News of the Arroyo
Title: | Lovely to look at, but little to be learned |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2003-11-13 |
Summary: | November 12, 2003 - An Art review in the LA Times Calendar section gives a mixed review to the Autry Msueum exhibit of Southwest Museum artifacts. |
Author: | David Pagel, Special to The Times |
Publication: | Los Angeles Times |
Content: | ART REVIEW Displayed works are indeed glorious, but context is missing from Autry National Center\'s inaugural offering. \"Glorious Treasures: 100 Years of Collecting by the Southwest Museum\" is a whirlwind tour of two continents and nearly 2,000 years of history. Beginning in what now is Arizona and New Mexico, the exhibition at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage travels from the central valleys of California to the icy tundra of northern Canada and the lush rain forests of eastern Ecuador. Along the way, stopovers are made in diverse communities in the Pacific Northwest, across the Great Plains, around the Great Lakes and in what now is Mexico, Panama and Guatemala. If the thousands of miles covered by the exhibit\'s ambitious itinerary don\'t incite wanderlust, the centuries spanned by its highlights-only format surely will set your head spinning. Take, for example, the show\'s oddest juxtaposition: a black velvet dress from the 1960s and a ritual object depicting a squat male athlete from the 5th century. Both were made in Mexico. Both were components of formal social occasions that provided respite from the tedious toil of the workaday world. But to glance from one artifact to the other is to experience imaginative whiplash and intellectual vertigo. Neither sheds any light on the other. ... \"Glorious Treasures\" provides less information about its priceless objects than typically is found on the back of a postcard. This suggests that museum visitors are superficial tourists, not people interested in delving more deeply into a subject but folks so pressed for time that it\'s impossible to do more than skim the surface of the magnificent things before us. ... Yet that\'s what is so frustrating about \"Glorious Treasures.\" It condescends to viewers by forcing us to look at its works in only one way: as an impressive inventory. Rarely are such socially significant objects treated so shamelessly as loot. ... \"Glorious Treasures\" presents about 90 vessels, baskets, blankets, garments and tools. Some of the standouts include a large Hopi jar (circa 1900) with images of kachinas painted on its exterior; a nearly 100-year-old trough-size feast dish carved from wood by the Kwalhioqua/Kwakiutl of the Columbia River plateau to resemble a grinning fish; and a nearly 2,000-year-old Chiriqui offering vessel whose three legs represent three men. Their casual postures are so natural that they could be hanging around any plaza or town square today. ... The exhibition inaugurates the Autry National Center, formed by the joining of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage and the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. It isn\'t an auspicious debut. As a whole, it\'s less interesting than the sum of its parts. The treasures are glorious, but the way they are presented is less ambitious than ignoble. * `Glorious Treasures\' Where: Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles When: Tuesdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Ends: July 4 Price: $7.50; students and seniors, $5; children, $3. Contact: (323) 667-2000 ----- Read the whole article at: http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/cl-et- pagel12nov12.story |
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