Hudson Museum’s New Exhibits Feature Tribal Photos, Pottery
Contact: George Manlove at (207) 581-3756
ORONO — Two special exhibits open Sept. 14 at the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine, one a rare assemblage of photographs of Navaho Indians in the early 1950s, the other a collection of stylized pottery bowls painted by the Mimbres peoples.
Both exhibits focus on the native cultures of the Southwest, according to museum director Gretchen Faulkner.
The Navajo photographs are a rare and intimate look at the nation’s largest and perhaps best known Indian tribe, photographed by cultural anthropologist John Collier Jr., who used photography to document his anthropological research.
A collection of 50 photographs from more than 1,000 comprises the exhibit created by C. Stewart Doty, a University of Maine professor emeritus of history, who co-authored a book on the Collier’s Navajo photos with Dale Sperry Mudge, a former Hudson Museum Advisory Board member and UMaine graduate.
The exhibit reveals candid and poignant images of traditional Navajo life in the early 1950s, a transitional period in which the tribe shifted from a pastoral existence sheep-herding, spinning, weaving and trading to a more urban-wage, cash-crop-oriented lifestyle using newer methods of cultivation and harvesting, also marking the beginning of town life for Navajos.
Doty, now a resident of Albuquerque, N.M., will open the exhibit with a lecture at 4 p.m., Sept. 14 in the Bodwell Lounge in the Hudson Museum.
“Maine historically has had connections with the Southwest and with the Navajo people,” Faulkner explains. “Engineers from UMaine built the rail lines through the region and Mainers engaged in the Navajo textile trade.
“Today, evidence of these connections can be found in the many Southwestern textiles, jewelry, basketry and pottery found in the state,” she says.
“Photographing Navajos” and Doty’s lecture draws on and expounds upon those connections, she says.
Collier, considered the foremost authority on using the camera for anthropological research, was the son of the controversial New Deal Indian Commissioner responsible for Navajo livestock reduction — a sign, historians say, of the younger Collier’s sensitivity and appreciation of the Navajo people, who allowed him to wander among their families in spite of their resentment of his father.
Collier sought to present an accurate historical record of the Navajo lifestyle and struggles.
The mystery of the sudden disappearance in about 1150 of the Mimbres people in the southwest cannot be explained, but their unusually artistic paintings on pottery survive in museum collections around the world.
The Hudson Museum’s William P. Palmer III Collection includes more than 40 Mimbres bowls, many of which have never been exhibited publicly before, according to Faulkner.
Mimbres pottery is characterized by distinctive portrayals of everyday activities — hunting, dancing, swimming, and gambling — in addition to images of animals, mythical creatures, and abstractions of plants, animals, insects, fish, mountains, and even clouds. Some Mimbres bowls have symbolic “kill holes” in the bottom, which archeologists speculate were made to release spirits through the bowl.
Both exhibits, “Photographing Navajos: John Collier Jr. on the Reservation, 1952-1953” and “Glimpse into a Lost World: Mimbres Ceramics from the William P. Palmer III Collections,” are in the museum’s temporary exhibits areas. The museum’s permanent exhibit, “From Native Hands: Southwestern Basketry, Pottery, Textiles and Silver,” explores the four technologies, presenting raw materials, tools and finished objects and is located on the second level.
Admission to Hudson Museum is free. Hours are Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, 11 a.m.-4p.m. The museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays.
The museum can be reached by telephone at (207) 581-1901. Its website is: http://www.umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum/index.php