Displaying items by tag: katsinam

French lawyer Pierre Servan-Schreiber may have been unable to stop the sale of artifacts belonging to Arizona’s Hopi tribe, but he did gift one object back to the indigenous group. Servan-Schreiber worked pro bono to halt an auction of 70 Hopi masks at Paris’ Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou auction house but was ultimately unsuccessful. The auction garnered $1.2 million despite the legal feud and opposition from people such as Robert Redford.

Amidst allegations of misconduct, the French auction house maintained that the artifacts had been acquired legally from a French collector. However, the Hopis asserted that the masks were ritual and spiritual objects, not meant for selling as art objects.

Servan-Schreiber bought an object known as a “Katsinam” for $9,000. He told the New York Times that, “It is my way of telling the Hopi that we only lost a battle and not the war.” Relatives of the French singer Jules Dassin also acquired a Katsinam at the auction and plan to return it to the Hopis later this year.

On view at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey through January 20, 2013, Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land focuses on Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887-1986) life from 1929 to 1953. During this time, O’Keeffe lived in New Mexico and found herself enthralled by her surroundings as well as the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region.

While O’Keeffe’s early career as one of the first American abstract painters and her relationship with American photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) have been examined at length, O’Keeffe’s time in New Mexico has been less studied. The exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum features over 30 paintings and works on paper depicting New Mexico’s local architecture and landscape. From 1931 to 1945, O’Keeffe created numerous drawings, watercolors, and paintings of Kachina dolls (or Katsinam), which are carved representations of Hopi spirit beings. The exhibition includes 15 of these works, which are presented alongside actual Kachina dolls.

The Montclair Museum of Art will compliment Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico with a small presentation of three O’Keeffe works from a private collection including two oil paintings, Black Petunia and White Morning Glory 1 and Inside Clam Shell, and one pastel on paper, titled Pink Camellia.

The exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum was organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico and will travel to the Denver Art Museum (February 10-April 28, 2013), the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (May 17-September 8, 2013), and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (September 27, 2013-January 12, 2014) after its run in New Jersey.