Anglo-European Male Figure (possibly a Missionary)

Label

Artists from different nations and backgrounds made the small boats and other artworks in this case. Before cars, trains, and planes, boats connected the world. These objects reflect the global movement of peoples and trade between Indigenous and Colonial nations.

White protestant and catholic missionaries sailed around the globe attempting to convert Indigenous peoples to western religions. The upright (and uptight) missionary figures appear stiff and unmoving, perhaps reflecting the maker’s opinion that colonizing missionaries failed to fully appreciate the complexity of Haida culture.

The necklaces are made from dentalium, a narrow white seashell harvested by Indigenous peoples along the western coast of North America. Indigenous Americans traded dentalium across the continent, exchanging it for turquoise from the Southwest or dyes and hides from other regions. Dentalium’s movement reflects a history of complex international trade between Indigenous Nations that predates the arrival of European colonizers.

From the 2023 exhibition Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, curated by Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

SOCY 7.2, Race and Ethnicity, Emily Walton, Spring 2014

SOCY 7.1, Race and Ethnicity, Emily Walton, Winter 2015

NAIS 38.01/HIST 38.02, Lewis & Clark in Indian Country, Colin Calloway, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

Ancient Native American Pottery, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Anthropology 32, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 7-February 9, 1992.

Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Anthropology 32, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 13-March 4, 1990.

Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, Israel Sack Gallery and the Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 29, 2023-June 16, 2024.

Native Ecologies: Recycle, Resist, Protect, Sustain, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-January 5, 2020

No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in conjunction with the Humanities Institute, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 6-December 9, 2007.

Survival/Art/History: American Indian Collections from the Hood Museum of Art, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 18, 2000-April 7, 2002.

Publication History

[Northern, Tamara]. "Native American Art". Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, page 12 . (Published in conjunction with Gutman Gallery opening exhibition)

Angela Rosenthal and David Bindman, No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2003, p. 140, ill.2.4

Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012, p. 140, figure 2.4.

Provenance

Collected by "an old sea captain," about 1820-1860; to General John Hewston, California; bequeathed to his niece, Margaret Barnhill Roosevelt Kimberly (1851-1927), West Newton, Massachusetts; given to present collection, 1922.

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