphold Indigenous priorities, integrating the expertise of Indigenous knowledge holders about their artistic heritage, and questioning current institutional practices, these new essays "unsettle" Northwest Coast art studies. Key themes include discussions of cultural heritage protections and Native sovereignty; re-centering women and their critical role in transmitting cultural knowledge; reflecting on decolonization work in museums; and examining how artworks function as living documents. The volume exemplifies respectful and relational engagement with Indigenous art and advocates for more accountable scholarship and practices.

"Lavishly illustrated studies of the art of pre-Columbian cultures in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru"

In 2005, the Denver Art Museum hosted a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca. An international array of scholars of Tiwanaku, Wari, and Inca art and archaeology presented results of the latest research conducted in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. This copiously illustrated volume, edited by Margaret Young-Sanchez of the Denver Art Museum, presents revised and amplified papers from the symposium.

Essays by archaeologists Alexei Vranich and Leonardo Benitez (both University of Pennsylvania) describe what their excavation and astronomical research have yielded at the site of Tiwanaku, in Bolivia. Georgia DeHavenon (Brooklyn Museum) surveys historical research and publications on Tiwanaku and its monuments. Christiane Clados (Free University of Berlin) and William Conklin (Field Museum, Textile Museum) each analyze styles and modes of representation in Tiwanaku art and arrive at provocative conclusions. R. Tom Zuidema reconsiders Tiwanaku iconography and sculptural composition, discerning complex calendrical information. Through a detailed analysis of Tiwanaku iconography, Krysztof Makowski (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru) examines the nature of Tiwanaku religious thought. Archaeologists and iconographers William Isbell (State University of New York, Binghamton) and Patricia Knobloch (Institute of Andean Studies) thoroughly discuss what they term the Southern Andean Interaction Sphere, which encompasses Tiwanaku, Wari, Pucara, and Atacama traditions. P. Ryan Williams (Field Museum) discusses the issue of identity and its expression at the territorial interface between the Tiwanaku and Wari states. Wari tunics and their imagery are examined by Susan Bergh (Cleveland Museum of Art), yielding evidence of ranking. And John Hoopes (University of Kansas) discusses both archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence of links between ancient Tiwanaku and the later Inca.

Bringing together current research on Pucara, Tiwanaku, Wari, and Inca art and archaeology, this volume will be an important resource for scholars and enthusiasts of ancient South America.

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.

When Buffalo Bill's Wild West show traveled to Paris in 1889, the New York Times reported that the exhibition would be ""managed to suit French ideas."" But where had those ""French ideas"" of the American West come from? And how had they, in turn, shaped the notions of ""cowboys and Indians"" that captivated the French imagination during the Gilded Age? In Transnational Frontiers, Emily C. Burns maps the complex fin-de-siecle cultural exchanges that revealed, defined, and altered images of the American West. This lavishly illustrated visual history shows how American artists, writers, and tourists traveling to France exported the dominant frontier narrative that presupposed manifest destiny - and how Native American performers with Buffalo Bill's Wild West and other traveling groups challenged that view. Many French artists and illustrators plied this imagery as well. At the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, sculptures of American cowboys conjured a dynamic and adventurous West, while portraits of American Indians on vases evoked an indigenous people frozen in primitivity. At the same time, representations of Lakota performers, as well as the performers themselves, deftly negotiated the politics of American Indian assimilation and sought alternative spaces abroad. For French artists and enthusiasts, the West served as a fulcrum for the construction of an American cultural identity, offering a chance to debate ideas of primitivism and masculinity that bolstered their own colonialist discourses. By examining this process, Burns reveals the interconnections between American western art and Franco-American artistic exchange between 1865 and 1915.

Originally published in 1896, this classic of ethnography was assembled by a skilled illustrator who first encountered Maori tattoo art during his military service in New Zealand. Maori tattooing (moko) consists of a complex design of marks, made in ink and incised into the skin, that communicate the bearer's genealogy, tribal affiliation, and spirituality. This well-illustrated volume summarizes all previous accounts of moko and encompasses many of Robley's own observations. He relates how moko first became known to Europeans and discusses the distinctions between men and women's moko, patterns and designs, moko in legend and song, and the practice of mokomokai: the preservation of the heads of Maori ancestors. Unbridged republication of the edition published by Chapman and Hall, Limited, London, 1896.

