This month, a tribal museum in Pendleton is going Pop Art. Tamastslikt
Cultural Institute is the place that celebrates Cayuse, Umatilla
and Walla Walla tribal culture. But right now it's exhibiting a
series of Andy Warhol panels, in a collection entitled "Cowboys
and Indians". This is one of several events the museum planned to
mark a milestone.
The ten panels and additional material are on loan to Tamastslikt
from the Rockwell Museum
in Corning, New York. Tamastslikt curator Randall Melton says the
images are evenly divided among the Cowboys iconic western
figures like General Custer and John Wayne and Indians
images Warhol obtained from what became the National Museum of the
American Indian.
Melton explains, "People kind of give you the 'Huh? How does
that fit into a tribal interpretive center?' "
He says this show is a departure from the museum's usual cultural
program, but an intentional one. The Tamastslikt show marks the
first time these works have travelled. They're typical of Warhol's
style photographs, done up in silkscreen, then painted with
lots of vibrant color.
Dorothy
Cyr a tribal member who works next door at the Wild Horse Casino,
brought her 12 year old son Zech to see the show.
"It was nice," the younger Cyr said, strolling amid the panels.
"It was really odd the way he uses his art, how he made all the
colors." Dorothy Cyr added, "I think it's great opportunity for
our tribe to have such works displayed on our reservation."
The museum regularly pulls in visitors to the casino, but this
exhibition, coinciding with Tamastslikt's 15th anniversary, is intended
in part to draw people coming to town for the Pendleton Roundup
later this month, and anyone who may not have had the chance to
see Warhol's works before.
Pendleton
resident Sue Petersen, who attended the opening, said she just missed
a Warhol exhibition in San Francisco some years ago and was glad
to see these works in town.
"I think this is just totally awesome," Petersen said. "I'm
blown kind of out of the park, I gotta see the rest of them."
Warhol had suffered some health problems by the time these works
were completed in 1986. He'd survived a gunshot wound, and worked
with a lot of assistants. Some critics believe his later works lack
some of the snap and wit of earlier pieces.
After seeing the panels, Jubertino Arranda, a young artist,
said he shares some of those reservations.
"I personally do like a lot of earlier work," Arranda said.
"For me, it was very hit and miss after his brush with death."
But Arranda still drove all the way from Walla Walla to see
the show opening, and loved the technique, and Warhol's elevation
of everyday objects in some of the images. Speaking excitedly about
seeing the works in person, Arranda broke off, saying, "Oh, gosh,
he was so smart, I think he was really ahead of his time."
Loretta Alexander is a retired painter herself, a Cayuse tribal
member, and the mother of painter Philip Minthorne, whose has a
vivid canvas hanging in an adjacent gallery room. She nods in approval
at the Warhols' temporary gallery.
"I liked it," she said. "And the woman and the baby is the one
I liked the best."
That image, of an unidentified tribal woman with an infant on
her back, is one of the few in the exhibition featuring an actual
Native American person, notes Curator Randall Melton. Cowboys are
represented with figures from Annie Oakley to Teddy Roosevelt. But,
in choosing his tribal subjects, Warhol often opted for images like
shield designs or an Indian head nickel. Melton wonders if the choice
might have been intentional.
"It's interesting to me that he chose these people versus these
objects," Melton said. "I was talking with someone who said that's
how Indian people were seen, things to be moved out of the way for
Westward expansion."
Melton
says a lot of people expressed surprise that a tribal museum might
consider including a group of images with stereotypical imagery
sometimes painful imagery -for native people. He points to
a panel featuring an iconic photo of Geronimo staring directly into
the camera.
Melton says the photo was taken after the Apache leader was
forced to surrender to the U.S. Army. But Melton says gallery viewers
are invited to draw their own conclusions about Warhol's treatment
of the image, and consider what the artist was trying to say.
"The reasoning why he put these images together the way he did,"
Melton said, "it's a statement on the idea of the old west, how
thats more myth than fact."
Also, Tamastslikt's Executive Director Bobbie Conner points
out shows like this, open to interpretation, also present the museum
another chance to do its job.
"One of the goals of the project,"Conner explains, "is to break
down stereotypes, and to replace those stereotypes with new information."
Tamastslikt's regular exhibitions are geared toward cultural
and historical exhibitions about tribes represented in the region.
Conner says the museum is doing pretty well, with over 600,000
visitors to the building. After 15 years, the museum is still paying
down some of the debt associated with its construction. Conner says
she takes deep pleasure seeing the direct access to history the
museum unlocks for tribal members and others. Young people trained
as teenaged tours guides when the museum opened now have young families
of their own, and are bringing their own kids to shows like the
Warhol exhibition.
Conner remembers riding horseback as a child in the field where
the museum now stands, at the base of rolling hills, next to the
tribe's busy Wild Horse casino.
"Of all the things you could grow up to be," she recalls, "this
was never in my mind's eye. Our tribe is less than three-thousand
members, for us to have this 80 million resort here, including the
museum is 180 degrees from when I was a child here. I'm still sometimes
surprised I get to work here."
Tamastslikt will keep Warhol's Cowboys and Indians on display
through October 26th.
Tamástslikt
Cultural Institute
Immerse yourself in the history, culture and hospitality of the
people who have lived on this land for more than 10,000 years. Come
to Tamástslikt Cultural Institute and experience the storied
past, rich present and bright future of our tribes through interactive
exhibits, special events and a Living Culture Village. More than
just a museum, Tamástslikt celebrates the traditions of Cayuse,
Umatilla and Walla Walla Tribes.
http://www.tamastslikt.org/default.cfm
Rockwell
Museum
The Rockwell Museum houses the largest and finest collection of
western art in the eastern United States. The collection contains
masterworks by the great nineteenth and early twentieth-century
painters and sculptors, including Remington, Russell, Bierstadt,
Couse, Dallin, Moran, Catlin, Miller, and many more, most collected
by Robert and Hertha Rockwell, for whom the museum is named.
http://www.rockwellmuseum.org/
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