ART : An Intimate View of American Indian Work

DENVER —  The Denver Art Museum has been identified with American Indian art for longer than most people can remember--and far longer than the field of study has been fashionable. Way back in 1893, when the museum sprouted as the Artist’s Club of Denver, museum founder Anne Evans had the unconventional notion that native art deserves as much attention as works made by Europeans and Americans who have a shorter history in the New World.

As the daughter of Colorado’s second territorial governor, Evans had influence. She bestowed a core collection of Indian objects on the fledgling institution, which became fledged in 1925, formed a department of American Indian art and proceeded to amass 20,000 objects representing 150 tribes and covering 2,000 years.

By 1971, when the museum moved into its modern, seven-story building, the institution was well known for its American Indian treasures. Today the Denver Art Museum prides itself on being first to collect American Indian material for historical and aesthetic reasons, and continues to refine a collection now valued at more than $25 million. Some anthropological museums have much larger holdings, but no general art museum in North America can compete with Denver.

A nice distinction, but some museum officials weren’t happy after the 1971 opening. They knew that the museum’s biggest and best collection deserved a better showcase than it had been given in the rush to finish the new building. No sooner had construction dust settled than they began to stockpile ideas on how to reinstall the collection. “We all thought about what we would do when the great day came,” said Richard Conn, curator of native arts, in a interview at the museum.

It took almost 17 years, but the occasion finally arrived late last month, and the transformation is as spectacular as it is appropriate. At a cost of $500,000, the American Indian exhibition space on the second floor and mezzanine has expanded from 17,500 square feet to 22,000 square feet. Most of the additional space came from former storerooms.

Instead of rows of objects isolated as untouchables in glass cases, visitors are treated to an intimate view of artworks on stepped platforms designed as abstract landscapes. Displayed in settings that are color-keyed to the objects’ natural habitat, identified by labels and poetic text, geographically located in 10 regional areas by maps and environmentally situated by photo blowups of landscape, the artworks are about as harmoniously and informatively displayed as is possible in an artificial setting.

In place of the former compartmentalized system, an open range effect now leads naturally from one geographical setting and historical period to another. Elongated windows originally covered by storage areas are now exposed to allow natural light into the galleries and to enhance the indoor-outdoor flow by mingling real Western landscape with fabricated settings.

Designer Jeremy Hillhouse has ensured that no one feels fenced in by his sprawling, horizontally oriented installation. Every position provides a visual escape--through a window or into another environment. The most striking is the dramatic view of Northwest Coast carved wood objects on the mezzanine that can be seen from a second-floor balcony near displays of basketry and ceremonial clothing from California.

Peering down into the spotlighted darkness, you see a fearsome green-and-ochre Kwakiutl mask representing Bukwus, the Wild Man of the Forest; a great cluster of painted beaks protruding from an unwieldy Bella Coola mask; a Tlingit doctor’s rattle, carved in the shape of a marine bird carrying a family of otters; a 15-by-12-foot screen depicting the brown bear crest of a Tlingit family, and four 12-foot house posts--two of which are recent commissions.

Hillhouse is a stickler for detail. Square modules of carpet and laminated coverings on platforms echo the steel grid of the ceiling, for example, and the feet of plexiglass stands displaying clothing correspond to human footprints. He seems to have thought through every conceivable aspect of the installation and is already planning refinements, but the designer’s primary concern was to provide a seamless experience that is true to the art. That’s a problem, for to put ethnic objects in a museum for preservation, appreciation and study is to rob them of religious significance.

“The American Indian aesthetic system is quite different from ours,” Conn said, explaining the rationale for the new installation. “The objects are meant to serve the community good and we need to understand how they work in the culture.”

Hillhouse, who has installed all kinds of material at the museum for 16 years, said American Indian objects are “the most difficult to deal with. They are small, rather quiet and have a spiritual power that demands special circumstances. They are not only art objects but also utilitarian. When we wrench them out of context it is difficult to get across the meaning.”

To preserve the integrity of the art, he created abstract landscapes that allude to regional environments and climates. “In the Plains area, we needed a low, open look with golden color suggesting fields and sunlight,” Hillhouse said.

The Great Lakes and sub-Arctic sections called for a relatively “confined space,” he said. “I wanted a closed, darker atmosphere to give a foreboding sense of the enclosed space and gloom inside a forest.” Instead of drenching these exhibits in the “open, hot light of the Southwest,” he used “pinpoints of light” to heighten contrast. Seneca false-face masks whose contorted expressions were used to treat illness and ward off evil, handsome plaited baskets and painted bark containers are on display here.

Snippets of Indian prayers, poems and songs, printed on labels throughout the installation, introduce such concepts as “doing all things correctly” and what it means to live in a contained society where people must produce their own utilitarian objects and farm, hunt or fish to feed themselves.

An attitude of self-sufficient permanence seems pervasive, but the art is not static. In one telling display, naturalistic French floral motifs are absorbed into more stylized native design of beaded products made in the sub-Arctic. Victorian style doodads--fussy pincushions, needle cases and beaded bags--were created for the tourist trade at Niagara Falls. The new installation also includes a “Bird and Corn Stalk” Navajo rug made in 1983, along with classic Navajo blankets and shawls.

The museum continues to collect historical and modern objects in an effort to build a more complete and aesthetically satisfying picture of American Indian art. “We represent most areas of Canada and the United States, though we are naturally strongest in the West,” Conn said. “It is difficult to get Northeast material and we are weak in the prehistoric Southeast because we didn’t collect there originally, but we have added pieces and will continue to do so.”

Fortunately, the museum amassed most of its holdings before other art museums and many private collectors took a strong interest in the material. “The market went berserk in the ‘70s,” Conn said. “It has leveled off since then, but the increase in value since the ‘40s and ‘50s is astronomical.

“During the last 15 years, attitudes toward this material have really changed. A lot more people are collecting American Indian objects and displaying them as art, not as curiosities, and more art museums include ethnic arts in their collections.”

Even the Louvre is considering a move in that direction, according to Conn, who smiled at the thought and said, “Imagine that. I’d be legitimate.”