FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART // UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART • UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art University of Oklahoma 555 Elm Avenue Norman, Oklahoma 73019
$24.00 ISBN 978-0-692-81914-2
52400>
9 780692 819142
9
Preface and Acknowledgments Mark Andrew White
17
Will Wilson's Cultural Alchemy: CIPX in Oklahoma Territory Janet Catherine Berlo
65
PHOTO/SYNTHESIS = An Exercise in Artistic Sovereignty heather ahtone
117
Contributors
118
About the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
119
Publication Notes Talking Tintypes are denoted with the “TT” symbol. These images have augmented reality experiences that are accessible by downloading Layar® on to your phone or tablet and placing the image centered within the camera reader. Plate 3 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969)
Chairman John A. Barrett, citizen of Citizen Potawatomi Nation, “Keweoge (He leads them on),” Citizen Potawatomi Nation families: Peltier, Bourassa (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 55 x 40 in.
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
·7
8
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Preface and Acknowledgments Mark Andrew White, Ph.D. Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director Although Edward S. Curtis began his exhaustive project The North American Indian in 1906, it took him over twenty years to visit Oklahoma. In its former designation as Indian Territory, Oklahoma had been the destination for numerous tribes removed from their ancestral homelands during the westward expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century. The state had, and continues to have, one of the largest and most diverse Native populations in the country, yet Curtis chose to examine only a small number of tribes in his Indians of Oklahoma (1930), volume 19 out of 20 in The North American Indian. The omission of so many tribes from the portfolio would seem inexplicable, though Curtis implied in his introduction that acculturation and assimilaPlate 4 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Charlotte Niyah McCurtain, citizen of Comanche Nation, Full-blood (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
Plate 5 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) Kicha—Comanche (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
·9
tion had altered many of the cultures. Curtis had conceived his original project as an attempt to preserve some aspects of Native cultures before traditions disappeared or were irrevocably altered by external pressure but he was, perhaps, unaware that Native cultures had always adapted and persevered while maintaining important traditions. His omission, it might be argued, was an attempt to disregard change and those tribes that he believed were too acculturated, in favor of a static view of Native life. Contemporary photographer Will Wilson (Navajo) has redressed Curtis’s misperception with his ongoing Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX), which reengages and revises Curtis’s documentary project—but with the intent of reciprocity and collaboration between Wilson and his sitters. The CIPX project provides the aesthetic foundation for this exhibition, PHOTO/SYNTHESIS. Here Wilson has photographed the descendants of those sitters included in the Indians of Oklahoma portfolio, but he has given the sitters and tribes control over their representation, in order to rectify Curtis’s authoritative approach and his desire to fix Native tribes in an unchangeable past. Any exhibition involves the participation of multiple parties, and the complexity of PHOTO/SYNTHESIS has required the hard work of numerous individuals and communities. We are indebted to Will Wilson for his willingness to participate in this project and the countless hours of expertise he devoted to photographing sitters and working with Native communities to ensure all had a voice in their representation. Additionally, PHOTO/SYNTHESIS would not have been possible without the creativity and insights of heather ahtone, the James T. Bialac Associate Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art, who conceived of the project and carefully managed it along the way. The research involved in identifying the descendants of Curtis’s original sitters was considerable, and her perseverance has resulted in a compelling exhibition. ahtone’s essay in this catalogue details her work not only with Wilson, but also with the Native tribes and nations that helped to make this project a reality.
10
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
We also appreciate the participation of Dr. Janet Catherine Berlo, Professor of Art History/Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, and the excellent scholarship she contributed to this publication. Tribal communities were essential to the success of this exhibition, and we would like to thank the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, Osage Nation, Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, and Comanche Nation for their collaborative spirit, their assistance in identifying descendants, and their help in selecting the images for the final exhibition. Many individuals within those communities provided invaluable help: Chairman John Shotton and Public Information Officer Heather Payne of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe; Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear of the Osage Nation and Director Hallie Winter of the Osage Nation Museum; President Bruce Pratt of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and Herb Adson, Director of the Cultural Resource Division of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma; President Terri Parton of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes; Chairman Earl Howe III, Enrollment Director Paula Mendoza, and Tribal Legislator Casey Camp-Horinek of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma; Governor Eddie Hamilton and Assistant Director Gordon Yellowman, Education Department, of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes; and Interim Tribal Administrator Jimmy Arterberry of the Comanche Nation and Margaret Murrow, Director of the Comanche Nation Native American Graves and Repatriation Act Department.