The first book to explore the entire range of modern and contemporary art of the Caribbean Unprecedented in scope, this beautiful book offers an authoritative examination of the modern history of the Caribbean through its artistic culture. Featuring 500 color illustrations of artworks from the late 18th through the 21st century, the book explores modern and contemporary art, ranging from the Haitian revolution to the present. Acknowledging both the individuality of each island, the richness of the coastal regions, and the reach of the Diaspora, Caribbean looks at the vital visual and cultural links that exist among these diverse constituencies. The authors examine how the Caribbean has been imagined and pictured, and the role of art in the development of national identity. Essays by leading scholars cover such topics as the interconnections between Caribbean artistic production to its colonial contexts; between various generations of artists; and between the so-called high and low arts and religion, music, and carnival celebrations. Primary source documents crucial to understanding the region provide an important complement. Edited by Deborah Cullen and Elvis Fuentes, and featuring essays by Katherine Manthorne, Mari Carmen Ramirez, Lowery Stokes Sims, and Edward J. Sullivan, among many others, this book will serve as the definitive volume on Caribbean visual culture for many decades to come.

One of the first people in Europe to consider the gifts which the Aztec ruler Montezuma gave to Hernan Cortes as works of art was Albrecht Durer: 'Nothing I have yet seen has given me such joy as the objects brought to the king from the new gold countries [...] Some pieces display an extraordinary skill; I have been astonished by the ingenuity of the inhabitants of those far distant lands,' he wrote. It was 1520 and those works had been sent to Brussels. The five centuries that have passed since the beauty of these objects was first noticed seem not to have been enough for the ancient cultures of Latin America to be fully understood. This catalogue of pre-Columbian art is a fresh attempt to examine and come to terms with artworks produced by a section of mankind that came to the attention of Europeans only after the voyages of Columbus and other explorers. It illustrates the collection of pre-Columbian art of Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue, one of the few collections of its kind in Italian hands: over 150 pieces from Mesoamerica and South America, an extraordinary corpus of objects which give testament to the excellence achieved by ancient artists. But it also tells the story of certain rare objects which belonged to the Medici Collection, one of Europe's greatest treasures. Among these are two atlatls, spear-throwers covered in gold-leaf from the Aztec or Mixtec cultures, a Taino necklace dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and a Teotihuacan stone mask. These objects are accompanied by pieces from private European collections and a number of significant artworks from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. Essays by leading scholars and archaeologists, such as C. Phillips, C.F. Baudez, J.M. Hoppan, J.J. Leyenard, F. Kauffmann Doig, C. Cavatrunci, D. Domenica, and M. Polia, weave both scientific and humanistic interpretations of Amerindian thought. The Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue Collection of masterpieces of ancient Latin American cultures is part of a huge and broad-ranging hoard of objects gathered over a period of almost fifty years.

"Early Art of the Southeastern Indians" is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full color, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centers for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America.

Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods--from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600--Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeast--from Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahoma--the pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators' widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds.

The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles consisting of symbolic colors, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centers that were noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales.

Power comments on the widening of artists' subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a piece's artistic "language" could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody an iconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of these southeastern artists delight the senses and engage the mind while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings.

This image-filled book features outstanding works of Luba art from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Major themes to be addressed include the role of visual and performance arts in Luba traditional politics; the symbolism of the female image and why 'the king is a woman' for Luba; the instrumentality of royal insignia in politics, problem-solving, and healing; and the use of art objects in the creation and transmission of historical knowledge in both the Luba heartland and its peripheries. Case studies from the authors' long research among Luba, Tabwa, and related peoples of the Congo will illuminate the complex philosophical underpinnings of Luba thought and visual expression.

