Collection Highlight

Harry Fonseca's Saint Coyote #1

For the Maidu of Northern California, and many other Native American peoples, the coyote occupies a special place in myth and folklore as a highly intelligent but often reckless shapeshifting trickster and creative cultural hero. Predating man on earth, the coyote is considered the instigator of human arts. The Sacramento-born artist Harry Fonseca (1946-2006) was of Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian, and Portuguese heritage, and in the Coyote series for which he is perhaps best known, Fonseca transformed this iconic Native American mythological figure into a contemporary and comic manifestation of the mythical troublemaker. In the Museum’s painting, Saint Coyote #1, we see a beatified version of Coyote in blue jeans, high-top sneakers, and a black leather jacket, coolly floating upright in a heavenly setting, surrounded by what might be interpreted as adoring coyote cherubim. In this instance, it seems as though he has somehow found his way from Native American mythology into western Christian religious iconography. The question now that he finds himself there might be, “what will he do next?”