Hood Quarterly, autumn/winter 2010-11
25th Anniversary Issue
Karen Miller, Assistant Curator for Special Projects
The works in this exhibition are all connected, formally or conceptually, to the tradition of Plains Indian ledger art of the nineteenth century.This style of figurative visual narrative derived from the inscription of heraldic images of war and hunting onto rock, buffalo hides, and tipis to memorialize the accomplishments of the male warrior-artists and to designate their positions within the tribe.As increased contact with Euro-Americans from the 1850s through the 1870s led to the transformation of life on the Great Plains, these men turned to drawing on balance sheets in ledger books that they obtained from white settlers, traders, and the military. Recognizing that ledger books were used to record important information, the Native artists appropriated them to chronicle heroic deeds, battles between Natives and non-Natives, and nostalgic scenes of pre-reservation life. During the reservation era these drawings served as both personal narratives and as stories in images of the transitions brought on by captivity, life on the reservation, and the subjugation of Native cultures. These drawings depict the struggle for cultural survival as the Natives adapted to an imposed non-Native lifestyle while attempting to preserve their history, resist white authority and domination, and negotiate tribal and individual identities.
Incorporating a wide variety of perspectives, materials, techniques, and aesthetic choices, contemporary ledger artists employ the visual narrative as a means of exploring both their cultural heritage and issues of present-day Native experience. These works often critique the contested histories of Native America and have come to constitute vehicles through which Native identity can be explored, constructed, and expressed. Over the past two decades, a number of women artists have also become active in the field of ledger art, joining their male peers in celebrating the cultural perseverance and survival of this art form through deliberate references to historic ledger drawing in their own work. Some contemporary ledger artists use historical photographs and documents as a means of reassessing and reclaiming their family and tribal histories. Others use ironic humor, fused with the unexpected, to compel the viewer to confront cultural stereotypes.
Related Exhibitions
- Contemporary Native American Ledger Art: Drawing on Tradition
- Native American Ledger Drawings from the Hood Museum of Art: The Mark Lansburgh Collection
- Picturing Change: The Impact of Ledger Drawing on Native American Art