Plate 8 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Patrick Primeaux, Citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma and affiliated Cheyenne, Descendant of Chief Big Elk (Ponca) and Chief Henry Roman Nose (Cheyenne) (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
Plate 9 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) Red Bird—Cheyenne (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 13
PHOTO/SYNTHESIS has also received the generous financial support of both the National Endowment for the Arts, which provided for the research and development of both the exhibition and this catalogue, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which provided valuable assistance with key aspects of the exhibition’s development, especially in the promotion of this important project around the state of Oklahoma and the nation. The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art continues to owe a debt of gratitude to President David L. Boren and First Lady Molly Shi Boren, whose unwavering generosity has been essential to the excellence of our exhibitions and programs. And finally, we would like to acknowledge the work and dedication of the museum staff who assisted in the planning and development of this exhibition and publication: Michael Bendure, Director of Communication; Tracy Bidwell, Head Registrar, and her department; Melissa Ski, Director of Education; Brad Stevens, Chief Preparator, and his department; and Becky Zurcher Trumble, Director of Administration and Financial Operations. Thank you to all the aforementioned parties and to everyone else involved in creating this significant exhibition. We hope visitors and readers will enjoy PHOTO/SYNTHESIS, which addresses the ongoing issues of historic and contemporary Native representation.
Plate 10 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) Wife of Howling Wolf (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
14
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
Plate 11 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Tashina Jean Tahdooahnippah, M. Ed., citizen of Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes and affiliated Comanche/Kiowa/Kickapoo, “Cheyenne name: Mista-stoot (owl woman),” “Kickapoo name: Skish-co-quah” (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 15
Will Wilson's Cultural Alchemy: CIPX in Oklahoma Territory Janet Catherine Berlo Since the summer of 2012, photographer Will Wilson has tirelessly created several thousand images in his remarkable series Contemporary Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX). These images combine the wet plate collodion process and digital printing/ photography. The resulting portraits now comprise the largest single-artist archive of Native American portraits since Edward Curtis’s well-known project of photographing the so-called “vanishing Indian” in the first three decades of the twentieth century.1 Wilson’s project is a testament not only to his own creativity, but also to the survivance Plate 12 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Virginia “Gina” Rush, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Grandmother, and Irie Roy, Ponca, Age 8 months, and Jeana Rush, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and Carly Chaney, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and Todd G. Brumfield, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and Brooke Stoner, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Age 12 (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
Plate 13 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) The Whip—Ponca (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 17
18
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
of Indigenous North American peoples in the face of genocide, oppression, ignorance, and dispossession. The images—joyful, gritty, magisterial, beautiful, and defiant—affirm the multifaceted experiences of Native people in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I trace Wilson’s development as a photographer and the complexities of his engagement with the legacy of Edward Curtis’s formidable photographic project, The North American Indian (1907–1930). A reading of some of the images Wilson has created in collaboration with Native subjects across North America—as well as the ethical parameters within which they have been made—points to an exemplary artistic practice and cultural politics. I suggest that these are deeply grounded within both a twenty-first century “relational aesthetic” and an age-old indigenous aesthetic practice that long predates the concerns of the modern art world. As heather ahtone outlines in her essay in this volume, PHOTO/SYNTHESIS is a remarkable collaboration between a Native photographer, a Native curator, and several of Oklahoma’s many Native communities. In this exhibition, decisions about photographic representations of individual and community members rested in the hands of the communities themselves. This Native control represents a radical departure from the usual role of the art photographer—that of autonomous decision-maker and image-maker. As Wilson observed, “Giving up artistic control is part of what relational aesthetics is about.”2 The Making of a Photographer William Raymond Wilson was born in San Francisco on February 23, 1969, to Lola Etsitty (Navajo) and William White Wilson. In the Navajo way of reckoning things, he was born “to” the Kinya’áanii or Towering House People, his mother’s clan.3 His childhood was spent between the worlds of San Francisco and Tuba City, Arizona, on the western edge of the Navajo Nation. After attending Northfield Mount Hermon prep school in Massachusetts, Wilson studied at Oberlin College, where he majored in studio art and art history. His undergraduate work with feminist art historian Patricia Matthews inspired him to think about art as a social practice, as did a campus visit by Anishinaabe performance artist Rebecca Belmore, whose work insists on Native performance as a decolonizing activity.4 After graduation, Wilson worked as an Associated Press photojournalist in Costa Rica for two years while completing his MFA in Plate 14 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Rennard Strickland, citizen of Osage Nation and affiliated Cherokee, Indian Lawyer, Dean Emeritus (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 55 x 40 in.
