Appeal to the Great Spirit, Cyrus Dallin's equestrian statue which stands in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, was originally cast in 1908—the midpoint of art’s Modern period although in style, it is more akin to the preceding Beaux-Arts era than to its own. However, it is its subject, a Native American in fervent prayer, that connects it to the early twentieth century and that, ultimately, has brought it under fire in the twenty-first. This is an examination of how the perception of this sculpture has evolved over time.
Dallin was born in the Utah Territory in 1861. He grew up with children from the nearby Ute tribe as his playmates, learning to speak the Ute language and, at age eleven, attending the negotiations between federal government representatives and Chief Tabby Ta-Kwanah for the return of Ute tribal lands. His blossoming talent for sculpting received early recognition so that, with the aid of two local businesses, he left Utah to study in Boston at the age of nineteen. While traveling east by train, Dallin met a group of Native chiefs headed for Washington, D.C. By the end of his six-day journey he had made life-long friends with two of them from whom he would seek advice and gain support for his work in the years ahead.
In Boston, he opened his own studio where he modeled portraits at the age of twenty-two. Soon after, he entered and won a city-sponsored competition for a monument to Paul Revere which was cast and erected in Boston’s North End where the classic equestrian statue has become an icon.
Although he quickly set down roots in the Boston area, Dallin studied in Paris for two periods in the late 1880s and 1890s. In 1889 he spent his free time with Native Americans from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show during their stay in France, sketching the clothing and accessories they wore in the show. This encounter likely contributed to the details of dress for the three equestrian statues he entered in the Salons. Signal of Peace, showing a Native American in full
Upon his return to Boston, Dallin’s growing reputation created a queue of commission work that continued to garner critical acclaim. For the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair he produced a model of his third “Indian” equestrian, Protest of the Sioux. And, in 1908, the fourth, Appeal to the Great Spirit, was cast in Paris winning the gold medal at that year’s Salon. The City of Boston sought to purchase the statue through public subscription in 1911 as a “permanent ornament” to the city. Thanks to a generous donation from Peter C. Brooks on the condition that the sculpture become the property of what was to be the Museum of Fine Arts, the subscription was successful and Appeal to the Great Spirit was soon installed at the Huntington Avenue entrance.
By the following year, the artworld had begun to take notice of Dallin’s quartet of equestrian monuments. Arts and Decoration published an article that described a progression the authors, Wilbur and Ethel Pomeroy, saw in Dallin’s work. A product of the era of the “Kill the Indian, save the man,” approach to America’s Indigenous peoples, the study suggested that the four statues represented the phases of indigenous history, beginning with Signal of Peace, as a welcome to the arriving settlers “open, expectant as one who meets strangers whom he wishes to greet fraternally” and endingwith Appeal to the Great Spirit, which the article described as signifying “the pleading Indian…appealing to the Great Spirit to save a vanishing race.”
A decade later Dallin had completed his fifth Native equestrian, Scout and was interviewed by Katherine Thayer Hodges for The American Magazine of Art, finally giving voice to his true artistic motivations. Rather than supporting the Pomeroy's interpretation which had been widely disseminated and accepted by that time, the article explained, “Justice is a strongly developed characteristic of Mr. Dallin’s nature. It makes him feel keenly the unfairness which has been meted out to the Indians. ‘In innumerable instances,” he says, “it has seemed that the Indians had no rights which the white men were bound to respect’. The injustice which the Indians have suffered has aroused in him a desire to express the Indian nature as he sees it, that the white man may understand the red man better, ‘If I have succeeded in any measure, my work has not been in vain.’”
Dallin not only put his thoughts into words for Hodges’ article, but he also became an activist. He served as chairman of the Massachusetts Branch of the Eastern Association of Indian Affairs (which would later merge into the AIA), participated in the establishment of the Federal Indian Crafts Board, was a committee chairman on the Algonquin Indian Council of New England and contributed to policy recommendations that led to 1934’s Indian Reorganization Act.
Dallin died in 1944, leaving behind hundreds of sculpted works throughout the world. Since his death, the depiction of the Native image and disrespectful use of Indigenous names and, finally the use of Native figures in public art has come under greater and greater scrutiny across the United States and Canada. (Perhaps it should be noted that many of the pieces that are causing the most heated discussions along with Dallin’s are sculptures. This may be attributable to sculpture’s unique status within visual art where, unlike 2-dimensional paintings and drawings, sculpture inhabits the viewer’s space. This creates a special affinity between the viewer and the sculptural object which, in turn, may elicit stronger emotions on the part of the viewer.)
