2004 Media Files Page

Articles reprinted in 2004 from contributors, newspapers and magazines in the ATADA Newsletter

Table of Contents

Media Files - antique and tribal art issues as seen from the point of view of the outside world reprinted from The ATADA Newsletter.

Media Files from the Winter 2004 Issue of The ATADA Newsletter

Media Files from the Fall 2004 Issue of The ATADA Newsletter

Media Files from the Summer 2004 Issue of The ATADA Newsletter

Media Files from the Spring 2004 Issue of The ATADA Newsletter

Media Files from Earlier Issues of The ATADA Newsletter

Click here to return to Legislative Alert Page Table of Contents

Winter_2004

Current Crafts: American Indian Baskets and Blankets Ask a Question, 'What Is Art?

From The September 11, 2003 New York Times, news of three new shows of American Indian art. The Times' headline: "Current Crafts: American Indian Baskets and Blankets Ask a Question, 'What Is Art?' "

Craig Kellogg's brief story begins, "Three exhibitions explore the enduring appeal of American Indian blankets, baskets and decorative art. 'Navajo Blankets of the 19th Century' will be at the Textile Museum in Washington until March 14 (www.textilemuseum.org), and 'The Language of Native American Baskets' will be at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York from Sept. 20 to Jan. 9, 2005 (www.americanindian.si.edu). Bruce Bernstein, who curated the basket exhibition, said his goal is to have people see baskets as art. The works he selected for the exhibition include a deer antler sheathed in woven cedar strips and a basket that incorporates Victorian embroidery patterns. In connection with the exhibition, basket weavers, including Terrol Johnson and Lisa Telford will hold demonstrations at Culture Fest 2003 in Battery Park pieces will sell for $50 to $500.

"For some collectors, the allure of Indian artifacts lies in the way they blur the line between art and décor. 'The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (through Dec. 14 www.metmuseum.org), includes a deerskin shirt, trimmed with human hair, part of a 200-piece collection that Mr. Coe keeps in his Santa Fe, N. M., farmhouse. A former museum director, Mr. Coe said he started collecting in 1956, 'when I couldn't buy Monets and Renoirs.' "

Of All the Clubs in the World, One From Kansas

The headline for Michael Wilson's September 17, 2003, story in The New York Times read, "Of All the Clubs in the World, One From Kansas," but by the time the story was posted on the newspaper's Website, the headline read "That Club on eBay. The Farmer Knew It Well."

On both the Website and in the paper, however, the story of the stolen Plains war club was the same.

"The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club was cold, see," the story began. "Colder than the dark end of the Kansas museum storeroom where someone snatched it nine long years ago.

"'I'd chased all my leads,' said Ray Classen, 52, of the Police Department in North Newton, Kan., who is not only the chief but also half the full-time force. There were 34 items discovered missing from the Kauffman Museum's storeroom in May 1994, and the war club was the prize of them all.

"A local farmer, Keven Hiebert, knew the club well, having photographed the piece and many others for the museum. He was shocked, then, shopping around on eBay on Thursday night, to see the club - the very picture he had taken. He called the museum curator, who called the chief, who made a few calls and learned the club was in a place he had never been before. Never had much use for the place, actually. "New York City.

"The New York City police found the piece in a SoHo art gallery on Monday. The gallery's owner, Martin Lane, bought it several years ago and had no idea it had been stolen, he said yesterday. The police said Mr. Lane was not a suspect in the theft.

"The club itself is not really much of a club at all. It is lighter than a weapon, designed for show. 'That particular piece was done more as a dance weapon than a battle weapon,' said Mr. Hiebert, who collects and studies Native American art in his downtime as a wheat farmer and cattleman. It bore the images of eight Native American warriors, four on each side, and is thought to date to 1870. 'Either Sioux or Arapaho,' Mr. Hiebert said.

"'It's a really typical Plains piece, which would have put it in the Dakotas or Montana somewhere,' he added. There are three knife blades jutting from one edge of the club. 'That was probably one of my favorite pieces in there,' Mr. Hiebert said. The museum acquired the club from a Wisconsin dealer in the 1930s. The theft, or thefts, vexed Chief Classen, who became chief of the small police force at 32. There are 1,600 people who call North Newton home.

"No one could be sure exactly when the items were taken from the museum, or whether they were stolen all at once. 'It's possible they went out a few pieces at a time,' the chief said. A few times since then, the club seemed close to being found, but the items turned out to be merely similar.

"'It's an extremely valuable piece because of the rarity,' Mr. Hiebert said. 'With the Indian art collectibles, there's a really high variation in market value from the art quality of the piece. This is what I would consider a high-end piece.'

"So it just about jumped off his computer screen and hit him Thursday night. He saw right away that the seller did not seem to realize its worth. The club was appraised at $9,000 in 1994, and the seller wanted less than half that.

"The chief called New York and got the Major Cases Squad and its new 'art cop,' Detective Mark Fishstein, who, with Detective Chris Secrest, paid a visit to Mr. Lane's West Houston Street art gallery.

"Mr. Lane told the police that he bought the piece in 1994 or 1995 at an Orlando antique show for $3,500. 'He advised us he had it in his private collection for many years, and it was time to sell,' Detective Fishstein said. Mr. Lane spoke briefly yesterday before begging off to call his lawyer. He said he had given the piece to the police without hesitation.

"'I have a reputation to protect,' he said. 'I've been very cooperative. These sorts of things happen quite often with antiques.'

"The investigation is continuing. Back in Kansas, everyone is happy.

"Well, almost everyone. It seems the New York police will not ship such a valuable piece. Someone in Kansas has to come and pick it up, and that someone is shaping up to be the police chief.

"'I honestly don't want to come I'm a country boy,' he said. There is no airport in North Newton - he has to drive 30 miles south to Wichita just to catch a flight. He has no idea when he will come or how long he will stay. He just wants a lift into the city.

"'There's no way I'm going to drive in that town,' he said. 'And I'm not getting in any cab.' "

Some Twists in the Old-New Basketmaker's Art

"Some Twists in the Old-New Basketmaker's Art" was the headline for Grace Glueck's September 26 New York Times article on the Indian basket exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Glueck wrote: "For countless generations of Native Americans, there was nothing quite so useful as a basket. Woven by hand, of course, from carefully cultivated roots and plants, a basket could be a baby carrier, a saddlebag, a purse, a bowl for cooking or serving, a tray, a jar, a water bottle, a fish trap, a trunk, a seed scoop, a hat and even a coffin.

"But even though baskets are now passé for most of these functions, it won't do to use the past tense, because their production still flourishes. Baskets today are made for religious occasions, for storage, for sale and as a demonstration of pride in heritage. In fact, most basketmakers insist that not only is their work of today contemporary, but that baskets are always contemporary, regardless of their age, since they are attuned to a timeless tradition.

"'Baskets are our art, culture and history,' said Pat Courtney Gold, a Native American of Wasco and Tlingit ancestry and one of a growing number of basket weavers across the country who carry on the tradition, most grouped in tribal or regional weaving associations.

"With four other contemporary basketmakers, Ms. Gold is represented in 'The Language of Native American Baskets,' a show of more than 200 examples in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian that goes back to the early 19th century.

"The five basketmakers, along with a Native-American basketry scholar, Sherrie Smith-Ferri (Pomo and Miwok), director of the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, Calif., worked with Bruce Bernstein, assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, to help shape the show. They each picked four baskets from the museum's collection and paired them with examples of her own or recent work by other Native American Native-American basketmakers.

"If you have no idea of the vivacity of the basketmaker's art, this show will come as a fine surprise. If you do, the examples here will heighten your pleasure. Along the way, you can learn a lot about this complicated pursuit.

"Ms. Gold's hip contribution is a smallish black-and-white bag of cylindrical shape, called 'Sally Bag' and made of acrylic yarn over Hungarian hemp in a traditional twining technique, the most commonly used of the basic basket modes in Western North America. Its title, 'Yuppie Couple,' comes from the image of a digital-looking man and woman that appears on the basket's side, representing, Ms. Gold said, 'the new urban Native.'

"The other contemporary basketmakers are Lisa Telford (Haida), whose elegant black-banded cylindrical basket is made of natural and dyed spruce root Julia Parker (Pomo/Miwok), maker of a tiny round container festooned with glass beads Terrol Johnson (Tohono/O'odham), represented by a stylish gourd cast in bronze with necklaces of bear grass bridging its wide side openings and Theresa Hoffman (Penobscot) who, pointing up that not everything here is a basket per se, contributes a lovely stylized ear of corn using black ash splints and a curly weave.

"In addition to the offerings of current basketmakers and their choices, the show includes a large and varied arrangement of burden baskets, which made easier the hauling required of people whose transportation was mainly by foot or horse. Burden baskets were made in open or closed weaves, depending on their functions. (Holding fresh-caught clams, an open weave basket would allow them to drain a tight-woven container might carry tiny items like seeds.)

"The burden baskets could be small, for harvesting berries, or large, say, for transporting firewood. A robust bucket shape from Arizona (circa 1900) is of dyed willow and is horizontally banded in red and black, with long leather fringes dangling from the rim. More accommodating to the shape of the back is a large conical basket from California made of willow shoots (Yokuts, circa 1900). On the smaller side is a berrying basket of coiled cedar root whose rough surface bears triangular designs of dyed and natural bear grass (Klikitat, circa 1920).

"The category of burden baskets includes hats, too, often used to ease the strain of carrying straps worn across the forehead. Some of the hats also came in handy as personal food dishes. One neat number is a woman's headgear in the shape of an upside-down round bowl woven with a design of stepped triangles (Hupa, circa 1925). Right side up, it's perfect for eating from.

"Speaking of hats, among the show's more spectacular items is a magnificent wide-brimmed sun protector, made of twined spruce root and painted a glorious purplish blue it is adorned with glass beads, shells and red wool cloth, and its crown is decorated with a linear design. A rakish touch is provided by long strands of stiff walrus whiskers that project out over the brim. Made by an Alutiiq weaver from Kodiak Island, Alaska, around 1910, it suggests in its flashy appeal the wide-brimmed, multicolor hat worn by the subject of Vermeer's 'Young Girl With a Flute.'

"It's not hard to find other treasures. Even relatively unadorned objects can have masterly shapes, like the classic configuration of a big, deep Navajo bowl (circa 1910). Made of coiled sumac shoots in a natural color, with a simple decoration of small brown-dyed triangles arranged in widely separated vertical lines, this elegant bowl with its braided rim has a less-is-more presence that is utterly serene.

"Oddball objects have their charm, too, like the Russian sailor's hat (circa 1820), made by a Tlingit of southeastern Alaska. Woven of close-twined spruce root, embroidered with natural and dyed bear grass and sporting a sort of classical Greek key decoration on the crown, the hat may have been inspired by a visit from the Russian fleet. You might want to overlook, however, the fancy dish with handles and a red velveteen lining (Abenaki, 1910) that seems to reflect not Native American but the worst of Victorian taste.

"Two floridly decorated items that work, though, are a pair of businesslike portfolios made of birch bark (Micmac, circa 1920), embroidered all over in dyed and natural porcupine quills with intricate multicolor geometric designs. (Perhaps they were made, like the fancy dish with handles, for the tourist trade.)

"A singularly precious item in the museum's collection is a round Chumash tray decorated with a Spanish coin motif, commissioned in 1825 by Spanish administrators in Monterey, Calif., as a gift for a visiting dignitary.

"Not bulking large, but hardly to be missed, is the group of wee canoe-shaped baskets, some less than an inch long, made by a weaver of the Pomo nation - among the best basket makers known - around 1900. Miniatures like these, made of coiled willow with sedge and bulrush stitches, were fashioned to show the maker's skill and often given as very special gifts.

"And on and on - but enough. Except to reiterate that besides its aesthetic pleasures, this show provides abundant proof that the Native-American basketmaking tradition continues alive and well."

Stolen Artifacts Returned to Navajo, Hopi Tribes

Mark Shaffer's story in the September 25 Arizona Republic had the headline "Stolen Artifacts returned to Navajo, Hopi tribes."

"In an emotional ceremony in Albuquerque," the story began, "historic preservation officials from the Navajo and Hopi tribes on Wednesday picked up boxes of religious and ceremonial artifacts taken illegally from the reservations and sold to an undercover federal agent.

