Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Changing Images Native American Imagery Spans The Gamut Of Stereotypes And Themes In The Temporary Gallery At River Park Square

Suzanne Pate Correspondent

Skywalk shoppers seem reluctant to look Native Americans in the eye at Cheney Cowles Museum’s latest venture in community outreach. “Indian Images: Art of the American West” opened in mid-February at River Park Square to showcase a handsome selection of CCM’s 19th- and 20th-century paintings. But passersby have been doing exactly that - passing by, instead of popping in to browse.

“The intent was to get a museum presence downtown to see if there is a public response to it,” said CCM director Glenn Mason, “and also to get some of our realistic art of the American West out into view - some from our own collection and some from the (former) Museum of Native American Cultures collection.”

The 43 paintings and eight bronzes illustrate the gamut of styles and stereotypes employed in depicting American Indians. The pieces date from 1880 to 1981. Among the earliest works is a “ledger art” detailed drawing of Indian dancers, and among the most recent is a pastel “Indian Madonna” by R.C. Gorman.

“Stereotypes and themes to American Indian images have included the stoic ‘cigar-store Indian’ male standing with his arms folded, the romantic Pocahontas-type of beautiful Indian maiden with long braids, the fearless warrior, and the menace who tried to deter the westward immigration of settlers,” said Mason.

Another recurring message echoes in panoramic landscapes that dwarf the human figure to insignificant stature. And the “noble savage” concept placed tribal people living in total harmony with awesome nature.

Just down the indoor mall from the Birkenstock shoe place and across the way from Mrs. Fields cookie shop, the temporary mini-museum is housed in the spot where Hickory Farms sold sausage at Christmas. The space also was a clothing store in recent years. Now it very adequately features work by the likes of E.I. Couse and Edgar Paxson, whose paintings can sell at auction for as much as $60,000.

The commercial context generates an interesting response from visitors to the small non-profit gallery, according to part-time staffer Amber Strawn. “Most people take it for a shop, look at a painting and ask, ‘How much is this?”’ Other viewers say this is a wonderful idea to bring art where the people are - and these days it’s wherever the clearance sales are.

For the first month, CCM charged a modest $1 admission to see the artwork, slightly more than the cost of a warm chocolate chip cookie. They counted about 20 visitors a day.

Last week the museum snapped awake to the realities of competitive marketing and dropped the fee altogether. Strawn flipped open her steno pad of attendance figures and smiled, “Today we had a hundred people.”

But even now that admission is free, not all visitors are buying into the exhibition. Docent volunteer Cheryl Grunlose is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes and an art history student at Eastern Washington University. From both those perspectives, she observes the art and its viewers. She says most people have a positive response to the show, but others just don’t catch its meaning.

“Some New Agers come in and get really irate that the paintings don’t depict the Indians accurately - they say it’s offensive to the Indians,” said Grunlose. Other visitors don’t recognize 19th-century genre art and mistakenly think everything in the gallery was created by Native Americans.

“I can’t say people are prejudiced, but they just don’t have the same interest in the Native American imagery genre-style painting that they had with the Dutch Masters,” noted Grunlose. “It kind of bothers me as an art history major, because it’s the same thing - it’s just the imagery that’s different.

“The point of the whole thing was to show early Native American paintings from the 1900s when you first walk in, then you look at the Anglo-Saxon paintings,” she explained, “and then at the very end you’ll be introduced to 1960s contemporary painters that are Native Americans.”

Grunlose went on to explain that most Native Americans don’t receive the show very well either, repelled by the inaccuracies of the “noble savage” genre paintings. “I don’t think this town is really open to this kind of imagery,” she said.

“I keep in the back of my mind at all times that the artists who painted these pictures were not motivated by racism - they were painting this way because that was the fashion of painting at the time,” said Grunlose. “They didn’t just paint the Indians like that, they painted everyone like that.”

CCM’s Mason also has noticed some viewer discomfort with a character study painting of reservation residents sitting on a store bench. “There’s another one the non-Indian kind of snickers at and feels uncomfortable with,” said Mason. “The Indian people smile in recognition when they see it, as if every reservation has this same group of people.”

Mason said the success of the show is in viewer awareness of their perceptions of Indian people and in realizing that those perceptions may be based on secondhand visual fabrication - not one-on-one experience.

In conjunction with the “Indian Images” exhibition, CCM is bringing in Peter Hassrick to speak Wednesday about the Indian in Western art. Hassrick is the director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., and formerly was curator at the Amon Carter Museum. He has written more than 20 books and catalogs about the art and artists of the American West.

“The exhibition has been a good learning experience, even if attendance hasn’t been what we’d hoped. It’s part of the whole consideration of what direction the museum should go in, and how the museum can be more involved in the community,” said Mason.

The community can visit CCM’s satellite experiment until April 15. When the show goes down, the museum will withdraw from the Skywalk space. “But,” added the ever-positive Mason, “we don’t rule out another similar venture.”

MEMO: “Indian Images: Art of the American West” continues through April 15. On Wednesday, Peter Hassrick’s illustrated presentation will follow a noon luncheon at the Crescent Court Ballroom, 707 W. Main. The luncheon cost is $15 per person; tickets must be reserved and purchased before 5 p.m. today. Tickets are available at the River Park exhibit during Skywalk hours, or at Cheney Cowles Museum, 2316 W. First Ave. For information, call 456-3932.

“Indian Images: Art of the American West” continues through April 15. On Wednesday, Peter Hassrick’s illustrated presentation will follow a noon luncheon at the Crescent Court Ballroom, 707 W. Main. The luncheon cost is $15 per person; tickets must be reserved and purchased before 5 p.m. today. Tickets are available at the River Park exhibit during Skywalk hours, or at Cheney Cowles Museum, 2316 W. First Ave. For information, call 456-3932.