Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Trip To Denver: Trouble With Indians


After perusing the Wyeth Exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, (my review here)we headed downstairs to partake of A Place In The Sun, featuring the painting of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings, two artist of Germany decent that made their way from the East Coast to Taos, New Mexico both around 1915 and were funded by the mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison and Oscar Mayer, yup the hot dog tycoon.


E. Martin Hennings, often painted his subject, nestled amongst the idyllic scenery in Northern New Mexico....



Walter Ufer was a different matter and through his painting he had something to say. Unfortunately, it didn't seem the curators and docents at the Denver Art Museum did much research on why he painted what he painted, focusing more on how he painted it.


Ufer's painting are rough and full of symbolism. The smartly dressed docent, who was leading a gaggle of stylish Denverite ladies around the show near us got that right.... 


Past that, she got about everything else wrong. Yes, I live in the Four Corners, very near Taos and  next to the Navajo and Ute reservations, have taught Native American children for about a decade, am an artist which can make me annoying on "the facts", but when I hear an official volunteer with the mini microphone and touch pad declare not slight errors but grievous misinformation on a culture she and the museum, according to the plaques beside the painting have no interesting in "getting right", it makes me cringe.


"Are these from Guatemala," asked one of the ladies, pointing out the brightly colored blankets Ufer depicted on several of his subjects. No response from the Docent.



Standing in front of Ufer's painting "Me and Him,"another of the ladies in the group asked why they looked so mad. The Docent's response, was..."Well, they are just a mad people."

Pause,,,,yes, she declared that the indegnious people who saw their land, culture and lives being taken over by the Western expansion of Anglo Europeans were just "cranky".

Then, pondering "The Solemn Pledge", borrowed by the DAM from the Chicago Institute of Art...



The Docent declared the painting depicted several generations of father and son, as they sent the boy off to Indian School where he would learn "how to be an Indian."

Okay...

I know the Denver Art Museum is well, an art museum, not a history museum. But to be frank, they aren't that good at getting the art part right either. As I mentioned at the top of the post, we also viewed the Wyatt show, featuring father and son Andrew and James. The reality is this, there is a wide, wide gap between being an artist and being a docent or a volunteer that works at an art museum, reading off the important bullet points listed for them....
             
               

Ease dropping in the Wyeth show, there were times I think the docents didn't really understand what they were reading off. I've been to enough museums and observed enough patrons to conclude they mostly want a short, ordered description to what they are looking at or sometimes just to be told what they should think about the painting in front of them. That is bad enough when the painting depicts something somewhat familiar to them.

But when the subject, the indigenous people surrounding Taos New Mexico already has  volumes and volumes of bad information, I can't stand anymore grievous misconceptions being added to people's perception.

The US Government did not set up Indian School to teach the native population how to be better Indians. They pulled children from their mother's arms, sometimes at gunpoint to literally "breed out the Red Man" by distancing the younger generations from their cultures, their language and their families. Cutting their hair, dressing them in White Man's clothing, beating them if they spoke their native tongues, teaching them a trade and often farming them out to be servants and laborers...


Thus many of Ufer's subjects were of the Pueblos Indians gardening and working for their White employers...

Bob Abbott and His Assistant (1935)

The plaque next to the painting talks more about Ufer's last great work being a self portrait, connecting the spent artist to the old car, instead of the dejected assistant, sitting on the bumper, obviously more important to Ufer, for his placement in the painting, then the old car.

Reality was and still is, that places like Taos and Santa Fe are attractive to rich Easterners like Henning, Ufer and even Georgia O'Keeffe for holidays, artists retreats, second homes where labor is cheap, real cheap.
 In New Mexico, though Anglos are in the minority, they hold the power, politically and have the say in most matters, like land. President Teddy Roosevelt took 48,000 acres of the Taos Pueblos land, land they have had claim to since the 13th century and made it part of the Carson National Forest. The land, including the Blue Lake which the Taos People consider sacred. The holdings were finally  returned to them 1970 and 1996.