Santa Fe art dealers Joshua Baer and Thomas Cavaliere were sentenced to probation earlier this year after being nabbed in the 1999 sting.

"During the investigation, a Norwegian police officer played the part of a wealthy European art collector in search of Native American artifacts. He was accompanied by an FBI agent posing as the collector's art broker.

"In addition to the Navajos and Hopis, six New Mexico tribes also received hundreds of items recovered by federal agents.

"Baer and Cavaliere both pleaded guilty to violating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

"Lucinda Schroeder, special agent for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Baer and Cavaliere told the Norwegian police officer false stories about the backgrounds of the artifacts.

"She said they 'attributed ceremonial significance to the artifacts which were untrue. Then, they would charge an astronomical amount.'

"Among the items returned to the Navajos were 16 prayer sticks with feathers from golden eagles, bluebirds and red-tailed hawks carvings of two dreaming twins three brushes adorned with bald eagle and golden eagle feathers and three hair ties adorned with eagle feathers.

"Vanessa Charles, a spokeswoman for the Hopi Tribe, said she had not been able to determine which artifacts had been returned to the northern Arizona tribe.

"Dale Hall, southwest director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said it was the agency's largest case involving the return of religious objects to tribes and 'we're thrilled with seeing them going back.' "

The Bishop Museum's request to enter burial caves on the Big Island and reclaim dozens of rare Hawaiian artifacts that it loaned to a Native Hawaiian group was denied Tuesday by the Hawaiian Homes Commission

Datelined Wailuku, Hawaii, the story began, "The Bishop Museum's request to enter burial caves on the Big Island and reclaim dozens of rare Hawaiian artifacts that it loaned to a Native Hawaiian group was denied Tuesday by the Hawaiian Homes Commission.

"The commission's 8-1 vote orders the 83 artifacts to remain in the Kawaihae caves where they were placed by Native Hawaiian organization Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei.

"The relics were reportedly removed from burial caves from about 1905 until 1980 and remained in the Bishop Museum's collection until 1998, when they were loaned to Hui Malama. Instead of returning the items to the museum, the Native Hawaiian group said it put the objects back in the caves.

"'The spirit of the iwi said, "Take us back to our home,"' Hawaiian Homes Commissioner Henry Cho said, using a Hawaiian word for the dead. 'They came home, and they did the right thing.'

"The items - including a wooden carving of a female figure - fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which calls for the return of human remains and other cultural items to indigenous groups, including Native Hawaiians. They are said to be priceless examples of Hawaiian culture before contact with Western civilization.

"Bishop Museum's loan to Hui Malama drew objections from other Hawaiians who made claims on the objects, including the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, which requested a federal review of the case. When the review was completed, the committee called the Bishop Museum's decision 'flawed,' and called for the items to be made available to all 13 recognized Hawaiian groups claiming a connection to the artifacts.

"Hui Malama has argued that placing the objects back in the caves was in line with the wishes of their Hawaiian ancestors, who put the items there in the first place. But Bishop Museum President William Brown said 'neither the museum nor the claimants can be certain that all of the objects were in fact placed in the Kawaihae Caves, nor can we be assured that persons unknown have not removed them.'

"Laakea Suganuma of the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts said the issue will likely end up in court."

The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club Part II: A Cop Who's Not in Kansas Anymore

On October 8, Michael Wilson followed up on his September 17 New York Times story, with a new story headlined "The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club Part II: A Cop Who's Not in Kansas Anymore."

"It was a beautiful morning in Times Square, the sun hanging around Broadway as if waiting to read its reviews. But the man in the olive suit bounced impatiently from one flat-footed cap-toe shoe to another, in no mood for sightseeing. He spotted a couple of New York police officers standing at their sidewalk post and ambled over.

"'Ray Classen,' he said with an accent one might mistake for Southern. He stuck out a broad hand. "Chief of police. North Newton, Kansas."

"The two young uniformed men smiled. 'You visiting us?' one asked.

"'Nope. Business.'

"The Case of the Missing Knife-Blade War Club was finally wrapping up. It had been nine years since the club, an American Indian artifact, was stolen from a storage room in North Newton's only museum.

"It had been a month since Chief Classen, 52, one of two full-time lawmen in a city of 1,600, had spoken to a local farmer who had spotted the piece for sale on eBay.

"Working long-distance with the New York police, the chief tracked the club to a SoHo gallery, then found himself juggling reporters' calls from a city he had never visited, nor desired to.

"So yesterday, here he was, in New York for the first time, to retrieve the club and have a look for himself at this art gallery.

"But he was stuck in Times Square for now, waiting for detectives to pick him up and take him downtown. He declared weeks ago that he would not get into a cab.

"'You guys basically got a beat that you walk?' he asked the uniforms. 'I don't envy you one bit. I started out as a street cop, too, but I wouldn't want to do it here.'

"Never mind Kansas. The chief was not even in his idea of a normal world anymore. 'I was raised on a farm - this isn't for me,' he said. He walked along 43rd Street and, as if on cue, a squat woman in bright red pants paused in smoking her cigarette, leaned over and vomited into a sidewalk grate.

"The chief rolled his eyes and said, 'I don't think she had something that agreed with her.'

"The missing club was one of his department's biggest cases. North Newton averages a handful of thefts a year, mostly Bethel College students stealing from one another. In his 20 years on the force, the chief recalls exactly one residential burglary. The homicide count for the entire history of the town stands at zero.

"At the time of its theft in 1994, the club was appraised at $9,000, the most valuable of the 34 pieces discovered missing from the Kauffman Museum's storeroom that day. It was designed not for battle, but for show, a ceremonial club with etchings of Sioux or Arapaho warriors on its side and three triangular blades inlaid along its edge.

"Its value is thought to have quadrupled since the theft because of the notoriety it gained, the chief said.

"Martin Lane, a collector, said he bought the piece in Florida at an antiques show in 1994 or 1995 for $3,500, according to the police, who said he was not a suspect. He posted the piece on eBay last month and stored it in his gallery on West Houston Street. Last month, he handed it over to detectives, who took it to a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. 'She said it was the finest one she ever saw, better than the ones in their collection,' Detective Mark Fishstein said.

"The New York police would not ship something so valuable. Someone had to come and get it, so Chief Classen loaded a bunch of North Newton Police Department pins and baseball caps into a suitcase and flew to town on Monday.

"Reporters from Wichita interviewed him at the airport before his departure, and will meet him at the museum on Thursday for a news conference.

"He wore a tiepin from his city, given to him 10 years ago as a show of thanks for his first decade as chief. In his pocket, he carried the badge that he designed himself, a fringe benefit of being the city's first full-time police chief.

"'I've got to take care of business,' he said. 'Then I can play.'

"It did not work out quite as planned. He hoped to interview the gallery owner himself, but Mr. Lane was nowhere to be found yesterday morning. Chief Classen killed time with detectives, who, in their unmarked car, gave him the nickel tour of the city on their way to an errand at a parole office in Brooklyn.

"'You stopped in the peep shows, didn't you?' one kidded him.

"'Nope,' the chief said.

"'What do you feel like eating, Ray?' Detective Chris Secrest asked from the front seat. 'Chinese food?'

"The chief said he did not care. 'I'm not here to enjoy all the cuisine,' he said. 'Here to do my job.'

"He followed detectives down to the property room at 1 Police Plaza, and when an officer handed him the club, packed in a long cardboard box, he looked relieved. The club was sure to turn a few heads at airport security, but it was too soon to worry about that.

"He met other detectives at the Major Case Squad. 'My 12-year-old son's teacher needs to know which tribe it's from,' one said. Several detectives had their pictures taken beside the chief as he held the club, and gave him N.Y.P.D. caps for his fellow lawman and four part-time officers.

"The chief came to the city with his wife, Janice, who spent much of the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ('We might as well fill out a Missing Persons on you now,' he told her as she entered a No. 6 train station.) She wanted to see a show later, and he bought tickets to '42nd Street,' for seats in the third row, orchestra.

"'I doubt I'll ever be back in New York City again,' he said in the police car as he and detectives headed downtown alongside the Hudson River.

"In the front seat, Detective Secrest replied, 'But you're welcome to.'

"He took his first cab ride, too. It was a smooth enough hop across Midtown, a $5 fare, and he tipped the driver $2."

'Gift' had Petroglyphs

"'Gift' had petroglyphs" read the headline for Sarah Anchors' story in the Arizona Republic on October 22.

"Federal agents are continuing their investigation into a large boulder on a Phoenix man's front yard," Anchors wrote, "saying the rock is an artifact stolen from the Lake Pleasant area.

"Six weeks ago, agents took the rock, which has drawings by ancient people. Tuesday, federal law enforcement officers returned to search the house near Northern Avenue and Seventh Street.

"The rock owner, Eric Zoller, 46, said someone gave him the rock.

"The agents did not arrest Zoller, but Bob Ruiz, special agent for the Bureau of Land Management, said the agency is investigating a violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.

"Federal law bars people from removing or damaging archaeological resources on public or Indian lands.

"The maximum penalty for a first violation is two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

"In the last year, the U. S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix investigated four or five violations of the archaeological protection act, said Kimberly Hare, an assistant U. S. Attorney.

"Cases range from corporations working on federal land and harming archaeological sites to hobbyists taking pottery from Native American burial sites, Hare said.

"Keith Kintigh, an anthropology professor at Arizona State University, said the loss of artifacts is a problem. There are sites where everything has been destroyed, Kintigh said.

"'It's not just the artifacts,' Kintigh said. 'It's our ability . . . to really get to learn about a really interesting culture.'

"Even in places where there are many artifacts, it's not OK for people to just take a piece.

"'Sites are not interchangeable,' Kintigh said. 'What we can learn from one is not the same as what we can learn from another.'

"The problem of theft may be worse in Arizona because land is open and not covered by grass and trees, said Arleyn Simon, curator at the Archaeological Research Institute at ASU.

"'The problem will probably increase with population growth, as the cities grow out to public lands and people are going out to those areas for recreation,' Simon said.

"Zoller, who moved into the white brick home three months ago, claims he never took the boulder from any land.

"He says that shortly after he moved into his home, he helped a person who was broken down on the road. In thanks, the person gave him the brown rock. Zoller said he wouldn't name the person who gave him the boulder.

"'I helped him out. He said, "Here, take this,"' Zoller said. 'I didn't know it was illegal to have a rock,' he said.

"The rock is huge, Zoller said, holding his arms out to his sides. BLM agent Ruiz said it weighed about 6,000 pounds.

Ancient Maya Altar Retaken From Looters in Guatemala

"Ancient Maya Altar Retaken From Looters in Guatemala," was the headline for John Noble Wilford's October 30 story in The New York Times.

"The latest story coming out of the jungle of Guatemala," Wilford writes, "of plunder and violence in the illicit traffic of Maya antiquities, has an all too familiar plot line, except for the ending.

"Two years ago a gang of looters fell on the palace ruins of the ancient city of Cancuén and made off with an elaborately carved stone altar, complete with writing and the image of a powerful king of the late eighth century A. D.

"The thieves tried to sell the relic to drug traffickers, the only people in the region with the kind of money they were asking.

"When the gang had a falling-out, first one band and then another seized the altar, at least once in a blaze of gunfire. An effort was made to get it across the Belize border and into the lucrative international market in antiquities, ill gotten or otherwise.

"Early this year, men wearing ski masks and brandishing submachine guns raided a village near the archaeological site, firing shots in the night and brutalizing a woman in an effort to capture the contested artifact.

"Then the story took an unfamiliar turn, when archaeologists switched from scientific to criminal sleuthing and joined in a six-month pursuit of the looters with local villagers and Guatemalan undercover agents. This led last month to the recovery of the 600-pound Cancuén altar, Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the National Geographic Society announced Wednesday.

"In a teleconference with reporters, Dr. Arthur A. Demarest of Vanderbilt, a leader of excavations at Cancuén who took part in the recovery, called the limestone altar 'a masterpiece of Maya art.'

"Its inscribed text, he added, will be 'of great importance in understanding the final days of the kingdom at Cancuén and its greatest king,' who has been identified as Taj Chan Ahk Ah Kalomte.

