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Paintings of Native America from the Stark Museum of Art
The Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston has begun a long-term institutional partnership with the Stark
Museum of Art, located in Orange, Texas. This exciting partnership will
enable the MFAH to bring to Houston
some of the key works from the Stark's extraordinary collections in a remarkable
series of rotating exhibitions. Emily Ballew Neff, curator of American painting
and sculpture at the MFAH, is organizing the exhibitions with David C. Hunt,
director of the Stark Museum of Art. On view from November 18, 2001 to April
21, 2002 in the Audrey Jones Beck Building, is the first in this series:
Paintings of Native America from the Stark Museum of Art. (left:
Charles Bird King, Chenannoquot, A Menominee Chief, 1835, oil on
wood, The Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas)
David C. Hunt said, "We are so glad to be able to bring our collection to the larger Houston audience who may not be aware of the importance of this great Texas collection."
"The collection includes many examples of early western American art by artists whose works rarely if ever appear on the market and consequently cannot enter the museum's permanent collection through acquisition," added Emily Ballew Neff. "This partnership allows our Houston audiences to get to know great artworks of this period that they otherwise could not see without traveling far from Houston."
The Stark Museum of Art, which opened to the public in
1978 as one of many projects initiated by the Nelda C. and H. J. Lutcher
Stark Foundation, is considered one of the United Stares' fine collections
of Western American Art. The collections of the museum reflect the Stark
family's interest in the land, the wildlife, and the people of the American
Wrest. H. J. Lutcher Stark, who focused on acquiring American paintings,
drawings, sculptures, books, folios, and prints, formed the collection primarily
in the 1940s. Initially Stark's interests
focused upon the works of contemporary Southwestern painters including the
Taos Society of Artists whom he encountered and befriended en route to his
vacation ranch in Colorado. Over the years, his interests expanded to include
the earlier works of such artists of the American West as George Catlin,
Alfred Jacob Miller, John Mix Stanley, Paul Kane, Alfred Bierstadt, and
Frederic Remington. His interests in wildlife and hunting led him to collect
the published folios of John James Audubon and other artist-naturalists
of the nineteenth century. (right: George Catlin, Pa-ris-ka-roo-pa,
(from Album Unique), pencil and watercolor on fiberboard, The Stark
Museum of Art, Orange, Texas)
Spurred by a fascination with the "exotic," ethnography,
and an interest in recording the history of what many believed was a vanishing
people, paintings of Native Americans proliferated during the nineteenth
century. Some artists, like Charles Bird King, painted portraits of visiting
Native Americans in their Eastern
studios. Included in Paintings of Native America from the Stark Museum
of Art is King's portrait Chenannoquot, A Menominee Chief, which
depicts the chief wearing peace medals that feature presidents James Monroe
and Andrew Jackson.
Other artists of the time, such as George Catlin, Paul Kane, and Alfred Jacob Miller, were artist-explorers who traveled from tribe to tribe to represent the Native Americans' colorful costumes and rituals, which the artists often embellished or made more dramatic in their works. An example of such a painting is Pa-ris-ka-roo-pa, by George Catlin. Audiences in America and abroad enthusiastically welcomed illustrated accounts of the experiences of these artist-explorers, as well as travelling exhibitions such as the "Indian Galleries," created by Catlin and John Mix Stanley. (left: John Mix Stanley, Gambling for the Buck, 1867, oil on canvas, The Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas)
Through portraits and scenes of everyday Native American
life, real or imagined, these paintings portray the various ways these major
American artists perceived the culture and customs of Native Americans in
the nineteenth century, creating images that defined the Native American
in the minds of the public.
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting
the sub-index page for the Museum of
Fine Arts, Houston in Resource Library
Magazine.
For further biographical information on selected artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 11/28/11
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