For centuries indigenous communities of North America have used carriers to keep their babies safe. Among the Indians of the Great Plains, rigid cradles are both practical and symbolic, and many of these cradleboards - combining basketry and beadwork - represent some of the finest examples of North American Indian craftsmanship and decorative art. This lavishly illustrated volume is the first full-length reference book to describe baby carriers of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and many other Great Plains cultures. Author Deanna Tidwell Broughton, a member of the Oklahoma Cherokee Nation and a sculptor of miniature cradles, draws from a wealth of primary sources - including oral histories and interviews with Native artists - to explore the forms, functions, and symbolism of Great Plains cradleboards. As Broughton explains, the cradle was vital to a Native infant's first months of life, providing warmth, security, and portability, as well as a platform for viewing and interacting with the outside world for the first time. Cradles and cradleboards were not only practical but also symbolic of infancy, and each tribe incorporated special colors, materials, and ornaments into their designs to imbue their baby carriers with sacred meaning. Hide, Wood, and Willow reveals the wide variety of cradles used by thirty-two Plains tribes, including communities often ignored or overlooked, such as the Wichita, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, and Plains Metis. Each chapter offers information about the tribe's background, preferred types of cradles, birth customs, and methods for distinguishing the sex of the baby through cradle ornamentation. Despite decades of political and social upheaval among Plains tribes, the significance of the cradle endures. Today, a baby can still be found wrapped up and wide-eyed, supported by a baby board. With its blend of stunning full-color images and detailed information, this book is a fitting tribute to an important and ongoing tradition among indigenous cultures.

Based on groundbreaking new scholarship, "Upside Down: Arctic Realities" brings together ancient and modern works from the Arctic region, including major sites in Russia and Alaska. The featured pieces dramatically illustrate the continuing influence of centuries-old traditions in modern times and include both utilitarian and decorative items such as amulets, funerary offerings, and ceremonial masks from the Alaskan Yup'ik. Essays by leading scholars in the field explore such topics as the relationship between artist and material and between the aesthetics of native Arctic cultures and their environments.

According to traditional Cheyenne belief, shields are living, spirit-filled beings, radiating supernatural power from the Supreme Being for protection and blessing. Shields stand at the nexus of several dimensions of Cheyenne culture, including spirituality, warfare, and artistic expression. From 1902 to 1906, fifty Cheyenne elders spoke with famed ethnologist James Mooney, sharing with him their interpretations of shield and tipi heraldry. Mooney's handwritten field notes of these conversations are the single best source of information on Plains Native shields and tipi art available and are a source of inestimable value today for both the Cheyennes and for scholars. In 1955, with the blessing and permission of the Keepers of the Two Great Covenants and the Chiefs and Headmen of the Northern and Southern Cheyenne People, Father Peter J. Powell began a five-decade effort to help preserve the religion, culture, and history of the Cheyenne People for the generations ahead. His transcriptions and annotations of Mooney's notes on Cheyenne heraldry is the culmination of these efforts. This two-volume set features nearly 150 color illustrations as well as more than 50 black and white photographs.

A superlative guide to traditional and contemporary Navajo sandpaintings. Few art forms are more significant to Navajo religious beliefs than the sandpainting, or ikaah. Sandpaintings play a major role in Navajo ceremonies, assisting healers to cure ailments by summoning the supreme beings' aid to restore harmony to both mind and body. In this clear, brief, yet profoundly informed text, Mark Bahti reviews the history of the sandpainting--from its original, and continuing, sacred purpose to the purely artistic creations produced and sold by some sandpainting artists today. With his collaborator, Eugene Baatsoslanii Joe, Bahti explains the meanings of the images and colors in sandpaintings and tells some of the traditional stories that they represent. Navajo Sandpaintings will enlighten both the amateur and the connoisseur of Navajo art.