"According to the society's statement, Guatemalan officials said this might be the first time an entire network of looters and dealers of Maya treasures had been exposed. Four suspects have been arrested and are to stand trial in January.

"Claudia Gonzáles Herrera, an assistant attorney general in charge of the case, said the arrests show that Guatemala 'takes the defense of its ancient Maya heritage seriously.'

"Archaeologists said that in the past, stolen Maya artifacts had usually been considered gone beyond recovery for scholarly research. They were successful this time, they said, because of a rare collaboration with elders of the village near the excavation site, the national police and the Ministry of Culture. Together they tracked down the suspected culprits and seized the altar in a nighttime raid on the gang hideout.

"At first Dr. Demarest's team had no idea that anything was missing from the palace ruins, which spread over land the size of several football fields. In their excavations in the last four years, they were unaware of the altar's existence. It was the looters who discovered it, after a rainstorm washed away dirt covering the site.

"Dr. Demarest said he first learned of the altar's existence more than six months ago when four village elders showed up at his tent at the excavation site.

"They told him that men in ski masks had beaten an innocent woman for information about a great altar that had been stolen from the palace. The elders feared for their lives and well-being, which had become tied in with the archaeological site.

"A program supported by Vanderbilt, National Geographic and the United States Agency for International Development began two years ago to train residents of nearby villages to take part in the archaeological project and the tourism it is expected to promote.

"As they have learned to be tour guides, park rangers and operators of tourist enterprises, Dr. Demarest said, the villagers have developed a protective attitude toward the project and are on the lookout for vandals.

"As archaeologists have now learned, the altar was placed at one end of the royal ball court near the palace in the year 796. The carvings on the altar represent the Cancuén ruler and another king in splendid regalia engaged in the ritual of a royal ball game, which customarily concluded a state visit or the forging of a new alliance.

"Dr. David Freidel, a Maya specialist at Southern Methodist University who has studied the altar texts but is not involved in the project, praised the discovery as 'an exceptionally fine work of art' and a source of new insights into the ruler of Cancuén.

"The text, he said, indicates that the ruler is literally and diplomatically 'playing ball' with the other king in the image, who is from an area northeast of Cancuén where the river routes were vital to the city's prosperity.

"Dr. Federico Fahsen, a Guatemalan specialist in Mayan glyphs who is deciphering the altar text, said the writing 'gives a glimpse of the last years of the Cancuén kingdom.'

"In the announcement, Dr. Fahsen was quoted as saying, 'Taj Chan Ahk was the greatest in Cancuén's long dynasty of rulers, and his titles on the altar show his aspirations to take control of the whole region during these final decades of Classic Maya civilization.'

"The Maya were dominant in Central America and southern Mexico in the first millennium A. D., the decline of their culture in mysterious circumstances beginning around 900. But the collapse apparently came earlier in the region of Cancuén, deep in the western jungle at the head of navigation on the Pasión River.

"Somehow Taj Chan Ahk held and expanded power when many other Maya kingdoms in the west were collapsing, Dr. Fahsen said. He was able to build one of the grandest palaces in the Maya culture, though he never finished it. The altar, archaeologists said, may well lead to finding the great king's tomb as excavations resume next year.

"Dr. Demarest said the discovery, along with other research at the palace site, indicated that in its decline, Cancuén, once wealthy from the jade trade, was virtually abandoned and that its rulers and people moved north, where they took over another city. But their time had passed.

"Archaeologists said the altar was well preserved and perhaps more splendid as an art object and more detailed as a source of information than a similar one found in 1915 and now on display at the National Museum of Archaeology in Guatemala City."

Experts Reveal Riches of Machu Picchu's Neglected Neighbor

"Experts Reveal Riches of Machu Picchu's Neglected Neighbor," read the headline for John Noble Wilford's November 18 New York Times story.

"Some forgotten cities in the mountains of Peru," the story began, "abandoned to overgrown ruin, remained 'lost' only because their possible significance was not fully appreciated by earlier explorers. That happened to a place known as Llactapata.

"In 1912, the American explorer Hiram Bingham came upon what he called the remains of some Inca chieftain's castle and a few other buildings. This was part of Llactapata, meaning 'high town.' But Bingham gave it only a passing glance. He was in a hurry to get to the site, only two miles away, where he would make his name in archaeology: Machu Picchu.

"Two weeks ago, a team of British and American explorers and archaeologists reported that they had rediscovered Llactapata using infrared aerial photography to penetrate the jungle growth. The explorers hacked their way to the mountainous site, where they uncovered remains of broad plazas, temples, an astronomical observatory, a granary and other stone buildings over at least a square mile of rugged terrain.

"In an announcement in London, the leaders of the expedition, the British explorer and writer Hugh Thomson and the American archaeologist Gary Ziegler, said the site was much more extensive and imposing than Bingham had suspected. Preliminary examination of the ruins suggested that this was a large religious center used for elaborate ceremonies and observations of solar equinoxes and solstices.

"The expedition leaders described finding a two-story temple that faced the rising sun and a plaza with ceremonial doorways aligned to Machu Picchu, which can be seen in the distance across the Aobamba River. They concluded that Llactapata was part of a much larger complex related to Machu Picchu, all built by the Incan emperor Pachacuti in the 15th century.

"In their field report, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Ziegler said the rediscovered site 'adds significantly to our knowledge and understanding of Machu Picchu as the hub of a complex neighborhood of carefully placed interrelated administrative and ceremonial sites reaching outward' toward the Incan capital at Cuzco, 50 miles away, and other Andean cities.

"Some excavations, the expedition leaders said, indicated that Llactapata might also have served as a supply depot and residential area for its more famous neighbor.

"Machu Picchu, Peru's most popular tourist attraction, is seen as a country retreat and ceremonial center for Incan royalty and aristocracy. Its stone walls and palaces stand grandly on an 8,000-foot ridge. Llactapata's elevation is about 1,000 feet higher.

"The expedition, conducted in July and August, was supported by the Royal Geographical Society in London and the Explorers Club in New York. Mr. Thomson is the author of 'The White Rock,' a book of Andean explorations published by Overlook Press.

"Other archaeologists said they were concerned that the new site lay outside the protection of the national park for Machu Picchu and thus could be vulnerable to looting. They recommended an expansion of the park to include the ruins of Llactapata."

10,000 Stolen Relics Recovered Artifacts from across West Constitute Major Theft Case

"10,000 stolen relics recovered Artifacts from across West constitute major theft case," read the headline for an Associated Press story that ran in the Arizona Republic on December 12.

Datelined Las Vegas, the story began "More than 10,000 artifacts taken from historic sites throughout the West have been recovered as part of one of the largest archaeological cases ever investigated, authorities said.

"The two-year investigation, dubbed Operation Indian Rocks, has led to a ring of relic hunters who were stealing remnants of the past, including arrowheads, ancient corncobs, hammer stones and clay figurine fragments, the Las Vegas Sun reported Thursday.

"The last major defendant in the case, Nevada resident Bobbie Wilkie, has pleaded guilty to two counts of excavation and removal of archaeological resources and aiding and abetting. His sentencing was scheduled for Monday in U. S. District Court in Las Vegas.

"His wife, Deanne, has pleaded guilty to similar charges and will be sentenced Jan. 12, federal officials said.

"A third defendant, Frank Embrey, already has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $86,196 in restitution.

"Court documents show the couple and Embrey conspired to 'unlawfully excavate, remove, damage and otherwise alter and deface archaeological resources located on designated, federal public lands' from December 1997 to December 2001.

"The group used probes, trowels, buckets, sifting screens, shovels and other tools to search for items on public lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and Nellis Air Force Base. A total of 13 sites were damaged, including some in Death Valley National Recreation Area, near Winnemucca Lake and a desert lake area in southern Nevada controlled by the Air Force.

"The defendants displayed the items at their homes and sold some of them, according to the federal indictment. Authorities estimate the items taken had a commercial value of $21,600 and that restoration and repair of damaged sites would cost more than $100,000.

"Historic sites on public lands are protected by the 1906 Antiquities Act and the 1979 Archaeological Resource Protection Act, which makes it illegal to destroy or excavate these areas.

"Once an artifact has been removed or damaged much of its historical value is lost, said Peter Ossorio, an assistant U. S. attorney in New Mexico who has prosecuted relic cases.

"'It's like somebody robbing a victim after the victim has already been mugged,' Ossorio said. 'Once these items are removed from the site you don't really ever get them back. Even if every single piece is returned much of the historical value is gone.' "

Tribe Receives Ancestors' Remains From Museum

"Tribe Receives Ancestors' Remains From Museum" was the headline of an Associated Press story datelined Chicago that ran in the October 18 Santa Fe New Mexican.

"A century ago," the story began, "anthropologists with Chicago's Field Museum traveled to islands off the coast of British Columbia to dig up the remains of an Indian culture they thought was on the brink of extinction.

"Though their dances and songs were celebratory, many tribe members expressed sadness at having to wait so long to take 160 of their ancestors back home. And they promised they would continue to petition museums around the world - including the Field - to return not only human remains, but artifacts such as masks and totem poles.

"'We have our ancestors. We will be back for the rest of our stuff very soon,' said Colin Richardson, a council member for Skidegate, one of two Haida villages on British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. The other village is Old Massett.

"By the turn of the century, smallpox had nearly eliminated the Haida people. Once about 10,000 strong, only about 500 Haida remained.

"Anthropologists and collectors came to the islands and took artifacts and bones that ended up in museums around the world.

"The Haida Nation of Canada set up a repatriation committee about eight years ago to track down and retrieve the human remains.

"Lucille Bell, heritage officer of the Haida Repatriation Committee, said the committee wrote 200 letters to museums to find out whether they were holding any remains. Negotiations with the Field Museum began a few years ago.

"'Our journey's not over,' said Bell, who named the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and British museums as next on her list.

"The Field Museum, which is not bound by the federal law that requires federally funded institutions to return the remains of U. S. tribes, decided to give back the Haida remains voluntarily. They had been kept in a storage room off-limits to the public.

"'In the late 19th century, when these remains were taken, it was an awful thing,' said Jonathan Haas, MacArthur curator of the Americas for the Field Museum.

"Haas said he believed the people who took the remains were not awful, though, but simply thought they were preserving a culture that would soon be lost.

"While returning remains and sacred objects is part of the museum's philosophy, requests for the return of other artifacts are trickier, Haas said. Two giant Haida totem poles have long greeted visitors as they enter the Field Museum.

"Haas said he hoped he could work with the Haida Nation on loans or exchanges of the artifacts kept in Chicago.

"A delegation of about 40 Haida members spent a week preparing the remains for their journey home. They will fly out of Chicago today, then take another week to ready the remains for reburial.

"Tribe members have been painting wood boxes and making traditional button blankets for use in reburial ceremonies set for Oct. 25 and Oct. 26 in the two communities.

"'I really thank the Field Museum for taking the high road,' said Chief Cheexial from Skidegate, Roy Jones Jr. 'It's been an incredible, sad experience and a celebration of our history.' "

Studies Show Chaco Canyon Ancients Traveled 50 Miles for Food, Timber

"Studies Show Chaco Canyon Ancients Traveled 50 Miles for Food, Timber," was the headline for Paul Recer's Associated Press story that ran in the October 14 Santa Fe New Mexican.

Datelined Washington, the story began, "Ancient Americans building elaborate structures in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon depended on corn carried by hand from fields up to 50 miles away, according to a study that analyzed the chemical content of ancient corn cobs.

"Researchers compared the chemical isotopic ratios of ancient corn cobs recovered from Chaco Canyon with the soils in distant areas and found the people living in the canyon between the ninth and 12th centuries had to hand-carry their food from faraway fields.

"Since this was before the voyages of Columbus and the return of the horse to North America, the ancestral Pueblo people living in Chaco Canyon had to carry the food on foot, said Larry Benson, a U. S. Geological Survey researcher and first author of a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"'They had to haul it in on their backs,' Benson said.

"To bring the heavy loads of corn to the desolate Chaco Canyon in Northern New Mexico, Benson said the people followed a network of roads and trails that have been detected by aerial surveys. Some of the paths were lined with marker rocks, and some forced heavily laden travelers to scale steep bluffs, he said.