In a 2018 article Emily Burns, addresses how these rising controversies relate to Dallin’s work. She draws a definite distinction between Dallin’s work and others such as John Mix Stanley’s 1857 painting, The Last of Their Race and John Earle Frasier’s sculpture The End of the Trail (1894) where Native Americans are purposefully portrayed as a dying race, symbols of the country’s endeavors toward Manifest Destiny.
After surveying the body of public art Dallin produced alongside Dallin’s activist writings and collaborations, Burns concludes,
Whether as a response to Burns’ conclusion or as an extension of its analysis of Boston’s public art, in 2019 the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, as part of its “Collecting Stories: Native American Art” exhibit undertook a closer look at how Appeal to the Great Spirit was perceived and received within the changing social climate. The museum convened “Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit Reexamined” a public symposium with the purpose to “reexamine the sculpture from multiple perspectives and work toward future strategies for interpretation and public engagement.” Although not explicitly stated, the possibility existed that the sculpture would be removed from the place of prominence it had enjoyed for more than a century.
At the opening of the session during which museum staff, Dallin experts, Native representatives including Osage citizen and Hood Museum curator Jami Powell spoke, a statement of Powell’s position regarding the monument was projected above the panel. It read, in part, “Dallin’s sculpture narrates a specific story about the decline, loss and extinction of American Indian peoples. Although I can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of Dallin’s work, I cannot reconcile it with the inaccurate message that it continues to convey.” However, after hearing from both Emily Burns, then Assistant Professor of Art History at Auburn University and Heather Leavell, Director and Curator at the Cyrus Dallin Museum, Powell admitted that she had not previously had knowledge of Dallin’s activism and support for Native sovereignty.
By the end of the program museum professionals agreed that cultural conversations led by Native artists might be the best way to move forward. Later in 2019, the museum invited visitors to submit their reactions to the statue in writing. Printed placards with quotes from these mixed sentiment responses were displayed around the sculpture on Indigenous People’s Day.
“With inadequate modern representation of Indigenous peoples at the MFA, the statue makes us seem like relics of the past…”
“It draws on stereotypes of First Nations people as ‘spiritual’, ‘vanishing’ and ‘con-quered’—we want to see images of who we were and are…”
“Since childhood I have always loved this statue as it always stood as a symbol of pride…Asnutaneyan! We are still here!”
The following year the museum used its website to expand its interpretations of Dallin’s statue publishing an essay by Joseph Zordan, enrolled member of the Bad River Ojibwe, PhD student at nearby Harvard University and former museum intern who quoted from author Toni Morrison, “White people have a very, very serious problem. And they should start thinking about what they are going to do about it.” Simultaneously, a video by Layla Bermeo, Associate Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas, chronicling museum efforts to come to terms with the sculpture’s meaning in the twenty-first century and expressing a desire to move forward with input from the broader community was posted and the previous online collection description of the sculpture was replaced with one written by Bermeo and Tess Lukey (Aquinnah Wampanoag) exploring at length the multiple perspectives from which the statue can be seen and understood.
Quickly, The Boston Globe brought the conundrum to a broader audience at a time when other city monuments were going into storage, with a front page article, “When Monuments Fall” (since re-named “Weighing the Fate of Our Most Problematic Public Art”) explaining that, “The museum has recently been deep in conversation, both internally and with local Native American groups, about the future of the work.” The article triggered a range of responses from Globe readership:
“To take down the Appeal to the Great Spirit sculpture in front of the Museum of Fine Arts would be to remove a powerful work of resilience.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to house [the monuments] as permanent exhibits in public places that can accommodate them along with other examples of such art, including photography, arti-facts, and books?”
“We cannot learn to be better humans if we hide the elements of our inhumane acts.”
MFA’s next attempt to address the situation was covered by The Globe in May 2021 as planting got underway around the statue for Elizabeth James Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag)’s "Raven Reshapes Boston: A Native Corn Garden at the MFA”. Described by The Globe as “pub-lic emissary of the museum’s increasingly outward handwringing over its most visible artwork,” Perry admitted that “I was loathe, in my description, to even mention the Dallin… [the garden] isn’t about that. It’s about a Northeastern reflection of who we are as a people — and our connection to the lands and oceans here.”
So, what’s next? This statue raises many questions, questions about appropriation vs. per-ceived appropriation, about the role, selection, and maintenance of public art and even about art in general. Should historical context and artist intent be considered when evaluating a piece? If so, who is responsible for providing that information? The artist? The curator? The viewer?
Currently, the museum’s website speaks on its behalf, continuing to encourage a dialog with visitors and summing up its position by saying, “Seen as a beautiful sculpture by some, it rep-resents a painful erasure for others. As the stewards of this work of art, we now reckon with this complicated history.” Overall, the fact that the sculpture’s presence continues to evoke dialog may be its most important purpose for the twenty-first century and one which Mr. Dallin would likely approve.
Comments
Post a Comment