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 19
photography from the University of New Mexico in 2002. There he studied with acclaimed photographer Patrick Nagatani, sculptor Steve Barry, and art historian David Craven. Wilson wrote a dissertation for his MFA degree on photographer Milton Snow (1905–1986) who, from 1937 to 1959, was a government employee on the Navajo reservation. Snow shot some twelve thousand photos of contemporary Navajo life, mostly using a large-format camera and a mobile darkroom in his panel truck. Wilson argued that Snow’s documentary photographs were a powerful tool for the promotion of government reform work, and that his own intention was to understand them “as part of a critical history of Navajo representation.”5 From 2002 to 2006, Wilson collaborated with artist Joshua Sarantitis on an ambitious community art-making project in the Barrio Anita neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, which resulted in Anita’s Song, a 12,000–square foot outdoor mural.6 While this public art project garnered attention in the Southwest, Wilson came to national attention when Auto Immune Response, an elegant and mysterious photographic and installation series, premiered at the Heard Museum in Phoenix in December 2004, before travelling to New York and Indianapolis.7 I believe that Wilson’s educational experiences, as well as his prior bodies of work provided the seeds that germinated into the ambitious undertaking that is CIPX. Auto Immune Response. An on-going project that becomes increasingly protean, Auto Immune Response features in its large-scale panoramic photographs an unnamed male protagonist (Wilson himself ) often wearing a gas mask, who traverses an eerie desert landscape. The artist writes: The work has focused on a post-apocalyptic Navajo man’s journey through an uninhabited landscape. The character in the images is searching for answers. Where has everyone gone? What has occurred to transform the familiar and strange landscape that he wanders? Why has the land become toxic to him? How will he respond, survive, reconnect to the Earth? 8 Wilson credits a youth devoted to comic books and 1970s science fiction films for generating his interest in a postapocalyptic world. More personally, an understanding of the ecological Armageddon that is the twentieth century legacy of U.S. governmental and
20
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
corporate intervention in the American Southwest informs his work; family members of his grandmother’s generation died from nuclear waste poisoning on the reservation, an issue that remains at the forefront of Navajo activism.9 Moreover, one of Wilson’s mentors, renowned photographer Patrick Nagatani, published a book on his widely-exhibited work titled Nuclear Enchantment in 2001, while Wilson was his student in graduate school.10 All of these influences combined to produce a memorable and arresting series, which is still on-going. Some photographs in Auto Immune Response depict the interior of a hogan, the traditional Navajo six-sided dwelling, the doorway of which faces east, toward the rising sun. The hogan is sometimes inhabited by the protagonist, and sometimes eerily empty, save for his paraphernalia (fig. 1). In Auto Immune Response #4, the log-roofed hogan contains centuryold photographic equipment (the kind Wilson would use in his next big project, CIPX), a laptop computer, a bed frame with plastic tubing, and yards and yards of mysteriously snaking wires and cords. It is clear that after the apocalypse, the hero has set up an ad hoc command station to deal with disaster. It is his combined mastery of ancestral knowledge, modern technology, and historic processes that will save him—if anything can.
Figure 1 Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Auto Immune Response #4, 2005 Archival inkjet print, 44 x 80 in. Image courtesy of artist.
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 21
The hogan photos of Auto Immune Response also gesture to the long history of photographs taken on the Navajo Reservation that chronicle the outsiders’ fascination with this remarkable architectural form and those who inhabit it. One classic photo genre, portraying the industrious Navajo woman working in or around her hogan, is exemplified by Laura Gilpin’s Hogan Interior (Harriet Cadman’s), taken in the 1950s (fig. 2).11 Here, a woman cards wool for spinning, surrounded by melons, enamel coffee pots, and other materials of daily life. Like all Gilpin’s photos, it is beautifully composed and ascribes a nobility to her sitters, who live in a twentieth-century reservation economy comprised equally of traditional features (the hogan) and aspects of modern life (the box of Duz detergent and other commercial products).12 In Wilson’s postmodern postapocalyptic reality, the hogan still offers both physical shelter and spiritual sustenance, as well it should: in a Navajo epistemology of place, the universe is conceptualized as a hogan, and within this vast cosmological dwelling are many subsets of home. The Navajo land, Dinétah, is circumscribed by four sacred mountains that form the house poles of a cosmic architecture, demarcating a parallelogram around Navajo country. This vast tract of land is conceptualized as a hogan, too. So the protagonist who seeks to regenerate the world operates within all of these layers of protection.