"Linda S. Cordell, director of the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder and a study co-author, said the central buildings and villages of Chaco Canyon housed 6,000 to 10,000 people during some periods during the ninth through 12th centuries. During those times, there were bursts of activity with the construction of buildings reaching four stories and containing about 800 rooms. In addition to these so-called great houses, villages were built nearby.

"Some food was doubtless produced in the canyon, said Cordell, although the sparse rainfall and short growing season would make agriculture difficult.

"'We suspect that during major construction food had to be imported in order to support the laborers,' said Cordell.

"Benson said his analysis of the corn cobs recovered at Chaco Canyon confirmed that the food was imported.

"He tested the ratios of the strontium isotopes in the corn cobs and found they precisely matched the soils of fields at the foot of the Chuska Mountains 50 miles to the west and the San Juan River flood plain 56 miles to the north.

"Benson said more than likely much of the food carried to Chaco Canyon was ground as corn meal, which would be much lighter than carrying the whole cob.

"Corn grown by the ancestral Pueblo people was highly nutritious, but it had ears much smaller than modern corn. The cobs, said Benson, were only 3 inches to 5 inches long and about three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

"It wasn't just food that the ancient people had to import to build their complex in Chaco Canyon, Cordell said.

"'We know they were importing many of the timbers used in the construction of the great houses from high elevations outside. Chaco,' she said. 'Also, a great deal of the pottery was imported.' Chaco had a scarcity of wood needed to fire-harden pottery, she said.

"To build the buildings in Chaco, the ancestral Pueblo people carried timbers 10 to 20 feet long from the Chuska Mountains 50 miles to the west, Benson said.

"'They were carrying trees all that way,' he said.

"Cordell said it is not clear why the early Americans chose Chaco as a place for such elaborate construction. She said there is evidence that people lived in the canyon as early as the fifth century and that, over time, the site became important to the culture of the ancestral Pueblo people. There are indications that buildings in Chaco were used for rituals and ceremonies, but details have been lost to time, she said.

"'It looks like that in whatever organization existed then, the place had some kind of power,' said Cordell. 'It became an important place and subsequently an important ritual area' to the diverse ancient people who lived in what is now the San Juan River basin of New Mexico."

Handling Artifacts Not Built to Last

"Handling Artifacts Not Built to Last" was the headline for Rita Reif's January 5, 2004 story in The New York Times.

The subheadline was "Holocaust and American Indian Museums Use New Techniques and Adjust Their Objectives." This excerpt dealt with Indian artifacts.

"Conservators at historical museums face a painful dilemma," the story began.

"They must try to achieve a reasonable reality in the preservation of artifacts that were not built to last. Too much, and there is fakery. Too little, and objects fall apart.

"Many conservators no longer restore objects to approximate their original condition as fine arts museums do, preferring instead to maintain the way they looked when acquired. The aim is to extend their life while retaining the evidence of what made them important, even if it means presenting tattered artifacts with blood stains, bullet holes and burnt edges. Now new techniques and a new emphasis on less varnished truth in history museums are transforming the staid exhibitions of the past.

"At the Museum of the American Indian here, Susan Heald, the chief conservator, said she and her colleagues used mostly plastics and other synthetics to stabilize objects in new subtle ways so that a repair can be seen on close examination. They fix breaks in wicker baskets and quill work with Tyvek, a paperlike substance used in envelopes that does not tear, and they patch moccasins with Polar Fleece, the synthetic popularized in ski wear."

Return of Indian Remains Delayed

"Return of Indian remains delayed" was the headline for Dennis O'Brien's January 4 story in the Baltimore Sun.

Dateline: Washington. The story: "In cavernous storage rooms closed to tourists at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History lie the bones of about 14,700 Native Americans.

"Despite hopes that they would be quickly returned to tribal lands, most are likely to stay where they are for a long time.

"Laws passed in 1989 and 1990 require the Smithsonian and other museums to inventory their collections of Native American remains and return them when possible.

"Less than 20 percent of the Smithsonian's original collection of 18,000 remains has been returned an additional 90,000 sets of remains in the nation's other museums lack sufficient documentation to ensure their return anytime soon.

"The problem is that repatriating remains can take years because of scientific uncertainty about their origins, the work involved in identifying them and traditions observed by many of the 770 federally recognized tribes.

"'When these laws were passed, people pushing them thought it was going to take five years to return what was collected, but they had no idea what they were asking. It's an incredibly complex task,' said Thomas Killion, an anthropology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, who formerly headed the Smithsonian's repatriation office.

"The Smithsonian, which has the largest single collection of bones by far, spends $1 million a year and has 15 anthropologists and researchers poring over the bones in an effort to return them to their descendants.

"But it isn't enough to ensure quick returns.

"'I think the process is going to take a very long time,' said William Billeck, head of the Smithsonian's repatriation office.

"The bones at the Smithsonian and other museums were unearthed over the years by archaeologists, private collectors, government expeditions, construction workers and farmers. During the 1800s, for example, Army physicians were under orders to ship east for study any Native American skulls they found.

"Many tribal officials say they understand why repatriation takes so long. But they're still angry that the bones were dug up and stored in the first place.

"'They should have just been left where they were. It's very dehumanizing,' said Francis Morris, the Pawnee tribe's repatriation coordinator.

"The 380 museums, historical societies and federal agencies covered by the repatriation law have 27,312 sets of remains available for repatriation. But an additional 90,833 remain unidentified because of poor documentation about where and when they were found, and they may never be returned.

"Confirming the tribal affiliation of a set of bones is a painstaking process. First, researchers must check any written records accompanying the remains, often notes from archeologists or Army officers, Billeck said. If they're too vague, scientists turn to ancient maps, letters and colonial records that describe fluid tribal boundaries. "'The remains can be straightforward or next to impossible to identify,' he said.

"For example, Billeck's recent search for Kiowa remains began with an examination of a set of bones from South Dakota that Army officers originally sent to the Army Medical Museum in 1860. The remains were labeled Kiowa, but based on where they were found, the shape of the skull and other historical data, they turned out to be Sioux.

"'There's no way of knowing what you have until you get into working with it,' he said.

The Smithsonian gets two to three formal requests from tribes each year, and each takes two to three years to complete, Billeck said.

"But the Smithsonian can move quickly on high-profile cases. Consider the case of Ishi, a California native known as the last "wild Indian" who died in 1916. When Ishi's brain was discovered at the Smithsonian in 1999, the story attracted national press, and politicians demanded its return to California soil.

"'We were getting letters from politicians, people like (California Lt. Gov.) Cruz Bustamante and Senator (Dianne) Feinstein. It was given a top priority,' said Killion, who worked on the Ishi repatriation. It took only a month for the Smithsonian to recommend that Ishi's brain be returned, Killion said.

"Experts say the slow pace is not the Smithsonian's fault. Many Native groups don't want the remains, while others need time to plan for repatriation ceremonies and burials.

"The deeply spiritual Navajo, the largest tribe in the United States, traditionally avoid contact with human remains and don't want theirs back. Nor do the Zuni, also of the Southwest, who believe remains are desecrated once dug up.

"For others, repatriation requires unaccustomed preparation. The fate of Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old skeleton scattered in pieces along the Columbia River in Washington, has been tied up in the courts since it was found in 1996. Native tribes want the skeleton reburied, while scientists want to keep it for research.

"'Kennewick is one of 15 or so sets of remains that date back 8,000 years or so and hopefully can tell us something about the earliest Americans,' said Jantz, one of eight scientists suing for access to the skeleton.

"Some researchers argue that wholesale repatriation is a mistake. 'The risk is that a source of scientific inquiry is going to be lost,' said Christopher Ruff, an anatomy professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School."

Heard at the Super Bowl of Antiques Shows

From Roberta Smith's January 16 New York Times write-up of the Winter Antiques Show in New York (which was described by the Times the day before as "the Super Bowl of Antiques Shows") :

"I could spend most of the fair studying. the pre-Columbian material at Throckmorton."

Fall_2004

Some Reflections on NAGPRA

ATADA Member Ron McCoy's view of a controversial and troublesome topic

Back in 1990, the U. S. Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Now, fourteen years later, it's possible to look back and reflect on the law, some of its effects and implications. As the "Legal Briefs" columnist for American Indian Art Magazine for the past thirteen years, I've had an opportunity to become acquainted with NAGPRA. (I need to make it clear at the outset that I'm not an attorney, and anyone in need of legal or financial advice should consult a professional.)

NAGPRA frequently finds a place in the "Legal Briefs" columns because of the many ways it affects the American Indian art world's collectors, curators, and dealers. After observing NAGPRA's implementation and enforcement for some time now I can report that while some of its provisions come across to me personally as long overdue, other features strike me as maddeningly confusing and bewildering illogical.

The basic thrust of NAGPRA concerns the repatriation to lineal descendants and "culturally affiliated" tribes (and Native Hawaiian organizations) of certain American Indian (and Hawaiian) objects held by museums or federal agencies. To qualify for return to the tribal milieu, the item(s) in question must fall into one or more of the categories embraced by the general heading of "cultural items." These categories are: "human remains," "associated funerary objects," "unassociated funerary objects," "sacred objects," and "objects of cultural patrimony."

The NAGPRA repatriation process is outlined on the Internet at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM. When repatriation is slated to take place, a notice of intent to repatriate is published in the Federal Register (accessible from 1994 to the present at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html). The notice identifies the object or objects, specifies the applicable NAGPRA category or categories, indicates the intended recipient or recipients, and invites anyone with a competing claim to come forward.

Between March 15, 1993 and September 14, 2004, no fewer than 295 notices of intent to repatriate appeared in the Federal Register. Nearly all-with the exception of some minor corrections and a few Hawaiian claims-pertained to American Indian objects.

The National NAGPRA program of U. S. Department of the Interior's National Park Service maintains an extremely informative website on the Internet which can be accessed at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/INDEX.HTM. Twice a year, the National NAGPRA program assembles statistics relating to the law's application as represented by the human remains and objects detailed in the repatriation notices that appear in the Federal Register. The numbers, updated on April 1, 2004:

I think the repatriation of human remains to the tribes to which the individuals belonged is a good thing. Nor do I see any problem inherent in the return of associated and unassociated funerary objects (the large number of items in these categories in the list above includes such relics as fragments of pottery and thousands of individual beads). But problems do arise, at least in my mind, when the focus shifts to pieces that fall into two NAGPRA categories: "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony."

I am not opposed to the repatriation of many of the pieces included in the "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" categories. In fact, I believe strong and persuasive cases can (and have) been made that many of the items described in the notices as "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" were correctly categorized. After all, some NAGPRA claims involve materials of American Indian origin which museums routinely categorize as "specimens," collectors typically view as "art," and tribal people see as a living part of their heritage. As a result, the possibilities for unrelieved rancor seem endless, with repatriation claims ranging from fairly straightforward, open-and-shut affairs to wildly complicated, hotly disputed, and occasionally rancorous controversies. (As ATADA members know, there is information floating around that some repatriated objects have reappeared in the Indian art marketplace until people come forward and set out the specifics, that information must remain anecdotal.) I believe, for example, a compelling argument can be made for the return of such objects as Zuni Ahayu:da, or War God carvings.

But the arguments for repatriation in some instances do not strike me as particularly compelling.

A May 24, 1996 NAGPRA notice dealt with "one hide pollen bag, three stone fetishes, one velvet fetish cover, two projectile points, one crystal, a fossilized shell, a pipe, two prayer stones, two polish stones, a pair of prayer sticks, two stone figures bundled with yarn and feathers attached, and a coiled basket." These were used during a Navajo Nightway chant conducted in 1925 for Ramon Hubbell, son of pioneering trader Don Lorenzo Hubbell who set himself up at his now famous Ganado, Arizona trading post in 1878. One is probably on safe ground in assuming that the Navajo singer, or medicine man, who conducted the ritual gave these objects to Ramon Hubbell. Four decades later, Hubbell's estate donated these objects to the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site which the National Park Service manages at Ganado. Another three decades went by, and then Sherwin Curley, Ramon Hubbell's grandson, "identified the items as necessary for the continued practice of traditional Navajo religion by present-day adherents"- close to three-quarters of a century after Hubbell's Nightway ceremony. The Park Service agreed that the Hubbell donation qualified for inclusion in NAGPRA's "sacred objects" category and announced its intention to turn them over to Sherwin Curley.