"George Littlechild: The Spirit Giggles Within" is a stunning retrospective of a career that has spanned nearly four decades. Featuring more than 150 of the Plains Cree artist's mixed-media works, this sumptuous collection showcases the bold swaths of colour and subtle textures of Littlechild's work. Littlechild has never shied away from political or social themes. His paintings blaze with strong emotions ranging from anger to compassion, humour to spiritualism. Fully embracing his Plains Cree heritage, he combines traditional Cree elements like horses and transformative or iconic creatures with his own family and personal symbols in a unique approach. "George Littlechild: The Spirit Giggles Within" shows the evolution of an artist from his earliest works to the present day, including hints of future directions and themes. An insightful foreword by artist and curator Ryan Rice, a Mohawk from the Kahnawake First Nation in Quebec, and Littlechild's reflections on each piece build a broad understanding of Littlechild's work, his life and his views on the role of art within all cultures.

Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

The Petroglyphs of Cheonjeon-ri are unique as prehistoric, and historic period fine-line engravings, and textual inscriptions. The chapters of this book offer a detailed exploration and analysis of the petroglyphs and texts at the Cheonjeon-ri site from a wide variety of aspects, while placing them within the broader context of the prehistoric rock art found in other parts of the globe.

This book documents the current revival and basketry from its leading practitioners, including basketmakers from the Hupa, Yurok, Karuk, Tolowa, Western Mono (Monache) of northern California; and the Great Basin tribes, including the Western Shoshone, Northern Paiute, Washoe, and Chemehuevi.

Praise for the companion title "Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America" by Michael Johnson:
""This substantial reference remains one of the most elaborately illustrated books on Native Americans now in print. . . . Highly recommended for North American historical and ethnographical collections.""
-- Library Journal

"Arts and Crafts of the Native American Tribes" is an authoritative illustrated reference that has been carefully created to be a companion to "Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America," not a competitive title. It examines in detail how Native American culture evolved and considers the regional similarities and differences of the arts and crafts created by tribes across the continent. Contemporary and modern photographs, fine line illustrations and step-by-step reconstructions (including a Plains Indian warrior dress with headdress, war bonnet, shirt and leggings) show the techniques of manufacture and display the skill and artistry of the crafters.

The book opens with concise coverage of the main cultural areas of North America and a survey of styles by region and over time. A major section on the living structures -- huts, tipis, igloos, etc. -- is followed by an analysis of individual crafts. These include: Baskets -- plaiting, twining, coiling Bone, antler and horn -- implements, tools, pins, fishhooks Decorative arts -- beadwork, porcupine quillwork Featherwork -- bonnets and headdresses Metalwork -- copper, silver, iron, gold Pottery Shellwork Skinwork -- rawhide, leather, furs Stonework -- arrowheads, pipes, art Textiles -- spinning, weaving Woodwork -- totems, figures, masks, utensils, working with bark.

"Arts and Crafts of the Native American Tribes" is destined to be a primary reference used by ethnographers, historians and collectors for years to come. It is essential for any library serving academic patrons.

River-cane baskets woven by the Chitimachas of south Louisiana are universally admired for their beauty and workmanship. Recounting friendships that Chitimacha weaver Christine Paul (1874-1946) sustained with two non-Native women at different parts of her life, this book offers a rare vantage point into the lives of American Indians in the segregated South. Mary Bradford (1869-1954) and Caroline Dormon (1888-1971) were not only friends of Christine Paul; they were also patrons who helped connect Paul and other Chitimacha weavers with buyers for their work. Daniel H. Usner uses Paul's letters to Bradford and Dormon to reveal how Indian women, as mediators between their own communities and surrounding outsiders, often drew on accumulated authority and experience in multicultural negotiation to forge new relationships with non-Indian women. Bradford's initial interest in Paul was philanthropic, while Dormon's was anthropological. Both certainly admired the artistry of Chitimacha baskets. For her part, Paul saw in Bradford and Dormon opportunities to promote her basketry tradition and expand a network of outsiders sympathetic to her tribe's vulnerability on many fronts. As Usner explores these friendships, he touches on a range of factors that may have shaped them, including class differences, racial attitudes, and shared ideals of womanhood. The result is an engaging story of American Indian livelihood, identity, and self-determination.