Figure 2 Laura Gilpin (1891–1979) Hogan Interior (Harriet Cadman’s) [near Little Shiprock, New Mexico], 1953 Gelatin silver print Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas Bequest of the Artist: p1979.128.431; © 1979 Amon Carter Museum of American Art
22
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
PHOTO/SYNTHESIS = An Exercise in Artistic Sovereignty heather ahtone James T. Bialac Associate Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art The photographic images embodied in the exhibition, PHOTO/SYNTHESIS, are the material evidence of a collaborative project involving one artist, one museum, seven tribes, and an army of participants. While collaboration has become an accepted model for developing art exhibitions, Native communities have broadly remained resource partners rather than engaged as full partners. Our exhibition was conceived from a series of questions. These questions began with wondering how a non-Native institution could work with tribal communities, as bodies, in a manner that was Plate 47 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Arlen Washburn Lightfoot, citizen of Otoe-Missouria Tribe and affiliated Iowa, “Montokomoni (Thunder),” Bear Clan (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
Plate 48 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) White Elk—Oto (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 65
mutually beneficial and effective. PHOTO/SYNTHESIS is the result of that question, which is perhaps not an answer so much as an expanded exercise. As a Native curator, one of my goals is to expand the role for Native Americans in the museum field and to engage in methodologies that promote Indigenous cultural ethos within the practice of exhibiting Native art. My goal is also to provide a glimpse into the collaborative processes that grew PHOTO/SYNTHESIS into an exhibition. Through a host of conversations, we created a project that was about more than creating a photographic exhibition; it was an imagining of how exhibitions could be produced in collaboration with the Native community by a non-Native institution, the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.1 The honesty of those conversations, the questions asked, and the fruitfulness of the dialogue created an experience that was, for many of us, personally and professionally profound. These exchanges were guided by a methodology that intentionally opened the curatorial and artistic process to include tribal agency, each tribe was asked to exercise authorship over their own representation. This essay looks at the many collaborators engaged in PHOTO/SYNTHESIS, while considering a single question: Why does collaboration matter? What is PHOTO/SYNTHESIS? During the last thirty years, the number of Native American photographers has grown tremendously. This speaks to Indigenous artists’ interest in expressing their creative vision through the medium of photography. For a population that has historically been well documented as visual subjects, this expansion of the field also speaks Plate 49 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) A Ponca Dancer (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
66
·
Plate 50 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Casey Camp-Horinek, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, “Zhuthi,” and Lola Williams, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Granddaughter of Casey Camp-Horinek, Age 2, and Diane Fafa, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Granddaughter of Casey Camp-Horinek, Age 10, and Matheanna Williams, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and Isaiah Williams, Ponca, Age 1, and Jewel Camp, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and Serena Horinek, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Granddaughter of Casey Camp-Horinek (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 67
68
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
to the reversal this enacts: moving from the front of the camera, as subject, to reposition behind the camera, as author. Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo; b. 1969) occupies the position of author in his project, the Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX). A complex program that reimagines photography for Indigenous people, CIPX poses a single question: What if Indigenous people had invented photography? Wilson’s resulting series is comprised of stunning portraits, full of aesthetic value and individual personality, that also include the voice of the subject as part of the image. As a curator, I found the photographs intriguing and the project an incredibly astute challenge to the issues of representation that persist for Indigenous communities. As a Native curator, though, CIPX begged another question: What if Indigenous people had invented museum curating? And from this shared point of professional and cultural inquiry, and a visit over coffee with Wilson in 2013, PHOTO/SYNTHESIS was born. In order to understand the scope of the collaboration, recognizing the role of the photograph is central for historical and theoretical purposes. In Photographs Objects Histories, Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart discuss the role of photographs as objects beyond the “aesthetic appreciation of the material,” because photographic images are powerful conveyors of what is often perceived as reality, or a real moment. Theorists have considered how image meanings function within society as access to public/private spaces, which has contributed to the scholarly discourse on issues of representation and the role of authorship by the photographer—a conceptual cornerstone of this project.2
Plate 51 (facing page) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Dwain Camp, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, “Shongaska (White Horse; same name as Gus McDonald),” and Casey Camp-Horinek, citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, “Zhuthi,” and Craig Camp, Sr., citizen of Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, “Zhaba Zhinga”; These siblings are descendants of Gus McDonald. (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
