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The New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors www.nmhistorymuseum.org Exhibitions Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton Treasures of Devotion/Tesoros de Devoción
Since the Civil War, photographers have tried to capture the lives of Native American peoples, resulting in some of the most beautiful and elegant portraits in the collections of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. More than 50 of these images will be on display from May 18 to November 4, 2012, in Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry, a salon-style exhibition in the History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery. Together, the images document the changing perceptions of Native peoples over a span of almost 100 years. In the words of contemporary Native American photographer Pena Bonita: “When trying to make sense of clichés, chaos and formal training, it seems necessary to break down fixed boundaries and explore the relationship between the real world and the point of inquiry as seen through the lens.” Focused on the post-Civil War period through 1935, Native American Portraits showcases exquisite examples by some of the most prominent photographers of their times. Included in Native American Portraits are the rigid and formal ethnographic portraits of visiting Native dignitaries to Washington, D.C., following the Civil War by photographers such as Charles M. Bell and Zeno Schindler; the overly romanticized and staged photos of Edward S. Curtis and Karl Moon; and the elegant but casual at-home photographs of New Mexico’s Pueblo Indians by T. Harmon Parkhurst and others. Curated by Palace of the Governors Photo Archivist Daniel Kosharek, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Photo Archivist Diane Bird, and Andrew Smith of the Andrew Smith Gallery, the exhibit divides the photos into three time periods representing various “points of inquiry” into American Indian-ness. The earliest photos, from the late 1860s to about 1880, show the government’s systematic attempts to create a visual catalog of the tribes. The goal was to document a wishful theory of the “vanishing” Indian while preserving material of their culture for scientific information. In the next group, from 1880-1900, commercial photography and photo essays by professional and amateur photographers promoted tourism and the development of Western lands. In the final period, 1900-1935, photographers indulge in the painterly style of the Pictorial Movement, with a soft focus, richly textured papers, and dramatically dark prints—all designed to show off the supposed Native characteristics of strength, courage, wisdom, and beauty. A contemporary element of the exhibit will showcase Native American photographers Larry McNeil, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, and Zig Jackson, who use photography to explore and re-claim historical Native American portraiture. They raise issues of colonialism, subjugation, spirit loss, blasphemy, identity, and pseudo-cultural appropriation as well as questions of veracity, historical fact and interpretation. They are harshly critical of the romantic/fashion/tourism stereotypes and the methodology of making those photographs while celebrating the spirit of the individuals photographed.
On April 4, 1818, Congress enacted the Flag Act of 1818, setting forth a rule that no new stars could be added to the flag until the Fourth of July immediately following a state’s admission to the union. Thanks to that once-a-year-and-only-once-a-year mandate, New Mexicans hoping to share their pride at becoming the 47th state were essentially forced into committing their first illegal acts as U.S. citizens. From January 6 through November 25, 2012, the New Mexico History Museum commemorates that dip into the dark side with 47 Stars, an exhibit of the officially unofficial 47-star flag. 47 Stars joins a collection of long-term exhibits and a tongue-in-cheek front-window installation to help celebrate the state’s Centennial. “Conservation concerns have kept us from bringing our 47-star flags out of collections for public view,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the History Museum. “But the Centennial was too good of an opportunity to pass up. By letting visitors see these artifacts in specially designed display cases, we hope they’ll become engaged in the amazing story of New Mexico’s struggle for statehood.” Upon achieving statehood, patriotic residents hoping for a flag of their own found themselves in a bit of a bind: Just 39 days after New Mexico became a state on January 6, 1912, Arizona stepped up to the statehood plate on February 14, 1912. By virtue of coming in second, Arizona would receive its just due on July 4, when the official flag of the United States was to switch from 46 to 48 stars. But New Mexicans wanted a flag of their own – one that would flutter from the flagpoles of official buildings and showcase 47 stars, not 46 and certainly not 48. Eager U.S. flag manufacturers were only too happy to help. Thus was born the unofficial 47-star flag. The 47 Stars installation will nestle within the museum’s core exhibition, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now. The Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum will also reproduce a 1912 photo by Jesse Nusbaum showing a 47-star flag waving from what was then the state Capitol. In addition, the museum’s Ventana Gallery by the front entrance will be festooned with bunting and the image of parade car celebrating statehood. The car will be presented as a cutout that visitors can pose behind to take Centennial souvenir photos. Visitors can also receive a miniature 47-star flag keepsake. Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible An epic work of art In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type revolutionized the way the world shared information. Its leap into what was then the cutting edge of technology sounded a death knell for a form of the book still cherished today: the handwritten, illuminated Bible. Some 550 years later, the senior scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s Crown Office at the House of Lords approached the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minn., with a proposal. Since childhood, Donald Jackson had dreamed of creating a handwritten and illuminated Bible in the pre-Gutenberg style. In the early 1990s, while attending a retreat at New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch, he sketched out a concept piece, Christ in the Desert, expanding on that dream. After showing it to the monks in 1995, he received the go-ahead to create what is now known as The Saint John’s Bible – an entire handwritten Bible with illumination, calligraphy, the finest materials, and the staying power of 2,000 years. In 2000, Jackson and a crew of artists and calligraphers began the first of 1,150 vellum pages. This year, the project will achieve completion. Before being bound into volumes and placed on permanent exhibition at Saint John’s Abbey, 44 pages from two of its seven volumes – Prophets and Wisdom Books – will be exhibited at the New Mexico History Museum. Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible will be on display in the museum’s second-floor Changing Exhibits Gallery from Oct. 23 through April 7, 2012. The exhibit shares its space and spirit with Contemplative Landscape, an array of black-and-white photographs celebrating the ties between landscape, art, architecture and sacred rituals in the Land of Enchantment. Also part of the exhibitions: The Letter, the Word & the Book, a small exhibit of books and lettering in the Mezzanine Gallery from Nov. 4, 2011, to April 15, 2012. Free lectures, performances and calligraphy workshops. “I consider this to be the artistic equivalent of the Apollo moon mission,” said Tom Leech, curator of the Palace Press. ”The Saint John’s Bible sets a standard of excellence that will never again be approached in our lifetimes. Combined with Contemplative Landscape, it offers visitors an opportunity to witness a historic burst of creativity and craftsmanship, and to reflect on their own spirituality, whatever form that may take.” Prophets, completed in April 2005, includes 232 pages and 20 illuminations from the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos and Zechariah. Illuminated pages in the History Museum’s exhibition will include Vision of Isaiah, Messianic Predictions, Suffering Servant, Vision at Chebar, Valley of the Dry Bones, Vision of the New Temple, Vision of the Son of Man, Demands of Social Justice, and Rejoice. Wisdom Books, completed in July 2006, includes 136 pages and 24 illuminations from the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Sirach. Illuminated pages in the History Museum’s exhibition will include the Job Frontispiece, Wisdom Woman, Garden of Desire, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and Creation, Covenant, Shekinah, Kingdom. In commissioning the project, the monks of Saint John’s revived a medieval tradition in which monasteries preserved knowledge and culture for the sake of the greater community. The Saint John’s Bible represents their commitment to the study of scripture and to educational, artistic and spiritual pursuits. Crafted with turkey, goose and swan quills, century-old handmade inks, hand-ground pigments, and gold and silver leaf gild on calfskin vellum, The Saint John’s Bible will collectively weigh over 350 pounds and measure roughly 2’ tall by 3’ wide when open. Guided by a combination of artistic skill and cutting-edge computer-assisted layouts, the project takes its place among the milestones of sacred literature. “I hope some of the emotion that we have collectively managed to put into the Bible will touch the hearts and emotions of those people who look at what we put onto the pages,” said Jackson, whose Ghost Ranch-era sketches will be shown for the first time in this exhibit. Visitors will find themselves drawn into reading the words of the text rather than skimming past them. Observant readers will note a variety of details: The illuminated letters starting each chapter are individually unique – a goal that proved a challenge when devising decorative T’s, given how often the word “the” begins a sentence in the English language.Artistic and clever techniques used by the scribes and artists to deal with “errata” – those perfectly human mistakes that crop up in even the most divine texts.A calligraphic script specially designed by Jackson. Along with members of the monastic community of Saint John’s Abbey, Episcopalian, Protestant and Jewish advisers helped form the vision of The Saint John’s Bible, which blends scientific advancements and anthropological understandings with the traditional text of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Contemporary aspects include its reflections of science, technology and space; its multicultural and interreligious imagery; and its depiction of women. Advanced technologies have also been used to create a digital template of the Bible. “It’s the one thing we’ll probably be remembered for 500 years from now,” said Eric Hollas OSB, a monk of Saint John’ Abbey and associate director of arts and culture at Saint John’s University. “The buildings will go. Most of the buildings that all of us see today are going to be gone 500 years from now. And oddly enough, this one piece of human artistic achievement will probably still be here.” (More information about The Saint John’s Bible is available on The Saint John’s Bible web site; http://www.saintjohnsbible.org/.) Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape are generously supported by the New Mexico Humanities Council, the Scanlan Family Foundation, and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. Lectures, workshops and performances for Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape will be held in the History Museum Auditorium and are free with admission unless otherwise noted. The schedule:
After covering the lives of drug addicts and prostitutes in America and the struggle of Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets – including a stint as a prisoner of war – Santa Fe-based photojournalist Tony O’Brien turned to Christ in the Desert Monastery in Abiquiu, N.M., to restore his spirit. During the year he spent living with the Benedictine monks, they allowed him to document their daily activities and rituals, both contemplative and secular. O’Brien’s work from that era now forms the heart of a new exhibition, exploring how photographers see the state’s meditative topography: the land, art, architecture, and people who build and populate the sacred. Drawing on the extensive holdings of the Photo Archives, with the participation of contemporary photographers, Contemplative Landscape’s black-and-white photographs explore the emotional and ceremonial practices of people as varied as Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Sikhs, to name just a