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Review: The Washington State Historical Society’s In the Spirit Exhibit Goes Virtual


            2020 was to be the fifteenth year of the In the Spirit Contemporary Native Arts Exhibition offered by the Washington State Historical Society of Tacoma, Washington in collaboration with the Tacoma Art Museum and The Museum of Glass as a showcase for northwest Native art. If all had gone according to plan, entries would have been submitted, a panel of jurors would have scrutinized them, each according to their own background and preferences--and biases. Then their choices would have gone on display for the public to enjoy for several weeks leading up to a free day-long indoor and outdoor festival which would include an Indian market and the presentation of awards to the artists. 

But then the coronavirus hit. The exhibition’s planning committee scrambled to salvage the 2020 show and finally decided to stage it online. Artists sent photos of their work, the jurors undertook the burden of selection based on 2-dimensional representations of objects that, in most cases, were designed to be viewed in 3-D. In the end, despite this handicap, 24 works by 20 artists were chosen and juror Charles W Bloomfield (Pyramid Lakes Paiute) declared that, “[The] pieces in this show highlight what is happening in Indian Country nationally and globally. [They] were selected not only due to their outstanding craftmanship, technique, expression through the selection of materials used, but also due to the power and voice of their message.”[i]

Next, the submitted photos were added to the In the Spirit section of the Washington State Historical Society’s website (https://www.washingtonhistory.org/ exhibit/15th-annual-in-the-spirit-contemporary-native-arts-virtual-exhibition/) in the form of a slideshow. Given the wide range of artforms and small number of pieces, there does not seem to be any particular order or categorization of the entries. 

Wisely, the slideshow is interactive so the viewer may progress at his or own pace, rather than being subjected to a preset progression through the two dozen items.

Photos of the objects are paired with a text box that includes the name and affiliation of the artist, the name of the piece, its size and the materials used.   A bonus provided by this format is the fact that the viewer is only seeing one piece at a time so that textiles are not competing with glassworks while baskets, paintings and sculptures can each stand on their own as well. The downside of the format is that the viewer has a diminished sense of the items’ actual presence. The magnificence of a 27-inch high glass piece is reduced to a portion of the screen on which it is being viewed. (Alas, it is not even possible to manipulate the images to full-screen size to get a better look at the details.) And the craftsmanship of a tiny 1.5-inch x 1.5-inch basket cannot be fully appreciated when it is magnified many times on a computer screen.  

A separate page from the slideshow gives viewers the option of reading each artist’s statement about art and the piece. The statements are presented as a list of the artists’ names which the viewer must select and expand to read the text that is also accompanied by a small image of the piece.  

Despite the constraints they were working under, the jurors (Todd Clark (Wailaki) and Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit) as well as Mr. Bloomfield) forged ahead to make selections for prizes which were announced via Zoom on September 11. (Technical difficulties prevented the program from being streamed live on Facebook as had been announced.) Awards were given for Honoring Innovation, Honoring Ancestors, Spirit of the Northwest as well as Best in Show.  These awards are indicative of the purpose and theme of the exhibit which highlights the Native spirit of the region and rewards artistic innovation within that context. As a prime example, Best in Show went to Lily Hope (Tlingit) for her Chilkat Protector, 2020, a traditional Chilkat weaving of merino wool and cedar bark fashioned into a face covering that is the globally requisite sign of the times. 

Overall, the entries were remarkable from Carol Douglas’ (Northern Arapaho) traditional coiled basket entitled Twenty-nine, 2019, commemorating murdered and missing Native women--her design incorporates the shapes of dismembered body parts in such a conventional-seeming pattern that, at first-glance, one might overlook its profound statement--to Dan Friday’s (Lummi) hand-sculpted hot glass piece, Forager Totem. This amazing piece won the Honoring Innovation Award for the beauty and intricacy of a design that Friday was able to produce in such a fragile and unpredictable medium. 

But it is the Best in Show piece in which the artist takes such a familiar design, so recognizable in the Northwest, and incorporates it into an object that speaks acutely to the present moment that most definitely represents the stated attributes of the exhibit.  Even before the award was announced, the photo of the mask had been astutely appropriated to publicize the exhibition. 

Hopefully, 2021 will see the return of this annual event as an in-person exhibit so that the shortcomings that were forced upon it by our extraordinary circumstances will not be given an opportunity to detract from the full power of next year’s entries and that this year’s pieces will be shown elsewhere in the future so that they can be truly appreciated. One also suspects that if next year’s show includes an online component, some lessons will have been learned from this year’s presentation. 

 

 

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