2011 Symposium
Carolyn Rose Seminar Room, NMNH
Session One
Thursday, July 21st, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
JENNIFER LEIGH REYNOLDS, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
MOLDING THE PAST: THE CASTS OF EUFEMIO ABADIANO IN THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION
The production of casts in Mexico has a long trajectory reaching back to Pre-Columbian
molds up to the present with installation works by contemporary artists like Mariana Castillo
Deball. Within this five-hundred-year span, casts as portable replicas have played an
important role in the dissemination of a Mexican national identity from nineteenth-century
World’s Fairs to their permanent display within museums. In the case of the Smithsonian, one
overlooked key player in the production and acquisition of casts is Eufemio Abadiano, a
Mexican cast-maker whose objects formed an integral part of the Hall of Latin American
Archaeology. This presentation traces the history of Abadiano’s collection within the
Smithsonian with a particular focus on the current status of these casts, many of which have
since been destroyed, relegated to storage, or left unaccounted for. By taking seriously the
history of casts and their subsequent appropriation in contemporary art, I argue that Castillo
Deball deconstructs the notion of a cohesive Mexican national identity as constructed
through archaeological practice.
KATHERINE BROOKS, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
PATTERNS OF CHANGE:
STYLISTIC CHANGES IN WOMEN’S BEADED COLLARS AMONG LOWER COLORADO YUMAN SOCIETIES
Beaded collars hold cultural and historical significance for women belonging to the Lower
Colorado Yuman societies, which include Mojave, Cocopa, Piipaash (Maricopa) and
Quechan (Yuma). Seed bead collars function as both a decorative clothing item, as part of
women's ceremonial attire and serve as an art form practiced exclusively by women, who
create intricate designs through the use of twine and seed beads. However, beading
techniques, designs, bead colors and collar length have changed considerably since the first
documented appearance of beaded collars during the late-nineteenth century. My research
investigates historic and cultural events which correspond with these stylistic changes and
works to explain reasons for the adoption of new techniques and designs. Research was
conducted through examination of museum collections, accession files, ethnographic records
and archival photographs which provided both context and social meaning for the beaded
collars, while also presenting information about the collection of these specific items.
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JACLYN KUIZON, THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY
COMPARATIVE ADAPTATIONS OF 19TH-CENTURY LEDGER ART:
STYLISTIC HYBRIDITY AND THE WORK OF DWAYNE WILCOX AND ACEE BLUE EAGLE
Stylistic hybridity is an aesthetic guide for artistic interpretations and expressions within objects
that reflect social environments of historical moments. These developing artistic techniques
exhibit a unique connection to shared cultural memories. A comparative study of the artists
Dwayne Wilcox and Acee Blue Eagle alongside an analysis of Smithsonian collections of 19thcentury Lakota ledger art offers an opportunity for tracing influence, meaning, and intention
through history’s winding social, political, ethnic and racial dynamics at times when the label
of "Indigenous Artist" remains in flux and undergoes attempted reification in the media. The
adoption and re-appropriation of symbols from the past speak to struggles associated with
maintaining "fine art" labels while shedding the "Indian artist" label, which is a categorization
often linked to connotations of kitsch, as opposed to the acknowledgement of the pieces as
individual creative expressions.
ROBBIE KETT, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
ORNITHOLOGISTS IN OLMAN: MAKING SOUTHERN MEXICO AT MID-CENTURY
This paper examines social and scientific activities surrounding a series of Smithsonian Institution
and National Geographic Society excavations of Olmec sites in the 1930s and 40s. These
excavations were the first to concertedly explore the areas of Veracruz and Tabasco that
would come to be known as the Olmec heartland. The digs were then a vital part of a
scientific attempt to unearth and define the Olmec. In addition to this work of archaeological
discovery, the sites were also social, serving as the center of a number of scientific and artistic
projects, from modernist art to ornithological collecting. This paper will examine how these
various projects produced both scientific objects and understandings of southern Mexico itself.
I will argue that an attention to such epistemological and geographic overlaps can call
attention to the kinds of social ties and intellectual collaborations that are often erased by
traditional disciplinary histories and collection architectures.