A March 4, 1997 notice pertained to material housed at Harvard University's Fruitlands Museums. Arvol Looking Horse of Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota, identified eleven pipes, nine wooden stems, six buckskin pipe bags, a pair of wooden pipe tampers, four rawhide rattles, two eagle bone whistles, and a shield (decorated with rawhide webbing, golden eagle feathers, locks of horsehair and gray fur) as "needed by traditional Lakota religious leaders for the practice of traditional Lakota religion by present-day adherents." Looking Horse is described on the website of the Wolakota Foundation (http://www.wolakota.org/menu.html), for which he is a board member, as "the 19th Generation Keeper of the Tradition of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe" and "Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe for the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nations." According to the repatriation notice, tribal representatives from Cheyenne River took the historically dubious position that all of the objects "were not and are not considered 'personal property' but belong to the Lakota People as a whole." Then, too, Arvol Looking Horse explained that the objects "spoke to him and asked to be brought back to the Lakota Nation." The museum believed "many of these items could have been made for sale." However, "the spirit of [NAGPRA] takes precedence over concerns for title" and it was agreed that the "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony" should be repatriated.

Earlier that year (January 16, 1997) another NAGPRA repatriation notice mentioned Arvol Looking Horse. This one pertained to a buffalo scrotum rattle with a wooden handle donated to the South Dakota State Historical Society in 1906 by Mary C. Collins, a Christian missionary who left Illinois in 1875 and began working at South Dakota's Oahe Mission near Cheyenne River Reservation ten years later, she moved to Standing Rock Reservation, where she remained for a quarter-century. At some point, according to the notice, Collins "identified the rattle as having belonged to 'Elk Head, 9th keeper of the sacred pipe.'" Nearly a century after Collins' donation, Arvol Looking Horse, Elk Head's great-great-great grandson, "identified this rattle as a specific ceremonial object needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religion by present-day adherents and has requested the rattle be returned to him as lineal descendent." On March 6, 1997, according to information at a website maintained by the South Dakota State Historical Society (http://www.sdhistory.org/mus/mus_nagp.htm), the institution "carried out its first repatriation, returning a medicine man's rattle to Arvol Looking Horse of Green Grass, South Dakota. Looking Horse believes that the rattle came from Elk Head's personal medicine bundle" (emphasis added).

In a NAGPRA repatriation notice that appeared in the Federal Register on January 12, 1998, the Oklahoma Historical Society agreed that a pipe should be turned over to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana because it qualified as "sacred object" and "object of cultural patrimony." The notice described the pipe as consisting of an "unworked tubular L-shaped catlinite bowl and wooden stem. The stem is carved in alternating spiral and disc shapes, and the spiral sections have yellow, blue, and red paints applied." The pipe, donated to the historical society in either 1914 or 1928, enjoys (as is so often the case) a murky provenance, although it was apparently obtained from the Southern Cheyenne chief Burnt-All-Over (1837-1917) in 1911. Cheyenne claimants maintained the pipe was removed from the tribe's Sacred Buffalo Hat bundle around 1870. "No information is known by the Oklahoma Historical Society or has been presented by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana regarding the pipe's possession by Burnt-All-Over," the notice reported. Instead, the repatriation was evidently based solely on oral tradition.

This is interesting, especially in light of the decision recently rendered in the Kennewick Man case.

"Kennewick Man" is the name bestowed upon the 9300 year-old skeleton of an adult male retrieved from the Columbia River at Kennewick, Washington in 1996. (Readers may immerse themselves in Kennewick Man matters at the excellent website maintained by the Tri-City Herald, a newspaper that has covered the subject since the initial discovery, at http://www.kennewick-man.com/.) Found on land under the control of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man quickly emerged as bones of contention between scientists who wanted to study the remains and local Indian tribes that wanted the skeleton of the individual they called "Ancient One" repatriated under NAGPRA and reburied. In the ensuing litigation, the scientists became plaintiffs, while the tribes and federal government took on the role of defendants.

For nearly eight years, the case known as Bonnichsen v. United States worked it way through the federal court system. Then, on February 4, 2004, the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in favor of the scientists which the tribes and federal government declined to pursue farther up the line to the U. S. Supreme Court. (The Court's decision can be found at http://www.tri-cityherald.com/images/kennman/0235994.pdf or http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/.)

The Kennewick Man case is unusual on a number of counts, one of the most important being the age of the bones and the Court of Appeals' skepticism about linking four-hundred-year-old remains to a present-day Indian tribe. What is of interest within the context of the present essay is the Court's evaluation of the evidentiary value of oral tradition (the basis for many NAGPRA claims based on items' status as "sacred objects" and "objects of cultural patrimony"). The Court did not dismiss tribal oral traditions out of hand. It did, however, caution that they are linked to some inherent limitations. Among these is their potential to "change relatively quickly."

Along this line, consider a significant shift in oral tradition transmitted by Oglala Lakota visionary Black Elk (1860-1950), whose words are preserved in John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (first published 1932 and currently available from the University of Nebraska Press and at http://faculty.smu.edu/twalker/blckelk4) and The Sacred Pipe (1953) edited by Joseph E. Brown.

In December 1944, Black Elk spoke to Neihardt about the Lakota practice of victorious warriors painting their faces black. The transcript of an interview he gave in December 1944 reads: "I [would] like to know why they [warriors returning victorious] paint their faces black when they bring a scalp or stole some horses. The relatives at home would paint their faces black and then dance. When we whip Germany, we will all paint our faces." (Source: The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt [University of Nebraska Press, 1984], edited by Raymond J. DeMallie, page 317.) Yet he would later tell Joseph E. Brown that Lakota warriors painted their faces black on coming home from war because "by going on the warpath, we know that we have done something bad, and we wish to hide our faces from Wakan Tanka [the Great Spirit]." (Source: The Sacred Pipe, page 92, note 4.)

I am not sure NAGPRA was intended to introduce an uncritical reliance on oral tradition into the repatriation process. Nor am I persuaded that spiritual forces emanating from objects, communicating only to a claimant, are the stuff of adequate proof of ownership. (Indeed, I'm not sure spectral evidence obtained from visions and dreams has been a feature of legal processes in this country since the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.)

I believe dealers, collectors, and curators ought to steer clear of messing about with sacred material. American Indian religions are alive and well, not artifacts of a forgotten past, and should be accorded the same degree of respect that should ideally be extended to all faiths. That said, I also do not believe that every object ever obtained from the nation's tribal milieux is inherently a "sacred object" or "object of cultural patrimony."

Unfortunately, I can offer no solution to remedy the situation. Although I suggest these positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that many of us-dealers, collectors, curators, historians, anthropologists, and the members of tribes-could do worse than attempt to wrap our minds around these concepts and engage in constructive dialogue.

Ron McCoy is a professor of history at Emporia State University in Kansas. He does not offer legal advice, and anyone in need of such advice should consult a professional.

NAGPRA: The Real Problem

A letter to the editor of Tribal Art magazine published in the Summer, 2004 issue from ATADA board member Bob Gallegos entitled "NAGPRA: the Real Problem"

Most collectors and dealers of my acquaintance believe that the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) by the United States government was long overdue. It corrected a racist policy against Native Americans by protecting their burials, returning respect to their communities, and creating awareness of the ongoing importance of sacred and cultural objects. The legislation allows Native Americans to repatriate from federally funded agencies and museums objects that meet the definitions of the statute. While some have argued that it goes too far (and others not far enough), the intent of NAGPRA is to reverse, to some degree, the acculturation policies of the US government spanning nearly two centuries, which allowed tens of thousands of vital cultural objects to leave Native communities, which themselves were encouraged and sometimes forced to abandon their customs and religion. In its original language, the legislation only applies to the private sector if an object is "found or discovered" on federal or tribal land after the date of enactment on November 16, 1990.

A problem is created when attempts are made to restrict trade in objects acquired privately before 1990. Legal precedent is being set in which plea bargains are bringing NAGPRA into cases unrelated to the principles of the legislation. The recent convictions of Joshua Baer (see TRIBALarts, Spring 2003) and Tommy Cavaliere, both of Santa Fe, New Mexico, are examples of NAGPRA convictions that are being obtained in return for lesser punishments on Migratory Bird Treaty Act violations. This is a very dangerous precedent, since it potentially sets the stage for all similar items to be restricted and subject to seizure, even if they had been purchased legally before 1990 and are no longer in use by any practitioner. The scope of this problem is global. Clearly the primary impact of such misguided prosecution is within the United States, but it stands to restrict the world market if Native American material becomes more difficult to source.

Such abuse of the intent of the legislation is doubly disturbing given the specificity of its application in true NAGPRA cases. The notable "Kennewick Man" decision is a good example of this. These 9,300-year-old skeletal remains were found in 1996 under Lake Wallula, a section of Columbia River held behind McNary Dam in Kennewick, southeastern Washington. This was a grave find that was also on federal land, and claims were filed by Indian leaders concerned about the violation and disinterment, and by members of the scientific community, who saw a unique opportunity to study the earliest known inhabitant of the region. Interestingly, the Asutru Folk Assembly, a traditional European religious group, also weighed in. After a heated legal battle, in February 2004, a three-judge panel on the Ninth US District Court of Appeals found in agreement with lower courts that no clear tie could be made to an existing Native American group, and therefore NAGPRA restrictions did not apply.

As a representative of the Antique Tribal Arts Dealers Association (ATADA), I was invited to testify before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States Senate about the definitions and wording of NAGPRA. I feel strongly that future NAGPRA convictions must satisfy the courts that the objects in question were obtained after the date of enactment, that they were found on tribal or federal land, and that they were being used in ongoing ceremonies by current tribal religious elders or were associated with burials related to an identifiable group. Such objects of cultural patrimony must have ongoing cultural importance to the tribe, rather than being simply property owned by a tribal member. Similar objects legally acquired before enactment are not and should not be subject to NAGPRA, especially by precedent set by plea bargaining. To do so denigrates the intent of what we had hoped would be a beneficial and fair law.

In Utah, Ancient Ruins Are Revealed After Long Wait

In a front page story in The New York Times on July 1, the headline for Kirk Johnson's story read "In Utah, Ancient Ruins Are Revealed After Long Wait."

Datelined Horse Canyon, Utah, the story began," Archaeologists pulled aside a curtain on Wednesday to reveal what can only be called a secret garden: the pristinely preserved ruins of an ancient civilization that was long ago lost to the mists of time in the remote cliffs of eastern Utah, then resolutely protected over the last 50 years by a stubborn local rancher who kept mum about what he knew.

"The ruins, called Range Creek, are spread over thousands of acres, much of it in inaccessible back country and reachable only through a single-track dirt road once owned by the rancher and recently bought by the State of Utah. Preliminary research dates the settlement from about A. D.. 900 to 1100, during the period of the Fremont Indian culture.

"Researchers say the site's singularity is not its monumental architecture. The people who lived here were more apt to build humble single-family stone-walled pit houses, of which there are believed to be hundreds - no one even knows yet - rather than high-rise cliffside apartment complexes like Mesa Verde in Colorado.

"What mostly distinguishes Range Creek is that through quirk of fate and human will, it escaped both the ravages of looters and, until recently, the spades of archaeologists. Cliffside grain-storage vaults have been found here with their lids still intact, the corn and rye still inside. And while many sites in the West can still produce an old stone arrowhead or two, researchers found whole arrows here just a few weeks ago, apparently lying in the dust just where they were dropped 10 centuries ago at the time of William the Conqueror.

"'There are places with concentrations of this magnitude,' said Kevin Jones, Utah's state archaeologist, who led a group of journalists to the site on Wednesday. 'The difference is that this place hasn't been wrecked.'

"Dr. Jones said that, so far, 225 sites at Range Creek have been documented, some as small as a single wall of pictographs, others as large as a village cluster of a half-dozen dugout pit houses. Twenty of the sites were documented in the 1930s -- the only other scientific work here that anyone knows about -- by a team from Harvard University. After the initial examination, no further research was done at the site as far anyone knows, Dr. Jones said.

