The Spirit Within Steven C

INTRODUCTION: THE SPIRIT WITHIN STEVEN C. BROWN Native art from the Northwest Coast has been a part of the Seattle Art Museum for more than forty years. In addition to exhibitions from other institutions, in the early 1950s and 1960s a collection of nine pieces was assembled by the founding director, Dr. Richard E. Fuller. This group of representative objects from the northern coast was joined by small gifts of additional Northwest Coast art by Dr. Mary Bridge and others over the ensu ing years. The first traveling exh ibition of N_orthwest Coast art hosted by the museum took place in 1951- 52. Indian Art of the Northwest Coast, organized by Dr. Erna Gunther for the Taylor Museum, the Colorado Fine Arts Center, and the Seattle Art Museum, was one of the first exhibitions of Native art to be held in an art museum. A small catalogue was published under the same name. In the last two decades, the museum has been a venue for additional significant exhibitions of Northwest Coast art, including Objects of Bright Pride, curated by Allen Wardwell through the American Museum of Natural History, 1977; The Box of Daylight, 210 highly regarded pieces from Washington State private collections, curated by Bill Holm, 1983; and Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch, organized by Dr. Aldana Jonaitis and co-curated by Gloria Cranmer Webster for the Ameri- can Museum of Natural History, shown at the Seattle Art Museum in 1994. John H. Hauberg has been a major presence in the Seattle area Native art field since his collecting began in 1953. Mr. Hauberg's first Northwest Coast artifact was the Raven Rattle in this volume (cat. no. 12), which he purchased as a benefit of his assistance to Dr. Erna Gunther and the Burke Museum in acquiring the Walter Waters collection. Mr. Hau berg was instrumental in raising the funds required to purchase this large and valuable group of artifacts. The Hauberg collection has since figured prominently in several outstanding exhibitions of Northwest Coast art, in Seattle and worldwide. These include an installation at the Seattle Center's Cascade Gallery in 1967. The Friends of the Crafts' Northwest Indian Art brought together highlights of the Hau berg collection with those of Anne and Sidney Gerber, the other major Northwest Coast collection in the area at that time. (The Gerber collection, a fine group of objects featuring a great deal of outstanding Kwakwakfl.'wakw material, was of- fered to Dr. Fuller at a time before the museum was prepared to handle a Native art col lection of such size, and the museum declined this opportunity to expand in that area. This important collection went on to become part of the Burke Museum's extensive holdings by gift in 1969 and was featured in Crooked Beak of Heaven [1972], authored by Bill Holm.) The Whatcom Museum of History and Art organized Arts of a Vanished Era in 1968. The exhibition and catalogue featured a number of Hauberg collection objects. 13 In 1972, the Hauberg collection formed the backbone of an installation at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery that included a remarkable assemblage of material gleaned from Seattle-area private collections. Curated by Bill Holm, it was also titled Crooked Beak of Heaven. During this time, John Hauberg was striving to expand and improve his already impressive collection with an eye toward its eventual inclusion in the Seattle Art Museum. Hauberg's contributions to the 1977 exhibition Sacred Circles, curated by Ralph T. Coe through the Walker Art Center in Kansas City, toured internationally. The Hauberg collection comprised a full third of the 1983 exhibition The Box of Daylight. The striking Tlingit headpiece (cat. no. 2) became the title and cover object for the exhibition and catalogue. The precontact Stone Club (cat. no. 96), collected by Captain Cook at Nootka Sound, was included in the 1992 Brussels exhibition and catalogue Treasures of the New World (fig. 25), which was curated by Emile Deletaille. The Seattle Art Museum hosted the Hauberg collection again from Au- gust 1985 through March 1986, displaying the newest and most outstanding pieces in The Hauberg Collection: Parsons Gallery. By this time, Mr. Hauberg had given 143 total objects to the museum, 43 of them Native Northwest Coast art. He subsequently made a generous gift of the remainder of his collection in early 1991, bringing his contributions to the Seattle Art Museum Northwest Coast holdings to 169 objects. Anticipation of the gift of this im- measurably valuable group of artifacts resulted in the development of the Northwest Coast art galleries that were eventually designed as part of the new Seattle Art Museum building, completed and dedicated in December 1991. The planning and design of the installation was made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Pamela