DISCUSSANTS
MARK AUSLANDER
SENIOR FELLOW
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART
DAVID PENNEY
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR RESEARCH
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
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Session Two
Thursday, July 21st, 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
CHRISTOPHER RICHARDS, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
TROP MODERNE, NÉANMOINS LUXUREUX: UNRAVELING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AN EWE ADANUVO CLOTH
This presentation will explore the symbolic motifs of a specific Ewe Adanuvo cloth from
the Venice and Alastair Lamb collection of African textiles. By unraveling the meaning
of specific motifs, the Adanuvo cloth becomes a vehicle for Ewe self-expression,
interwoven with representations of cultural values and symbols relating to colonization.
My presentation will suggest this specific Ewe Adanuvo cloth serves as a visual
testament to both an appropriation of colonial symbols and a subtle critique of
Ghana’s colonizers, attesting to Ghanaians’ active engagement with colonization. I
will begin by providing a brief overview of the Ewe people and their weaving
practices, with the main focus of my presentation on interpreting the specific pictorial
motifs woven into the cloth. Ultimately, my presentation will suggest that this Adanuvo
cloth, and potentially other colonial Adanuvo cloths, demonstrate the agency of
Ghanaian people during colonization, further supporting the significance of African
textiles as a form of individual and cultural expression.
STEPHANIE BECK COHEN, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
SPECIMENS, ANIMALS, OBJECTS, AND IMAGES:
COLLECTING PRACTICES OF THE SI-FIRESTONE EXPEDITION AND ON THE FIRESTONE PLANTATIONS
Since 1822, the histories of Liberia and the United States have been linked by
migration. During the early 20th century, this relationship intensified as scientific
expeditions and business ventures from the United States entered the Liberian
environment and economy. To better understand collections of non-anthropologists,
who acquired ethnographic material in the course of their jobs, this project focuses on
the collection of Director of the National Zoological Park William Mann and his wife
Lucile, who traveled to Liberia on the Smithsonian-Firestone Expedition in 1940, as well
as Richard Flach, an employee of the Firestone Plantation from 1936-38. Objects from
the collections are housed in the National Museum of Natural History and the National
Museum of African Art. The collectors also imagined their travels through photography
and film, wrote articles and annotated albums, finally depositing their collections in
museums and archives. The paths of the objects, photographs and film are set within
their larger collecting events and subsequent movement and audiences in order to
explore collector perspectives and goals and intercultural communication within a
specific historical period that saw the influx of industry in Liberia before and during
World War II.
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JENNIFER K. BROWN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
EDUCATION AND EXHIBITION:
THE ART AND CRAFT OF ASSIMILATION IN ALASKA THROUGH HAIDA CEDAR BASKETS
From 1886 through 1906 the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Education amassed
a collection of objects to be exhibited at various expositions, including World’s Fairs,
that represented their activities in the frontier of the United States’ empire. At least
three World’s Fairs contained an exhibition of objects and models from Alaska, Hawaii,
and the Philippines showing the ways of life and products of students from these farflung locales. These objects were acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1910 after
being discovered in a basement and have rarely been studied since their accession.
Ten Haida cedar baskets, neatly labeled with names and a location, are a few of the
many objects from the exposition that were crafted by schoolchildren and collected
for exhibition. My interest in these particular baskets is in how they may answer
questions about why the Bureau of Education chose to display of Native craft at a
time they were simultaneously working to hasten the assimilation of Alaska Native
children.
CAROLYN SMITH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
A WEALTH OF VOICES: THE HARRINGTON COLLECTION OF KARUK BASKETRY
In 1928, John Peabody Harrington brought Phoebe Maddux, a Karuk basket weaver,
to Washington, DC for the purpose of documenting the Karuk language. During the
course of language documentation, they examined Harrington’s collection of baskets,
recording not only types and designs, but also information regarding individual
weavers and the circulation of baskets in the community. Examining the Harrington
collection of baskets and the accompanying documentation at the National Museum
of Natural History, I situate these objects spatially and temporally, reflecting how
baskets were envisioned by a member of the Karuk community. By exploring the
various contexts in which they circulate—home, community, commodity, and
museum—I illustrate that the imposed categories by the catalog records do not
necessarily reflect the social meaning of baskets within a Karuk lens. Rather, the
process of weaving embodies the social memory and connection to community no
matter what contexts the baskets were made.
