Presented August 22 - October 26, 2003

Sponsored by
Nationwide Insurance Foundation
Canton Fine Arts Associates
The Museum Guild
Jim & Vanita Oelschlager
Lemmon & Lemmon
Professional Friends of the Museum
Malone College
Kent State University, Stark Campus
Merrill Lynch
The Helen McInness Foundation
and two anonymous donors

Wyandot Bandolier Bag

This exhibit sought to honor Native American culture from the region. Its focus was on artistic work expressed in items of daily life such as beaded moccasins, pipes and bandolier bags and other items from woodland tribes including the Miami, Ojibwa and Algonquians. Many of these artifacts had never been in public view before, and there had never been an exhibition focused solely on the art of the Woodland tribes of North America.

Guest Curator Dr. Theodore J. Brasser, an internationally recognized scholar of Native American culture, assisted the Museum in assembling artifacts from throughout North America. Among the organizations loaning to the exhibition were the Denver Art Museum, the Cranbrook Institute, The Canadian Museum of Civilization, the American Museum of Natural History and the Ohio Historical Society. The Museum also selected a number of paintings of native peoples and landscapes, as well as maps, to help provide context for the artifacts on display in the galleries.

The Museum staff thought that an exhibit focusing on the art and culture of the pre-statehood peoples of the Ohio Country would provide an exceptional opportunity during the Bicentennial celebration to examine something that was lost with the massive influx of European settlers into the region. Native peoples deserved a place in the commemoration and the Museum believed that honoring their art, culture and traditions was an ideal way to celebrate their lives.

The Museum was honored to acquire the services of an internationally recognized scholar of Native American art and handcrafts, Dr. Theodore Brasser of Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, to serve as guest curator. Beginning in the fall of 1999, Dr. Brasser began visiting over three dozen museums and private collections holding relevant artifacts throughout Ohio, the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard.

In his catalogue essay, Dr. Brasser noted, " Our knowledge of early Ohio Indian art is restricted to the less perishable objects found in old village and gravesites. Whole categories of this art – almost everything made of wood, fiber, or hide are represented by fragments at best. The native people lived in a social context that did not recognize art as something separate from the production of garments and utensils. Aesthetic norms were an inseparable component in the creation of functional objects; there was no art for art’s sake."

He went on to state, "Local art styles provided the means of proclaiming one’s tribal identity. Crafts were part of the daily work assigned to either men or women, according to the conventional domains of each gender’s economic activities. There were no professional artists. Through informal training, men were expected to acquire some expertise in carving, painting, and engraving, while the women learned to make pottery, weave mats and bags, tan animal skins, and decorate garments with shell beads or porcupine quillwork. Obviously, some people of a strong creative inclination developed a recognized expertise, but that did not exclude them from other work." The 32-page, four-color exhibition catalogue will be available for sale during the exhibition.

Native American interpreters and researchers presented several public programs in support of the exhibition. We prepared a special interpretive packet for our school tours and used some of the interpreters for in-school and in-gallery presentations.