"'The other 200 sites have never been seen by anybody,' Dr. Jones said, adding that there are unquestionably thousands of sites, and that every time a team goes out, still more are found. The Fremont culture existed from about A. D.. 500 to 1300.

"Two reasons account for Range Creek's existence and preservation, he and other researchers say. The first is geography. The land chosen by the ancient people who lived here is reachable only through a steep narrow walled canyon that could be easily defended from intruders. The Fremont people then built many of their homes and their granaries in the most remote parts of the remote canyon, on the summits of ridge lines and high on the sheer faces of cliffs, where they were not likely to be disturbed.

"The second and far more serendipitous reason for the site's preservation is that in 1951 a man named Waldo Wilcox bought the 4,200-acre ranch at the end of that canyon and prohibited anyone from entering.

"'I tried to keep people from knowing about it,' Mr. Wilcox, 74, said.

"Mr. Wilcox said he knew that the historical treasures that were underfoot and on the cliff walls above where his cattle grazed were important. Over the years, he became the valley's foremost expert.

"About 15 years ago, for example, he was chasing a mountain lion that had been bothering his cattle. The lion went up the mountainside and up went Mr. Wilcox in hot pursuit. Once at the top -- a spot he could not have seen from the valley floor -- he stumbled on one of the most perfectly preserved sites of all, a tiny cliff-top village that he has since pointed out to the researchers. He said he has no desire to climb to it again.

"'These places were secure because nobody in his right mind would go up there,' he said.

"The great debate about Range Creek is not the record of the past, however, but the great risk of the future, and what the breaking of the long secret will mean for the valley's preservation.

"Mr. Wilcox sold the ranch to the Trust for Public Land in 2001 for $2.5 million, but officials at the trust kept quiet. The Federal Bureau of Land Management then acquired the land from the trust and kept quiet. The State of Utah obtained title earlier this year and had been delaying an announcement until a management plan was in place to protect the grounds from looters. That strategy was shattered last week when a local paper in southern Utah broke the story, which was then picked up by The Associated Press. That led to the invitation to the news media from around the country for the valley's unveiling.

"'We're rolling with it,' Dr. Jones said.

"He said that the state wanted people to be able to experience Range Creek, but that he also had an obligation to protect it. Among the options under consideration, he said, include opening the site on only certain days of the year, or through prior permits, or only with a guide.

"Environmentalists are also looking closely at what might happen next to the lands around Range Creek, which include areas under consideration for federal wilderness designation.

"'It raises a complicated management issue, especially when you have a place like this that is so special, so unique and so vulnerable,' said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonprofit conservation group in Salt Lake City. 'The best way to preserve these places is to preserve their remoteness.'

"Some people working at the site, however, are deeply pessimistic that it can be protected in the same way that nature and Mr. Wilcox preserved it.

"Hikers have been seen in the canyon in the last few days -- an extremely rare site out here -- and some artifacts that were on the ground, ready for cataloging, were later found missing. Looting and vandalism are common in many of the cliff dwellings on public lands east of here.

"'I'm unbelievably worried,' said Joel Boomgarden, a graduate student in archaeology at the University of Utah who began working at the site last year. 'I just feel it's going to happen here, too. It's inevitable.' "

Tribe Members Express Concern Over Handling of Ruins

In a follow-up to the July 1 story, Mindy Sink's New York Times story on July 4 was headlined, "Tribe Members Express Concern Over Handling of Ruins."

"As archaeologists study a long-secret site of ancient ruins in eastern Utah," the story began, "some tribal leaders are asking why they were not notified sooner and if their cultural and religious beliefs will be respected as the site is excavated and human remains are found.

"The Range Creek area was kept private and secret until recently, when a rancher sold his land to the State of Utah and a local newspaper ran an article about the ranch and its trove of artifacts, believed to have been left by the Fremont people hundreds to thousands of years ago.

"Included in news of the various arrows, pottery shards, cliff dwellings and pictographs discovered there were revelations about human remains - some slightly exposed by erosion. For some American Indians, an excavation of these remains can be considered a desecration of the graves of their ancestors.

"'Out of respect for our ancestors, I think the tribes should be given a chance to go in and pray,' said Patty Timbimboo-Madsen, cultural resources manager for the Northwest Shoshone Tribe of Utah and chairwoman of the state's Native American Remains Review Committee.

"Lora E. Tom, a chairwoman of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah in Cedar City, said any skeletons and sacred or funerary objects found with them should be 'put back in the earth' or remain buried and untouched.

"Although Ms. Timbimboo-Madsen and other tribal officials said they only learned of the Range Creek area through the news media two weeks ago, an assistant state archaeologist, Ron Rood, said he was under the impression that his boss, Kevin Jones, the state archaeologist, had informed the Utah Division of Indian Affairs about the site 'over a year ago.' Dr. Jones could not be reached on Friday, nor could Forrest Cuch, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

"Duncan Metcalfe, the curator of archaeology at the Utah Museum of Natural History who is also working at the research site, also said it was his understanding that the information was presented to the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. 'I'm sure Native Americans will be involved in the management plan of the area,' Mr. Metcalfe said. 'We don't even know what we have here yet.'

"The ranch was first sold for $2.5 million in 2001 to the Trust for Public Land before being acquired by the Bureau of Land Management. The title for the land was transferred to the State of Utah this year, and work has been going on for months at Range Creek.

"Under state and federal laws, when human remains are disturbed or are being excavated, and if a tribe can prove an affiliation with the remains, it can decide if they should be studied or reburied.

"Mr. Rood said it was preferable to identify remains and leave them alone. 'Our preference is not to excavate human remains,' he said. 'I don't like the idea of having to disturb somebody's final resting place.'

"It is not known how many remains exist at Range Creek. It also is not clear if any link between the Fremont people and any modern tribes could be made with such old remains.

"'I think it's a matter of control over the remains as much as a control over religion,' said Keith Kintigh, a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University. 'I think Indians have felt, and rightly so, that control over their ancestors and the places their ancestors lived were taken away from them.'

"Ms. Tom said it would have been better for the tribes to be involved at the site since its discovery, but now a ceremony was important. 'We want to pray for the area since they are disturbing it,' she said, 'and pray for who is there.' "

What the Smithsonian Can Learn From Germany

"What the Smithsonian Can Learn From Germany" was the headline of Tom l. Freundenheim's story in The Wall Street Journal on July 8.

Datelined Berlin, the story began: "It's difficult not to catch the excitement surrounding September's opening of the Smithsonian's national Museum of the American Indian. For one thing, the imposing building occupies the so-called "last spot on the Mall" - facing the Capitol and across from I. M. Pei's National Gallery East Building - in a way that is both felicitous (melding elegant sculptural forms that echo nearby buildings) and jarring (its warm, beige-colored stone contrasts with an excess of official cold, white marble elsewhere). The new museum will be a monument for far more than its structural qualities, however, since it will house the world's largest collection of Native American artifacts, a collection that will essentially be interpreted by Native Americans themselves.

"At the same time, it's sobering to be reminded that some of the greatest holdings of Native American artifacts dwell, much admire, in European museums, especially those of Vienna and Berlin, and have for some time. Vienna Museum of Ethnography (Museum fur Volkerkunde) collections, which range from the Northwest Coast and South America to Hawaii, trace their origins to 1806. Some of the material was collected during Captain Cook's search for the Northwest Passage in 1778-79, and subsequently purchased at the London auction of Parkinson's Museum, thanks to the impetus of Emperor Franz I. The expanding European fascination with ethnology reflected the waning Age of Enlightenment and its interest in the exotic peoples of far away lands (often colonies). American Indian culture and its artifacts made a perfect fit. But the Vienna museum recently closed for renovations, and will not open until 2006, at which time we can anticipate impressive new installations.

"Those of Berlin's museums in suburban Dahlem have recently been reorganized - in line with the general reorganization of the reunited city over the past decade. Reflecting recent intellectual shifts from exoticism to multiculturalism, Berlin's North American Indian exhibition may seem almost too politically correct yet it provides an excellent and concise review of topics that are likely to be handled in greater depth in Washington.

"Entitled 'From Myth to Modernity,' the exhibition at Berlin's Museum of Ethnology is not especially large (500 to 600 objects) and yet covers an enormous amount of important ground. The display highlights some breathtaking objects, of which my favorite is a seductive buffalo-skin robe from about 1830 painted with hunting scenes that was brought back (with much else) by Prince Maximilian zu Wied from his 1832-34 research trip in northern Missouri territory, with the painter Karl Bodmer. Many of these artifacts were subsequently acquired by the Prussian royal collections in 1844. Here are splendid older Northwest Coast masks, as well as a majestic recent (1985) adaptation of a traditional Kwakiutl mask by Calvin Hunt. The exhibition's thematic program also thoughtfully handles potentially awkward issues such as 'the Indian stereotype' and 'the White Man in Indian humor.' The wall texts are fairly matter-of-fact (some, but not all, with English translations), reflecting the positive side of what can sometimes be overly detached dry German scholarship and avoiding much of the political rhetoric that often now infuses such texts in renovated American exhibitions. And perhaps most impressively, the exhibition ends with a stunning display of contemporary Native American art, such as notable artist Allan Houser's poignant 'Medicine Man." Lawrence Paul fuses the forms and colors of his Northwest Coast tradition to create an abstract painting that plays at the edges of Kandinsky's lyrical works of 1912-14. Moreover, these many works have been acquired by the museum they are not some sort of symbolic loan collection.

"In this reinstallation of the Native American collection, there is a sense of commitment to address the objects for their beauty, for the stories they tell, and for their complex cultural readings from which our own museums could learn a bit. That should come as no surprise to those who remember that the German writer Karl May (1942-1912) and his 60 Western novels have sold in the multiple millions over the years and prior to the advent of the Western in film had a significant influence on how all Europeans perceived and mythologized the American West. Not surprisingly, May's depiction of the West wasn't all that different from the imaginary Cowboys-and-Indians world of Americans. This, too, is intelligently reprised in the Berlin museum, along with wall texts giving historical overview of the collections.

"The North American Indian collection in Berlin was begun in 1819, and by 1940 numbered over 30,000 objects. Before September, when we commence a season of self-congratulation on how we've finally gotten it right insofar as American Indians and their art are concerned, a visit to Berlin might make us feel less smug."

A Museum of Indians That Is Also for Them

In an August 19 story, Elizabeth Olsen also wrote about the new museum in a New York Times story headlined "A Museum of Indians That Is Also for Them."

Datelined Washington, the story began, "A century ago George Gustav Heye, a New Yorker, traveled across the United States, gathering up Indian objects by the boxcar. All told, he amassed 800,000 examples of Indian art and life, which will have a new home at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which opens here on Sept. 21.

"Unlike the impoverished Indians who happily sold Heye, a wealthy oil heir, their tribal treasures and sometimes their dregs, today's Indians see these same objects as an opportunity to tell their story - their way.

"Long before construction began on the museum's curvy, buff-colored limestone-clad building on the National Mall, W. Richard West Jr., a Southern Cheyenne who has steered the museum's plans since 1990, began asking native tribes what they wanted in a museum in the nation's capital.

"What they did not want, museum officials found, was the static display of 10,000 years of tribal life and culture that was represented in Heye's collection. Their ideal museum would celebrate the glories of the past, to be sure, but they also wanted their artifacts and their contemporary culture to be accessible.

"'This is an important opportunity to show tribal people as participants in a living culture,' said Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, 'not something in museums or in history books.'

"So the new museum will mark its presence not only with a bumpy-looking facade at odds with those of its stately white marble neighbors, but also with a distinctly different operating philosophy that allows tribes continuing access to both the objects on display and those in storage at a suburban Maryland preservation center.

"'Every piece is considered a living being,' explained Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director for cultural resources. 'These pieces are not seen just as specimens or artifacts.'

"So when the Mechoopda, of central California, discovered that the museum's collection had a shirt used in a tribal dance that had not been performed since 1906,l they asked to borrow it. Mr. Bernstein then carried the buckskin shirt, with a fringe of acorns, pine nut beads and feathers, across the country for tribal members to use as a model to make new shirts for a revival of the dance.

"As part of its commitment to Indian tribes (dozens collaborated extensively on its exhibits), the museum is allowing them to commune with their objects. Mr. Bernstein said much of the access would be after hours, but he added that spontaneous ceremonies or offerings to sacred objects would also be welcome and that the staff had been trained to deal with them.