few of the diverse faith-based communities who call New Mexico home. Throughout our time, creativity and spirituality have blended in ways as monumental and communal as the world’s great cathedrals and as small and personal as a roadside descanso marking another person’s passage from the earth. “The idea is to think about the spiritual, however it manifests for the viewer personally,” said Mary Anne Redding, curator of the Photo Archives. “What is considered sacred or contemplative varies. What these places have in common is that they draw people to them either in the built or natural environment. Each is infused with an energy that collects over time as people come together or seek enlightenment. New Mexico encompasses and encourages radically different religious practices. Each of these communities adds a different perspective to the meaning of religion and contributes their practices to the diversity of spiritual belief.” Contemplative Landscape shares its space and spirit with Illuminating the Word: Saint John’s Bible (Oct. 23, 2011, through April 7, 2012) in the museum’s second-floor Albert and Ethel Herzstein Gallery. As part of the exhibition design, visitors will be invited to enter a contemplative area to pray, meditate or simply sit in silence – opportunities too often lacking in the 21st-century world. In addition to O’Brien, photographers represented in the exhibit include:
The photographers have used their work to explore and renew their faith, even challenge their own and others’ beliefs. The result is an exhibit that marries an adobe morada abandoned by the Penitentes to processions of robe-clad monks carrying out the Stations of the Cross in desert canyons. For so many of these photographers, their images illuminate their personal quests. Award-winning photographer Cary Herz, who died in 2008, was working on a project in the Las Vegas, N.M., Jewish Cemetery in 1985 when someone told her of other Jews in New Mexico – people who had practiced their faith in secret. As Herz began investigating, she found slides of grave markers that appeared to contain Jewish symbols, a discovery that led her to cover 10,000 miles documenting the lives of people in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, the descendents of a secret history that has its roots in the Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions. Another example is photographer Kirk Gittings, who was hired by New Mexico magazine to photograph the rapidly deteriorating historic churches of northern New Mexico. Through that work, he and writer Michael Miller won a National Endowment for the Arts grant that for four years allowed Gittings to immerse himself in Catholic spirituality. Given the keys to a church to photograph at his leisure, he would sit in the pews, breathe the scent of candlewax and reconnect with the saints. A few years later, he converted to Catholicism. Of his own work, Edward Ranney says: “The petroglyphs associated with the ancient Pueblo sites in New Mexico's Galisteo Basin give us an entry to the imaginative and religious world-view of these early Pueblo people. In addition, as Lucy Lippard has observed, they `focus space,’ and make visible the Pueblo people's concerns and beliefs, and their relationship with their gods.” And, says Teresa Neptune: “My camera serves as a tool for my own awareness; with it I challenge myself to constantly pay more attention and see the world in a more creative way. Every landscape, every street has the potential to be seen contemplatively. What a joy to share and celebrate this way of seeing in "Contemplative Landscape." The Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors recently acquired 20 of O’Brien’s images from his Monastery of Christ in the Desert portfolio. O’Brien’s experiences in the monastery are the subject of his new book with writer Christopher Merrill, Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert (Museum of New Mexico Press), debuting with the exhibition. A New York City native, O’Brien began his photography career in 1973 at the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Santa Fe Reporter and the Albuquerque Journal North. His work has appeared in national and international publications, including Life magazine, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He has also worked with the Ford Foundation on a land-use project on Zuni Pueblo, as well as a water-works project in the colonias along the Texas border for the Pew Foundation. Among the places that have exhibited his work: the Museum of Our National Heritage, Massachusetts; the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida; the Adham Center of Photography, Cairo, Egypt; The Newseum in New York and the Sag Harbor Picture Gallery. In 1990, O’Brien was awarded the first Eliot Porter Foundation Grant for his work in Afghanistan. He has taught documentary photography and was director of the Documentary Studies Program at the Santa University of Art and Design (formerly the College of Santa Fe), where he is on the faculty at the Narion Center of Photographic Arts. In 1989, while on assignment for Life magazine, he was taken prisoner in Afghanistan for six weeks, an experience that led to his 1994-95 sojourn at Christ in the Desert as a practicing member of the contemplative community. “You sit in that chapel and the light dances throughout the day,” O’Brien said. “It can go from just plain to pure beauty. I began to look at things a little differently. I began to be more aware of what it was that I was looking at and really taking my time. And the willingness to let things go.” Founded in the town of Abiquiu in 1964, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert follows the Benedictine life with no external apostolates. It maintains a guesthouse for private retreats where men and women can share the Divine Office and Mass in the Abbey Church with the monks. Set in the Chama Canyon, about 75 miles north of Santa Fe, the monastery is surrounded by miles of wilderness, assuring solitude and quiet. Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape are generously supported by the New Mexico Humanities Council, the Scanlan Family Foundation, and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. Lectures, workshops and performances for Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape will be held in the History Museum Auditorium and are free with admission unless otherwise noted. Schedule listed above under Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible information.