DISCUSSANTS
MICHAEL MASON
DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITIONS
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
JOSHUA BELL
CURATOR
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
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Session Three
Friday, July 22nd, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
LUCERO RADONIC, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
ON DEER DEWCLAWS, CANS, AND MISSING VIRGINS: TRACING THE CREATION OF A YAQUI ICON
In 1902, in one of the bloodiest episodes of the military campaign against the Yaqui
nation, the Mexican army massacred a Yaqui camp at the Sierra of Mazatan. Today,
the Yaqui deer dance is a staple of Mexico’s folkloric ballet while the figure of the deer
dancer proudly adorns Sonoran license plates. How did the figure of the Yaqui deer
dancer become an enregistered emblem in Mexico’s popular imagination? By
studying the changes in materials used in ritual objects and the composition of the
Smithsonian Yaqui collection, I will start to trace the role of Mexican and U.S. museum
anthropology in the creation of this Yaqui icon.
GINA WATKINSON, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
A STUDY OF TOHONO O’ODHAM BASKETRY MATERIALS THROUGH TIME
The purpose of this study is to investigate the change of basketry botanical materials
and form through time and to challenge assumptions that have been proposed for
this transformation. The presentation will address access to “gathering sites” and will
reveal the inability for weavers to produce baskets made from willow due to
interruptions in movement and constraint to space.
INGRID AHLGREN, HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE, MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS, REPUBLIC OF THE
MARSHALL ISLANDS
UNDERSTANDING LOCAL AND FOREIGN REPRESENTATIONS OF RI-MAJOL AS WARRIOR:
LORE AND MATERIAL CULTURE IN EASTERN MICRONESIA
Early foreign accounts of contact with Marshallese in the 19th century portray an oftwarring, unstable and violent history. Traditional stories, language, and visual accounts
in Micronesia equally echo this stigma of unrest, describing feared warlords and
battles between clans, castaways, whalers, merchants, and missionaries alike.
Considering the 19th-century era of increased exploring expeditions and associated
collecting activities in the “savage” South Seas, the material culture held in private
and museum collections are expected to reflect this lore of violence. Contrary to this
assumption, there is a dearth of Marshallese weaponry in the Smithsonian and Bishop
Museum collections, but a wealth attributed to their Kiribati neighbors to the east. This
paper uses object analysis, collector versus donor investigation, and contact histories
to reconstruct and contextualize historic and imagined warfare of the early contact
period in Micronesia. It raises questions of collecting and attributing material culture in
the Pacific, the affect of lore and reputation on collecting activities, absence and
presence of objects in cultural heritage, foreign iconography, and traditional agency
in cultural loss.
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DENISE NICOLE GREEN, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
A CAPE COVERED IN HAI’QWA:
UNANTICIPATED OBJECTS IN CAPTAIN DORR F. TOZIER’S NUU-CHAH-NULTH COLLECTION
At times, museum collections present researchers with the most unexpected materials,
and in turn, unanticipated histories of exchange and colonial encounter. In this
presentation, I begin by questioning how a small cedar bark cape embellished with
dentalium shells (hai’qwa) made its way into the collection of the Museum of the
American Indian in 1917. A young girl of high status likely wore the cape for an
Aayts’tuulthaa (coming of age potlatch ceremony), one of the most important
cultural events for Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations people of Vancouver Island. Because
of the significance of this occasion, associated materials were much less likely to
circulate outside of Nuu-chah-nulth communities. Yet, sometime in January of 1902
while the United States Revenue Cutter Grant made a trip to the West coast of
Vancouver Island, Captain Dorr F. Tozier acquired the cape and numerous other
items. The cultural biography of the hai’qwa cape is a case-study, which is part of a
larger research project exploring the ways Nuu-chah-nulth material artifacts are
produced, used, and exchanged, and what these processes reveal about peoples’
engagement with one another, the landscape, natural resources and the contexts
within which they are living.
DISCUSSANTS
HOWARD MORPHY
PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE RESEARCH SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND THE ARTS
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
JAKE HOMIAK
DIRECTOR, ANTHROPOLOGY COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES PROGRAM
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
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