"The tribes' spiritual needs, including the blessings of objects in the museum and traditional offerings of braids of sweet grass, feathers or sage brush, would be accommodated both at the building's inaugural and afterward, museum officials said. Tribes like the Santa Clara of New Mexico would also be able, for example, to sprinkle cornmeal around their objects to maintain their tribal custom of " feeding and nourishing" them, Mr. Bernstein said.

"A century after Heye's forays, American Indians have the resources to ensure their vision of a national museum serving the estimated 30 million to 40 million native peoples in the Western Hemisphere. American tribes gave more than one-third of the $100 million in private funds that Congress, which authorized the museum in 1989, required to be raised. Federal money paid for the rest of the $219 million project.

"Three tribes that operate casinos donated $10 million each: the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which operates the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut the Mohegan Tribe, which operates another Connecticut gaming operation and the Oneida in New York. Over all, nearly two dozen tribes and tribal corporations formed by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act contributed.(Four other tribes are now operating the only tribally owned enterprise in Washington: a Residence Inn, intended to cater to American Indian visitors, that they built a few blocks from the museum, also using gambling proceeds.)

"Financing the museum is seen 'as a huge accomplishment,' said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest group representing the nearly 600 state and federally recognized tribes. 'Because a lot of tribes felt they were contributing for all of Indian country.'

"The money also helps offset complaints about Indian casinos. Questions about tribal gaming now 'overshadow almost everything else about us,' acknowledged Ms. Mankiller, who also served on the museum's advisory fund-raising committee.

"American Indians have a chance to move beyond such stereotypes, she said, because the museum 'is about our culture and art, and where our future is.'

"To keep Indian traditions and culture more visible, the museum, with its smaller sister institution, the National Museum of the American Indian at the George Gustav Heye Center in lower Manhattan, plans traveling exhibitions that will circulate Indian art and cultural objects around the country. It is also training smaller museums' staff to mount shows of Indian art and culture. The museum plans to have performances by Indian boat builders from Hawaii and Alaska as well as artisans, dancers and storytellers to help museumgoers (officials expect nearly four million annually) to understand contemporary Indian life.

"The efforts to accommodate tribal sensibilities are visible even before entering the museum, located on a four-acre tract next to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. With 150 species of American trees and shrubs, the museum's grounds include a wetlands area, a planting of native crops (with corn and tobacco) and huge boulders from Canada.

"Its entrance faces east, in deference to native tradition (it is desirable to face the rising sun) and is opposite the Capitol building. The five-story-high entrance has an electronic welcome board in hundreds of native languages, and a circular maple wood floor for dancing and other celebrations. A woven copper screen designed in a basket pattern rims the area, and sun symbols are etched on the doors. American woods, Canadian granite and Minnesota limestone are used both inside and outside.

"More than 12,000 Indians from tribes across the hemisphere are expected to attend the opening, which will be followed by a weeklong First Americans Festival to celebrate what Mr. West called "the most remarkable assemblage of cultural patrimony of the first citizens of the Americas."

"That patrimony will be displayed in three permanent exhibitions: 'Our Universes,' which examines how Indians thought and lived in the past, as well as now 'Our Peoples,' which features native histories and 'Our Lives,' which looks at tribal identities.

"Among the 7,000 objects in the museum, which has about 10 times the space of the Manhattan location, are beaded moccasins, feathered headdresses, pre-Columbian gold figures, pottery, woven baskets and even a miniature buffalo made 94 years ago for a Lakota child in South Dakota.

"But not only the sunny side of Indian history will be on display. Some of the knottiest topics will be addressed, Mr. West said. The museum, for instance, will include documents that show the habitual breaking of treaties with the Indians - "not one treaty was ever completely honored by the federal government," he said - as well as the efforts to eliminate Indians from this country.

"A major tribal complaint - that collected religious and sacred objects are often used improperly - was addressed by repatriating some 2,000 disputed pieces, Mr. West said. (Heye collected in an era when human remains and funereal objects were often taken along with other artifacts.)

"Heye began what many have described as his collecting mania at the turn of the 20th century, when Theodore Roosevelt was popularizing the American West. While Heye was working as an engineer in Arizona, he came across a Navajo woman chewing the seams of her husband's deerskin shirt to kill the lice. He promptly bought it, then a rattle, moccasins and other Navajo items and started reading about Indians - "rather intensely," as he wrote about it later.

"Heye accumulated his collection over 54 years, acquiring about two-thirds of it in North America. He traveled in Central and South America as well, to include tribes from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. He also crossed the Atlantic many times, returning with crates of American Indian materials that had been exported by European collectors.

"Mr. West said he hoped the museum would achieve 'cultural understanding and reconciliation that has eluded American history from its beginning.' Ms. Johnson, a Tlingit from Alaska, said she agreed. 'But does it resolve our political issues?' she asked. 'Of course not.' "

500 Tragic Years of Mayan Life, Shown in an Exhibition of Outreach and Hope

"500 Tragic Years of Mayan Life, Shown in an Exhibition of Outreach and Hope" was the headline for Catherine Elton's August 23 story in The New York Times.

Reporting from Guatemala City, Elton wrote, "Guatemala is known by most of the world for the soaring pyramids of the ancient Maya and the colorful weavings of their contemporary descendants. Folkloric images of the Maya Indians have been used to help attract tourism to a nation that was until eight years ago ravaged by a three-decade civil war. But within Guatemala, the Maya are often treated with no such respect.

"Many Mayan leaders say they are disappointed with the scarce improvements in opportunities for the Maya, who make up roughly half of Guatemala's population and who most keenly suffered the war's wrath.

"But now a traveling exhibition titled 'Why Are We the Way We Are?,' which opened in Guatemala's capital last week and will continue until June of next year, is trying to prompt a long-overdue national dialogue between the country's dominant non-indigenous population and the Maya. Created by the Guatemala-based Center for Mesoamerican Research with the collaboration of some top American museologists, the show has rallied support from business groups, media and government itself, elevating it to nothing less than a national event. At the exhibition's inauguration, Vice President Eduardo Stein of Guatemala hailed it as a 'watershed in history.'

"'The significance of most shows comes from superlatives: the most beautiful Fabergé eggs, the only intact tyrannosaurus rex, the most Monets in one place at a time,' said Jim Volkert, the associate director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, who was a consultant on the exhibition. 'This show isn't that at all. Its significance is that it has the ability to affect the culture of a country, and that is rare in a museum context,' he said.

"Some indigenous activists say the Maya are the victims of a de facto apartheid instigated by Guatemala's non-Maya, while other Guatemalans deny that racism exists. What is certain, however, is that Guatemala is the country with the second-greatest income disparity between rich and poor in Latin America, behind only Brazil, according to the World Bank. And on which side of the divide citizens here find themselves depends largely on whether they are Indian.

"United Nations statistics reveal that for every 10 Guatemalans who live in extreme poverty, seven are indigenous. Guatemala's version of a truth commission, the Historical Clarification Commission, concluded that during the country's armed conflict the vast majority of those who were killed, raped or tortured or who disappeared were Maya Indians. Some 200,000 were killed in the 36-year conflict. The commission also concluded that the military's scorched earth campaign amounted to genocide against the Mayas.

"The show material is based on scholarly research on inter-ethnic relations and feedback from focus groups, and it forms part of a larger educational campaign here devoted to diversity. But for Tani Adams, the show's executive director, an exhibition format was the most logical way to promote a profound reckoning with a social ill that 500 years of history has rendered acceptable and even invisible to much of the population, indigenous and non-indigenous alike.

"'Thousands of thousands of books have been written about this and are clearly not making a difference,' said Ms. Adams, who is also the director of the Center for Mesoamerican Research, which created the show. 'It's not like you read a book and say "I'm never going to be racist again." And I think a lot of training to deal with racism or ethnocentrism basically tells people, "It's bad that you are racist, do something different." But if you don't understand how you inherited these ideas you can't let them go. You need to go through a personal, transformative experience, a disorganizing experience, something that makes you question ideas you have always held unconsciously.'

"Claudio Tam Muro, an Argentine artist and designer, assumed the challenge of producing that experience in a 500-square-foot show that could be packed up on the back of a flatbed and taken to some of the most far-flung parts of the country after its six weeks in the capital. As a result, the show is almost devoid of the objects or artifacts that are the backbone of most museum shows. Rather, it relies on life-size photography (providing some visitors with their first experience of looking eye to eye with an indigenous person), graphics, video, audio, short texts and interactive tools.

"Mr. Muro set out to use different sensory media to communicate the show's message. The result is a roughly hour long zigzagging circuit divided into two sections. The bulk of the first section addresses the historical construction of discrimination. It is careful not to omit mentions of the discrimination that existed in pre-Colombian societies, before moving on to the violence of the Spanish conquest, the segregated society of the colonial years, and the crusade for assimilation during the Republican era. This section is filled with tightly spaced areas whose walls are painted in rich, dark colors. It culminates in a small black space with a low ceiling that produces for the visitor the claustrophobia that Mr. Muro says is 'what discrimination feels like.'

"Afterward the visitor emerges into the second section, which addresses modern-day Guatemalan race relations. It explores stereotypes and their effects the staggering statistics of how the two Guatemalans live and it features testimonies about how many Guatemalans see their identity. In this section the spaces get progressively larger and the colors brighter, while the content becomes a more upbeat message about diversity.

"'The easiest thing to create is a polemic or an exhibit of anger, but that will only work for the committed,' said Elaine Heumann Gurian, former deputy director of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, who was a consultant on the show. 'This exhibit points no fingers,'' she said. 'It says we are all in this together and have to solve it together.'

"The text in the show is spare, understated, almost simple. But the creators hope that conversations and debates will emerge from it. For instance, Juan Luis Hernandez left the exhibition recently with ideas he said he hadn't ever considered. The Maya Indians who crouch over the earth on his father's plantation and the servant who cleans his room are the only indigenous people this 17-year-old has ever talked to. And he admits, he's never even talked much to any of them.

"He said that what struck him most was a video in which an Indian woman 'says that indigenous people do want to be included in society and progress, but don't feel they are allowed to.'

"'I had always thought Indians were poor because they didn't want to get ahead in life,' Mr. Hernandez said, 'but the truth is, I've never asked them what they wanted.' "

Artifacts Sale Investigated: Federal Agents says that several items returned to Hawaiian group were offered to collectors

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 11: "Artifacts Sale Investigated: Federal Agents says that several items returned to Hawaiian group were offered to collectors"

Sally Apgar's story began, "Federal agents are investigating the alleged black market trafficking of valuable Hawaiian artifacts that Bishop Museum had turned over to a native Hawaiian group, according to several sources close to the ongoing probe.

"Federal investigators said the artifacts, which include several water gourds, at least one priceless hand-carved bowl and pieces of burial kapa from the well-known J.S. Emerson collection, were secretly offered for sale within the past few weeks to private collectors and at least one antique dealer on the Big Island.

"Federal agents with the U. S. Department of the Interior declined to identify suspects to the Star-Bulletin.

"Over the past seven years, the allegedly stolen artifacts had been repatriated, or legally transferred, to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei. Hui Malama is a native Hawaiian organization founded in 1989 for the purpose of repatriating human remains and other artifacts and reburying them in burial caves in accordance with ancient ancestors.

"The objects from the Bishop Museum had been sold to the museum in the late 1880s by Emerson and repatriated to Hui Malama in 1997. The investigation also includes possible items linked to the Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass., that were sold by Emerson in 1907, and repatriated to Hui Malama, with the help of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, in 2003.

"Edward Halealoha Ayau, spokesman for Hui Malama, did not return telephone calls yesterday for comment. In the past, Ayau has said that items repatriated from the museum were sealed and hidden in burial caves.

"The sale of such artifacts is illegal under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which was established so that native Americans and Hawaiians could have a procedure for recovering human remains and sacred objects on display in museums.

"'We are conducting an investigation into the trafficking of Hawaiian artifacts,' confirmed Michael Kingsley, an assistant special agent in charge of the regional office in Sacramento, Calif., for the Interior Department, the federal agency that oversees NAGPRA.

