Olla (Water Jar)
Acoma Pueblo (Aco-Mah)
Southwest
about 1900
Terracotta, slip and pigment
Overall: 12 3/16 × 13 in. (31 × 33 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Bequest of Frank C. and Clara G. Churchill
46.17.10078
Geography
Place Made: Acoma Pueblo, United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Pottery
Research Area
Native American
Native American: Southwest
Not on view
Label
Looking just beneath the larger jar’s widest point, do you see the black stripes painted in a shell-shaped pattern? As if falling from the sky above, these abstracted rain clouds represent the importance of water in the Acoma Pueblo community, located in the colonized state of New Mexico. Water’s significance, preservation, and storage remain important today for the Acoma Pueblo and their neighbors, as suggested by the clouds adorning the smaller and more contemporary Santa Clara Pueblo bowl by Adam Speckled Rock.
How does water’s portrayal on these jars reflect communal relationships to water? How do these relationships relate to or differ from those portrayed in the paintings hanging nearby?
From the 2023 exhibition Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, curated by Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Course History
First Year Student Enrichment Program - Cultures, Identities and Belongings, Francine A'Ness, Summer 2023
Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2023
Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2023
Art History 40.01, American Art and Identity, Mary Coffey, Fall 2023
Creative Writing 10.02, Writing and Reading Fiction, Katherine Crouch, Fall 2023
Geography 11.01, Qualitative Methods, Emma Colven, Fall 2023
Geography 2.01, Introduction to Human Geography, Coleen Fox, Fall 2023
Geography 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Fall 2023
English 30.01, African and African American Studies 34.01, Early Black American LIterature, Michael Chaney, Winter 2024
Writing 5.06, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Winter 2024
Writing 5.07, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Winter 2024
Exhibition History
Gene Y. Kim, Class of 1985, Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-August 13, 2000.
Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Anthropology 32, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.February 13-March 4, 1990.
Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition; Anthropology 32, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.January 7-February 12, 1992.
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-November 24, 2024.
Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.December 1, 1995-February 14, 1996.
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
Waterways: Tension and Flow, Harrington Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 4-August 23, 2015.
Publication History
[Tamara Northern], "Native American Art". Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, page 13. (Published in conjunction with Gutman Gallery opening exhibition)
Jacquelynn Baas, From "a few curious Elephants Bones" to Picasso, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, September, 1985, Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College, 1985, pp. 37-43, ill. p. 41
Beth Michelle Schrift, Pueblo Pottery of the Churchill Collection at the Turn of the Century: A Representation of Changing Times, 2004, pp. 1-102, ill. p. 61, fig. 19.
Provenance
Clara G. Corser Turner Churchill (1851-1945) and Frank Carroll Churchill (1850-1912), Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, 1903-1907; bequeathed to present collection, 1946.
This record is part of an active database that includes information from historic documentation that may not have been recently reviewed. Information may be inaccurate or incomplete. We also acknowledge some language and imagery may be offensive, violent, or discriminatory. These records reflect the institution’s history or the views of artists or scholars, past and present. Our collections research is ongoing.
We welcome questions, feedback, and suggestions for improvement. Please contact us at: Hood.Collections@dartmouth.edu