Blending an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western poetry and printing techniques, From a Distant Road features hand-colored Japanese albumen prints and original haiga by Santa Fe poet John Brandi. The exhibit runs Sept. 16-March 4, 2012, in the John Gaw Meem Room. The exhibit includes: Eighteen of Brandi’s contemporary haiga (haiku poems accompanied by brush art work) that find their source in the poet-painters of 17th-century Japan. The haiga will be displayed on papers marbled by Palace Press Curator Tom Leech in the Japanese technique of suminagashi (black ink floating). Six hand-tinted albumen photographs from a collection of late 19th-century images of Japan from the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors, paired with excerpts from the travel diaries of 17th-century haiku master Matsuo Basho. A new marbled broadside from the Palace Press featuring a prose poem by Brandi. To kick off the exhibition, poet John Brandi will speak on “Haiku Painting: The History of Haiga,” and read haiku from his new book, Seeding the Cosmos (La Alameda Press), a selection of 30 years of his work from New Mexico and abroad. The event begins at 6 pm on Friday, Sept. 16, in the John Gaw Meem Room. In this high-spirited program, Brandi’s poems will be accompanied by JB Bryan on alto sax. The event is free, but seating is limited. Besides reading from his work, Brandi will talk about the practice of haiku in everyday life, the art of haibun (prose punctuated by a haiku), and aspects of haiga. Nonoguchi Ryūho, a 17th-century poet, was the first person to regularly include paintings alongside his calligraphy, although Japanese poetry was often enhanced by images for centuries prior. Brandi, a Southern California native, was encouraged by his parents toward the art of traveling, witnessing, writing and painting. After graduating from Cal State Northridge, he joined the Peace Corps and worked with Andean farmers. Returning home, he made contact with Beat Generation poet Gary Snyder. In 1971, he moved to New Mexico and, in his early years here, traveled with Japanese poet Nanao Sakaki, and compiled That Back Road In, the first of his many poetry collections. In 1979, he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. Modern American haiku is said to have been given new life by Jack Kerouac, author of the Beat classic, On the Road. Brandi was a consultant for the museum’s 2007 Kerouac exhibit, Jack Kerouac and the Writer’s Life. As a poet, Brandi owes much to the West Coast Beat tradition, but he also refers to poets as diverse as Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Matsuo Basho as influences. As a painter, he says, his practice as poet-painter-traveler harkens back to the 8th-century Chinese master Wang Wei.
Free opening event Join the commanding officer of the USS New Mexico (SSN 779), veterans and other dignitaries for a kickoff event in honor of the new installation, A Noble Legacy: The USS "New Mexico." Gather in the History Museum Auditorium where, at 1 pm on Sunday, Jan. 23, CDR George Perez, commanding officer of the SSN 779, and Dick Brown, chairman of the USS New Mexico Commissioning Committee, will speak. The Museum of New Mexico Women’s Board will serve refreshments afterward. (Sundays are free admission to NM residents.) A Noble Legacy: The USS “New Mexico” will be displayed in La Ventana Gallery at the museum’s main entrance with items that include a hand-crafted model of the New Mexico (BB 40), a battleship that saw significant action in World War II. Also included are items related to the new USS New Mexico (SSN 779), a nuclear submarine; photographs from both ships; and a short documentary by KNME-TV telling BB 40’s dramatic story. In 1918, the state of New Mexico presented a 56-piece Tiffany silver service set to the battleship USS New Mexico. The set contains this humidor in the shape of a pueblo-style building, as well as a number of plates, each of which has a different scene – Coronado’s Expedition 1540-42; San Miguel Chapel – Oldest Church in the US; and the First Locomotive through Raton Pass – 1879. Segesser Hide Paintings Segesser I and II were painted on hides, likely bison, that had been tanned to make them supple, pumiced so that the grain was no longer visible, and sewn together to form a large canvas. The hides do not exhibit any distinctive ground or gesso layer under the paint. Some scholars believe that the Segesser Hide Paintings were created in New Mexico, where imported canvas was rare and processed hides were used for a variety of purposes, including paintings on hide, or reposteros, that were exported to Mexico. |
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