WHEN MOTHERS ARE CONTEXT

Artist's Date #52: Arts of Indigenous America - Opening Celebration @ the de Young

Woodrow Wilson Crumbo (Woody Crumbo) (Citizen Potawatomi, 1912–1989). Spirit of Spring (detail), ca. 1950.

In mid-September, the main atrium of the de Young Museum was filled with people ready to observe a ceremonial dance to celebrate the opening of their relaunched Arts of Indigenous America gallery. The gallery itself was a step forward for the museum’s strategy, which normally pairs traditional or historical artworks with contemporary pieces. Usually, newer pieces sit at the back of the exhibit, luring you into seeing the whole thing, and also asking you to reconsider your impressions of the older work on the way out.

In the case of the new Indigenous wing, contemporary art leads the journey into the museum’s collection of cultural artifacts, including Ancestral Maya artwork and pottery. I think the approach is a wise one, asking us to consider whether art is contextual or whether aesthetics alone can create its own meaning. Overall, it’s a progressive strategy that acknowledges both the audience and maintains the museum’s institutional mission.

The same cannot be said of the dance performance and cultural sharing that took place in the middle of the event on the opening day. The Karuk Brush Dance Group was the name of the dancers, according to the program, but when I tried to find more information afterward, I wondered whether the museum had gotten that title wrong altogether.

The Karuk are a tribe, and a Brush Dance is a ceremonial dance, and it feels like someone in PR just put the word group on the end. I could be wrong about this. I could be just reacting to the initial feeling I had when I heard, several times, before they began, how they’d be dancing “in front of the cars.”

The cars referred to Rose B. Simpson’s installation, LEXICON, which features two refurbished lowrider cars adorned with sweet leather seats and Pueblo geometry. She had a talk on her work as part of the event, and so there was a context set up for that spectacle. Plus, her work fits into the space - the cars can look like objects to consider in a room that’s as big as a stadium with ceilings up to the sky. I get why a dance performance on the same floor was appealing - there’s a big staircase in the center of the museum, and some people were already positioned up on the balcony so that they could look down to observe. But this set the piece up for failure, given its own contextual requirements and the audience’s limited exposure to a work of this kind.

I started up top, but as the group arrived in a dramatic fashion, walking silently around the gathering crowd, and took their place front and center, I found that I wanted to be closer. The intimacy was already signaled - with the shell of their costumes gently clinking with each step and the soft clunking of bare feet on the museum’s concrete floor.

I snuck up through the crowd and sat down on the floor, as the people in the front of the crowd were all asked to do.

As one person in the group, a middle-aged man in the center, began to describe what we would see, I found myself taking mental notes of what the group was wearing. The skirts were composed of lines and lines of beads and shells, which accounted for the sound they made on arrival. The men all wore feathers that were two feet high attached to leather straps around their heads. A few of the younger boys wore animal-shaped hoods that hung down their backs. I wanted to take pictures, but this was against the protocol, because, as we soon learned, this dance was primarily ceremonial and was not meant for consumption in the way we were used to.

We also learned that the piece we were about to see would be traditionally performed at the end of a long ceremony, where the community would have been up all night, maybe for days, and now would be coming together to focus their intention on healing, and for this dance specifically, the healing of a sick child.

I think with all the hubbub, I found myself blocking out the vulnerability of this intention. I was also torn. On the one hand, I can only imagine a whole community gathering, men included, where the sole purpose of the art made was to be protective and personal, whose impact could potentially be judged by an ill child who later got well. This sounds ideal. So there was jealousy. But there was also anger. If you were to tell me, right now, in this moment, where I am again, looking for a pediatrician with capacity that’s both competent and caring and not concierge, that I ought to look toward art for my answers, I would also be outraged.

Perhaps because of these defenses, I began feeling critical of the piece in the way I am used to - with my more familiar lens: a feminist lens. With this perspective (western, mine!, second/third wave), I found that I was uncomfortable with the cultural norms expressed through the movement. Out of the people on stage, it was only one man who addressed the audience. Of the people who sang prominent parts, it was only the older men. There were no older women. The women on stage turned perpendicular to the audience as well as their fellow dancers whenever the main commentator began to speak. All the young children were silent.

The main action of the dance was that two male dancers stepped out in front of the group and performed the same movement as the last pair of men: a kind of confrontational stance toward one another, squatting with their arrow-like tools held in front of their bodies.

Clearly, the piece was not meant to turn me on, but I was distinctly turned off. I’m not a fan of work that ceremonially excludes women’s voices and focuses single-mindedly on the achievements of men (and the possible tensions between men as they fight to achieve them).