Stephanie Pratt & Joan Carpenter Troccoli, co-curators attending 'George Catlin: American Indian Portraits' an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), until 23rd June 2013. The exhibition includes major loans from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. London, UK, 6th March 2013
"George Catlin, American Indian Portraits" an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 23rd June 2013. The exhibition is co-curated and an accompanying book is authored by Dr Stephanie Pratt & Dr Joan Carpenter Troccoli. This exhibition brings back George Catlin paintings to England and Europe for the first time since they were last exhibited in the 1840s by the artist.
GEORGE CATLIN (1796 - 1872) born Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, is probably the most prolific and revealing of the American painters specialising in the indigenous people of North America. Catlin was acutely concerned with the danger to Native American tribal traditions and indeed the prospects for continuing existence of the indigenous Americans because of the effects of the expansion of the United States into further Indian Territory. Thus with urgency he passionately set about illustrating and writing about his observations and impressions taken significantly from five adventurous journeys beyond the legal western frontier of the United States into Indian Territory in the 1830s, creating an incomparable body of work on the culture of the Plains Indians.
George Catlin says "the history and customs of such a people, preserved by pictorial illustrations, are themes worthy the lifetime of one man, and nothing short of the loss of my life, shall prevent me from visiting their country, and becoming their historian.”
The exhibition shows extraordinary visionary designs used by the First Nations in their appearance and crafts. It is both inspiring but also heartbreaking to view these heroic portraits and then read about the tragic outcomes for those portrayed and their tribes. For example the loss of their traditional lands, the US government braking its treaties, the exploitive commercial relationship of the Europeans settlers towards the indigenous people. President Jackson's racist Removal Act of 1830, whereby all Native American peoples were to be forcibly expelled to the western part of the country beyond the Mississippi River boundary, a tragic policy that would now be termed ethnic cleansing.
Black Hawk (Ma-Ka-Ta-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak) says "Why did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island to drive us from our homes and introduce among us poisonous liquors, disease and death?". Ironically the US military helicopter A UH-60L Black Hawk, is named after the Sac warrior Chief resistance fighter.
The exhibition is jointly curated by Dr Stephanie Pratt, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Plymouth, author of books including, American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840, and other publications, she is a member of the Dakota Nation; and Joan Carpenter Troccoli who is Founding Director of the Petrie Institute of Fine Art at the Denver Art Museum, from which she retired in 2012. She served as Curator and Director at Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, which holds many of Catlin's works and correspondence. She is co-author of, George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, and other books.
The exhibition is organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which contributes major loans of the paintings and exhibits. The exhibition is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Sandy Nairne director of National Portrait Gallery says "he (Catlin) is a vital chronicler of a tragic period in the lives of so many tribal peoples." London, UK, 6th March 2013
Date: 06/03/2013
Location: London, UK
Photographer: Richard Keith Wolff