Plate 52 Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) The Story Teller—Ponca (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 69
Contributors heather ahtone
Currently the James T. Bialac Associate Curator of Native American & Non-Western Art at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, the primary focus of heather's research and writing has been to examine the intersection between traditional tribal knowledge with contemporary art. Working in the Native arts community since 1993, she has curated numerous exhibits, published articles on her research, and continues to seek opportunities to broaden discourse on global contemporary arts. In addition, she is committed to serving the arts community of Oklahoma. She is a member of the Chickasaw Nation, and has strong family ties to the Choctaw and Kiowa communities. Janet Catherine Berlo
Janet Catherine Berlo is Professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and has written numerous books and articles on Native American art, including the influential Native North American Art with Ruth Phillips (1998, 2015), Plains Indian Drawings 1865–1935 (1998), and Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawk’s Vision of a Lakota World (2000). Berlo has taught Native American art history as a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale and has received grants from the Guggenheim and Getty Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mark A. White
Mark Andrew White is the Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma. He specializes in American and Native American art of the twentieth century with a particular focus on the Southwest. His recent publications include Picturing Indian Territory: Portraits of the Land That Became Oklahoma, 1819–1907 (2016), James Surls: A World Apart (2015), A World Unconquered: The Art of Oscar Brousse Jacobson (2015), Macrocosm/Microcosm: Abstract Expressionism in the American Southwest (2014), Art Interrupted: Advancing American Art and the Politics of Cultural Diplomacy (2012), The James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection: Selected Works (2012), and The Eugene B. Adkins Collection: Selected Works (2011). Will Wilson
Will Wilson is Program Head of Photography at Santa Fe Community College. He holds the dissertation track MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico. Wilson has received grants from the Joan Mitchell and Pollock-Krasner Foundations and the Eiteljorg Fellowship. Wilson managed the National Vision Project, a Ford Foundation initiative at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, which published Manifestations: New Native Arts Criticism. Wilson’s work has been exhibited widely from the National Museum of the American Indian to the Museum of Fine Arts in Yekaterinberg, Russia. For more information about Wilson’s practice, visit: willwilson.photoshelter.com.
PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 117
PHOTO: ERIC H. ANDERSON
About the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is one of the finest university art museums in the United States. Strengths of the nearly 17,000-object permanent collection (including the approx. 3,300-object Eugene B. Adkins Collection and the more than 4,500-object James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection) are the Weitzenhoffer Collection of French Impressionism, 20th century American painting and sculpture, traditional and contemporary Native American art, art of the Southwest, ceramics, photography, contemporary art, Asian art and graphics from the 16th century to the present. Temporary exhibitions are mounted throughout the year that explore the art of various periods and cultures.
118
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Publication Notes Copyright © 2017 The University of Oklahoma.
front cover: Plate 76, p. 100
This catalogue has been published in conjunction
back cover: (Clockwise from top left) Plate 14, p. 19; Plate 74, p. 99; Plate 59, p. 77; Plate 11, p. 14; Plate 36, p. 49; Plate 22, p. 35.
with the exhibition PHOTO/SYNTHESIS at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, January 26–April 2, 2017. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form without the written consent of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. All catalogue plate images © Will Wilson 2016, unless otherwise identified. Catalogue authors: Janet C. Berlo; heather ahtone Catalogue editor: heather ahtone Copy editor: Jo Ann Reece Catalogue design: Eric H. Anderson Masthead design: Michele Archambo
Plate 1 (page 4) Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Cristina “Cricket” Hart Yellowman, citizen of Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes (2016) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in. Plate 2 (page 6) Edward S. Curtis (U.S., 1868–1952) (right) An Arapaho (1930) Photogravure, 12 7⁄ 8 x 9½ in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman Purchased with funds from the T. W. Eason Fund, 1974 pages 2 and 3: See plate 34, page 46 Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) See plate 35, page 47 Will Wilson (U.S., Navajo, b. 1969) Archival pigment print from wet plate collodion scan, 8 x 10 in.
This exhibition and catalogue were made possible with the generous support of grants from National Endowment for the Arts The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art The University of Oklahoma 555 Elm Ave. Norman, Oklahoma 73019-3003 phone: 405.325.3272; fax: 325.7696 www.ou.edu/fjjma Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962844 ISBN:
978-0-692-81914-2
This catalogue was printed by the University of Oklahoma Printing Services and is issued by the University of Oklahoma. 1,000 copies have been printed and distributed at no cost to the taxpayers of Oklahoma. PH OTO ⁄ S Y N T H E S I S
· 119
120
·
FRED JONES JR . MUSEUM OF ART
·
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART // UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART • UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art University of Oklahoma 555 Elm Avenue Norman, Oklahoma 73019
$24.00 ISBN 978-0-692-81914-2
52400>
9 780692 819142