McClusky, curator of the art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas for the museum for fifteen years, initially planned and managed the inclusion of the Hauberg collection during the grant period before 1990 when a curator dedicated to the Northwest Coast material was hired. The year following the transfer of the Hauberg collection to museum storage was one of intense research and activity. My part as the initial curator for this new department began with consultation with the Native American and Canadian First Nations advisers. Vi Hilbert, Upper Skagit and teacher of the Lushootseed language; Tony Hunt, Kwakwgkg'wakw artist; Robert Davidson, Haida artist; and Joe David, Nuu-chah-nulth artist, were identified in the NEH grant as advisers to the installation. As our conversations regarding the installation progressed, the need for a deeper level of Native participation in the planning than was first conceived became apparent. Native people needed to be given a more active role than merely acting as reviewers for ideas laid out by members of the museum staff. A special project group was assembled to address the Tlingit artifacts, the largest group of materials in the Hauberg collection . Guided and assisted by Tlingit elder and Seattle resident Judson Brown, originally of Haines, Alaska, we contacted five additional Tlingit elders who were flown to Seattle (through the generosity of Alaska Airlines) to examine and provide consultation on the 56 Tlingit objects to be included in the opening installation. The process began with a meeting with then Museum Director Jay Gates and a moving and 14 emotional ceremony at the storage facility, which wa s attended by museum staff who were to handle the material in the course of deve loping the installation. Here the elders group, made up of Cecelia Kunz, lookna21_.ad i-Juneau ; Mark Jacobs, Jr., Daktaweidf-Angoon/Sitka; Cyril George and Matthew Fred, Deisheetaan-Angoon; and the late Austin Hammond, l u21_a 21_.adi- Ha ines, laid out their intent: to instru ct the museum staff in the proper spiritual importance of the collection and its handling, to share their remin is- cences of these and related artifacts and to take information about the collection back to their home country, so that all the people would be aware of what was being kept at the Seattle Art Museum and, to the extent that it was known, where the pieces had come from. During the next five days, many hours of sessions we re video- taped , the conversations flowing from one object to another, from stories that trace the origins of traditions to songs that underlie their history. Some of this material has been incor- porated in the captions and labels that accompany the objects in the museum's installation and this catalogue. Much more exists that can be tapped in the future, though perhaps the most interesting segments are Participants in the Seattle Art Museum conducted in the Tlingit language and require translation and transcription . photo project that produced the con- Some of the songs and speechmaking of the initial ceremony have been in- textual color photographs used in this volume, undertaken at the Sea Monster cluded in the audio program stationed within the gallery, giving visitors access House, Pacific Science Center, Seattle, to the sounds and emotion expressed in the words and music of this and other in 1991. Left to right, front: David Neel, cultures represented in the installation. Kevin Cranmer; middle: Vera Newman, Alvin Alfred, Ethel Alfred, Edith George; The second phase of participation by Native individuals involved the back: Steve Ray, Steve Brown, Norine curating of the artifact displays to be included in the installation, working with Charlie, Henry George. Photo David Neel. full-size mock-ups of the display cases, the sizes and design of which I and the advisory council had inherited from the previous stages of the museum's architectural planning. For this aspect, the council's membership was ex- panded to include a larger proportion of individuals who lived in Seattle or other parts of western Washington , so that we could meet on a more regular basis on a very limited travel budget. Added to the core four were Anna Haala, Tlingit/Cowichan; Judson Brown, Tlingit; Charlie Sigo and Leonard Forsman, Suquam ish; and Kirk Wachendorf, Makah . Each brought familiarity with traditional objects and the experience of interpreting them and the cultural mo- tivations for their use to a largely non-Native audience. Each had gained th is experience either in presenting programs of traditional culture to the public 15 C (as in the Alaska Native Cultural Heritage Association), or as one of the key figures in on-reservation public institutions (The Suquamish Museum and the Makah Cultural and Research Center).

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