Sadly. such facts were not very highlighted by the Denver Art Museum in their A Place In The Sun show.   

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Trip to Denver: The Wyeth Exhibt

After "the business" was completed, we went to the Denver Art Museum's exhibition of arguably the greatest American family of artists, father and son- Andrew and Jamie Wyeth...


So popular is the Wyeth legacy, started first by "the grandfather" N.C, Wyeth...


 whose was one of our great American illustrators of the Golden Age and whose "prop" boots were on display...

The DAM show, which when I was a kid and went Denver on field trips to the Art Museum, would love to keep the little badges that proved we had paid the admission, cause it spelled a "naughty" world. Sadly, this trip I only got a sticker that spelled out the full name, but I digress.

This show featured N.C. son, Andrew Wyeth ( 1917-2009).....


know for his muted palette of browns and earth tones,  his studies of the local inhabitants of New England including the Helga series...


and the Olson family. His most famous painting that of Christina's World, gazing up through the grass of the Olson's farm. The finished painting was not at the DAM, but one of his preliminary sketches was, showing the energy of the idea, that is often lost when the idea is worked out.


We interrupt this review of a great show to highlight something else, who goes to museums in the middle of the day, middle of the week? 

Tourist and well, lots and lots of "older ladies", who made the day interesting. First, they are concerned with everything, their business and others. They first took notice of us, because the "Member's line" was rather long, cause they all come mid day, mid week and we were the only ones in the "other line" and they were rather vocal about that. Then, once our tickets were bought and we were waiting in the rope queue, they were rather upset we did not want to listen to the audio commentary, one reaching over the rope to stop us from going in, unguided to be washed this way and that in the exhibit hall. 


My husband dubbed them the "audio zombies" and they did seem to zombie walk from one painting to the next and then stand motionless listening to the commentary coming through the large satellite phone-ish looking device at their ear.

I was polite with the whole encouragement to not go in, unanchored and resisted tell them that my Wyeth knowledge was decades long,  Helga being released to the world when I was in art school decades ago and just recently watching a whole documentary on the Wyeth legacy.


And I was Jon's whispering commentary, directing  him to appreciate the photograph of the wooden box on the shore line and telling him of Andrew Wyeth's frustration with gawkers while he tried to work and his solution.

The show was very telling, especially the progression of Jamie Wyeth , (1946-  ), showing him experimenting for his voice, painting such icons as Warhol....


his father and grandfather's influence showing in his palette and subject matter....


to finding something that was truly his own....


greater than life whimsical animals. 

The show would have been wonderful, if not for the  "gaggle of older ladies" who didn't seem to know what to think, needing to be instructed, either with the "zombie audios" or clustered around a "docent", a volunteer guide of the museum with a tablet and mini microphone.


They were quite suprised by the "Nude Wall" , a series of sketches and studies...



I heard a few audible "Oh, mys!" as they came around the corner from the lovable animals.
Don't know what they thought of the "pumpkin head man...


 at the end of the show, by that time, I wanted to distance myself, cause, well, I had had my fill of "the gaggle". Unfortunately I would have to deal with them again in A Place in the Sun Exhibit...


 and this time my frustration is probably going to result in an email of complaint to the Denver Art Museum. That story to come in the next post. 



Monday, February 08, 2016

Trip To Denver: The New Union Station


We headed up to Denver last week for  a little bit of business in the Capitol city...


Click HERE for video of train passing by coffee shop...

But when that was done, we stayed around for a couple of days. For one, to explore the newly renovated Union Station on the Northwest end of downtown...


Denver continues to add to their mass transit system, a sleek new hub between Union Station and the South Platte River in LoDo (lower downtown).


The old Union Station has been a anchor on the Northwest corner of the Sixteenth Street Mall...






and includes a hotel...

                           

and several restaurants, listed here...


Ate at the very hip Kitchen Next Door Community Pub for dinner...


and then came back the next day and had breakfast at Snooze, yup the 60's are cool again...