"Kingsley would not name suspects or describe the extent of the black market trafficking.

"'We are conducting an investigation, and we're going to the end of where this investigation takes us,' he said.

"Bishop Museum Director Bill Brown said yesterday, 'This is a critical moment to remember the great significance of Hawaiian cultural heritage and to reflect on what stewardship that heritage genuinely requires.'

"DeSoto Brown, a Hawaiian, scholar and collection manager of the museum's archives, was more blunt: 'This is why we have museums: to preserve, safeguard, and keep valuable artifacts. Additionally, when artifacts are in museums, others can see them and have access to appropriate levels and learn. It's unrealistic to say that it's in the cave where the ancient Hawaiians wanted and that therefore we've done right and it's all finished,' DeSoto Brown added. 'The items in cave are subject to natural deterioration, which I know is what Hui Malama said should be their fate. But people can get into those caves and take things and they are not safe. This case brings this point into the open the caves are not safe.'

"The investigation into black market trafficking comes at a time of bitter debate at the museum over who should be in charge of such remains and artifacts.

"In 1990, NAGPRA was passed so that human remains and artifacts that had shown up for centuries in museums' display cases would be handed back to native American tribes and native Hawaiians.

"DeSoto Brown, who is not related to the museum's director, said that even 50 years ago native Hawaiians did not openly question Bishop Museum's right to having human remains and sacred objects in its collection for safekeeping and study.

"The museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop as a memorial to his wife, Princess Pauahi Bishop, the last of the Kamehameha line of ruling chiefs. The princess and other alii wanted the museum to safeguard items so that future generations could know their heritage. The museum's core collections included items owned by Pauahi, Princess Ruth Keelikolani, Queen Emma and Queen Liliuokalani.

"DeSoto Brown said there's been such a re-emergence of pride among Hawaiians that the staff felt shame, not pride, in having preserved bones, artifacts and history. 'Acting in atonement,' the staff repatriated many items over the last 14 years, he said.

"But in 2004, museum Director Bill Brown said he determined that the museum had its own place in deciding what items would stay in the museum for the study of future generations and what would be hidden in burial caves.

"In a controversial decision last month, the museum's board announced an "interim guidance policy" that said it was a native Hawaiian organization, owing to its founding mission, just like Hui Malama or any other Native Hawaiian organization.

"Hui Malama has fought the museum's policy as an act of 'institutionalized racism' that says Hawaiians cannot take care of their own ancestors.

"Hui Malama has said that making the museum a native Hawaiian organization defeats the intent of NAGPRA and lays open many opportunities for abuse by the museum."

A New Museum in Paris Inches Toward Reality

Alan Riding's New York Times story, "A New Museum in Paris Inches Toward Reality" was published on September 6.

"Primitive art has not lacked admirers here," Riding's story, written in Paris, began. "A century ago Picasso and Brancusi were inspired by African masks and statues. Thirty years later André Breton fell in love with tribal carvings from Oceania. Today dozens of Left Bank galleries specialize in the exotic creativity of distant lands. Yet in the museums of Paris, primitive art is still the poor relation of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities and European painting and sculpture.

"All this is about to change. A $265 million museum devoted to the indigenous art of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania is rising on the banks of the Seine beside the Eiffel Tower. Within a year the Musée du Quai Branly, as it is known, will begin receiving the 270,000 objects in its collection. And early in 2006 President Jacques Chirac is expected to inaugurate what is already considered the principal cultural monument to his 12 years in office.

"The project would never have occurred without Mr. Chirac's affection for African and Asian art or without his resolve to make a political gesture to the third world. He started planning it soon after he became president in 1995, and construction had only just begun when he was re-elected to a five-year term in 2002. That the museum will eventually take 11 years to be realized is a measure of both its complexity and the opposition it stirred.

"The first tiff stemmed from Mr. Chirac's conviction that primitive art should be treated on a par with Western art: he demanded that the Louvre Museum also display primitive art. Its director at the time, Pierre Rosenberg, objected strongly, arguing that the Louvre was not a universal museum. But Mr. Chirac had his way. Managed by the Musée du Quai Branly, four galleries in the Louvre now present 120 masterpieces of African, Asian, American and Oceanic art.

"'The history of the world is not just the history of the Mediterranean and Europe,' said Stéphane Martin, the director general of the Musée du Quai Branly. 'Our ultimate aim is to give non-Western art its place.'

"But finding a physical place for it proved difficult. Since the existing Museum of African and Oceanic Arts was deemed too small, the next idea was to evict the National Maritime Museum from the Palais de Chaillot. But the French Navy resisted until Mr. Chirac opted for the five-acre plot on the Quai Branly, where a convention center had been planned. Local residents then went to court to block the project, alarmed by the prospect of five years of noise and dust. They lost.

"Naming the museum posed other difficulties. The tag of primitive art was discounted because, today at least, 'primitive' sounds pejorative. The Museum of Early Arts was considered, but only pre-Hispanic works are truly ancient. A presidential commission suggested the Museum of Man, Arts and Civilizations, but that was a mouthful. Finally, the museum's address, the Quai Branly (pronounced kay bran-LEE) was picked. One day, though, it may well be called the Chirac Museum.

"There are precedents for both options. The Georges Pompidou Center and the François Mitterrand French National Library are named after former French presidents, while the Musée d'Orsay is on the Quai d'Orsay and the Louvre, well, is in the Louvre Palace. But in the case of the new museum, a non-descriptive name was also helpful. The Musée du Quai Branly wants to display what it has, rather than pretend to offer an encyclopedic vision of primitive art.

"Although it will have spent $28 million on new acquisitions by 2006, it will inherit the bulk of its objects from the former Museum of African and Oceanic Arts and the ethnographic department of the Museum of Mankind. Their collections, reflecting France's colonial history and the quirks of individual explorers, were not built systematically. Further, the Guimet Museum's separate collection of South-East Asian, Chinese and Japanese art will not be affected. But for the Musée du Quai Branly, the issue is less what to show, than how to show it. Most primitive art was created not as art, but for religious and ritualistic purposes. Thus, an art-versus-science debate has long divided experts, with the Museum of Mankind, for instance, unhappy to imagine its collection presented outside its ethnographic context. Yet increasingly European museums display works of primitive art principally on their aesthetic merit. Mr. Martin said that while the objects will be presented here with 'theatricality,' the new museum would also explore links between primitive art from different climes and different eras.

"'Ethnographic museums of the 1930s were created for people who did not travel,' he explained. 'The Museum of Mankind was based on the idea of showing the cultures of the world, of showing the interaction between man and the world. Today people do not seek a description of the world. They want more of a dialogue.'

"The challenge for Mr. Martin and his team is not just to move collections into a new building but to develop a new concept for a 21st-century primitive art museum, arguably the first of its kind in Europe since colonialism ended. Experts have been working since the late 1990s to define its artistic, research and educational functions and to plan exchanges with museums in both the West and the third world.

"The ultra-modern Quai Branly building, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, should further these aims. 'The project has changed very little since it was unveiled,' Mr. Martin said, 'because we worked for over two years defining our needs before the design competition was organized.'

"Mr. Nouvel's narrow 560-foot-long building, running parallel to the Quai Branly, will be set in a small forest with the idea of quickly transporting visitors to a different world. The building itself stands on two 'feet,' with a large ground-level passageway enabling the gardens to continue uninterrupted. From a small atrium, a long curving ramp leads to the main gallery, which will display some 4,000 objects divided into four geographical areas.

"The collection is particularly strong in works from African countries and Pacific islands that were long under French colonial administration. It includes stone, wooden, terra cotta, ivory and metal masks, figures and ceremonial instruments. From the Americas, the pre-Hispanic collection is smaller, but the museum does have significant works of Native American art. One question, which will not be answered until Mr. Chirac leaves office, is whether the treasures in the Louvre will eventually move to Quai Branly.

"The museum will also offer ample spaces for temporary exhibitions, which will form an important part of its program. Some will be thematic, like 'What Is a Body?' or 'D'un Regard à l'Autre,' which might be translated as 'Viewing the Other,' a sort of mirror game between first and third worlds. Others being planned, like the art of New Ireland and Paracas, will be organized with foreign institutions.

"Education and scientific work will not be overlooked, not least because half of the museum's $14.4 million annual budget will be covered by the Ministry of Research. (The Culture Ministry will pay the other half.) The main building and three annexes include not only an auditorium for lectures and performances as well as numerous classrooms but also space where researchers can handle and study objects from the museum's underground storage rooms. These objects, many of which have been locked away for decades, have now been cleaned, disinfected, repaired, photographed and cataloged.

"For the moment, with cranes and earthmovers and scores of construction workers occupying the site, the future must still be imagined. But Mr. Chirac's dream now seems certain to be fulfilled. And it is a dream that also involves using the museum as a symbol of France's openness to the third world. In fact, to science and art, Mr. Chirac has now added politics as one of the essential ingredients of primitive art."

A Native Spirit, Inside the Beltway

In another take on the new museum, Patricia Leigh Brown's September 9 New York Times story is titled "A Native Spirit, Inside the Beltway."

Datelined Alcalde, New Mexico, the story began: "More than the corn, the willows and the sunflowers stirring in the late summer wind, Donna House cultivates memory.

"When Ms. House, a Navajo ethnobotanist, steps gingerly through the barbed wire fence into her backyard - a former alfalfa field along the Rio Grande now brimming with native plants framed by a distant mesa - there is a sense of homecoming, of reunion, of land returning to its origins.

"So it is, too, on the Mall in Washington, where Ms. House is the guiding force behind a landscape of cornfields, meadows, forest and wetlands - complete with 3,500 specially introduced ladybugs - outside the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, which is to open just west of the Capitol on Sept. 21.

"'Plants were here way before people,' she said, walking through rustling rows of corn behind her home where ancient pottery shards from the nearby San Juan Pueblo share dusty furrows with ants and grasshoppers. 'They know you, have a relationship with you. It's a sense of recognizing the plants, the animals, the insects as beings. They were here way before the five-finger people.'

"In her career as an ethnobotanist, Ms. House, 50, who grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, has served as a translator of sorts between 'the people' (or the Dineh, as the Navajos call themselves) and the outside world. A traditional 'old school' Indian, as she sometimes jokingly refers to herself, as well as an environmental scientist, she has worked for or consulted with the Nature Conservancy, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Navajo Nation and others, helping to protect rare and endangered plants that have cultural, as well as ecological, significance. 'Recognizing the diversity of plants is no different than recognizing the diversity of people,' she said.

"Along the way, she often bridges the gap between the native world view - in which human beings and nature are interrelated, and all plants, animals and mountains and other landforms are sacred - and the more scientific Anglo one, pollinating a deeper understanding between them. (Ethnobotany is the study of how plants are used in particular cultures.) Her home ground, or habitat - a word she prefers to landscape - stretches far into the horizon, to the cottonwoods along the river presided over by the steep, rocky mesa. 'A landscape is not dynamic,' she said, gathering fallen peaches from elderly trees. 'A habitat is a place where beings come to life - the damselflies, the dragonflies, the mallard ducks that eat the wild rice.'

"These fields were farmland until Ms. House, much to the consternation of some of her neighbors, dispensed with the alfalfa and roses, 'allowing the memory of the land to return.' The globe mallow, prized by the Navajos for its medicinal applications, came back. So did the sunflowers, used to treat prenatal infections for millenniums by the Navajos, who also fashioned their hollow stalks into bird snares and flutes and boiled the seed hulls for a dark-red dye. The seeds themselves are used for soup. 'I wouldn't rate it very highly,' she said of seed soup. 'But it's the most lovely flower ever.'

"Today, her adobe house is in a state of suspended remodeling, dozens of 'to do' lists taped to her torchiers. She has spent much of her time over the past 11 years in Washington, where she has been part of a core design team including Douglas Cardinal (a Blackfoot Indian) and John Paul Jones (a Cherokee-Choctaw), both architects Ramona Sakiestewa (a Hopi), an interior designer and weaver and a welter of collaborators, notably EDAW Inc., a landscape firm based in Alexandria, Va., and the Polshek Partnership, the New York architectural firm.

"Their collective work has been shaped by a four-year process that solicited ideas from nearly 1,000 tribal leaders who urged, among other things, that the museum be illuminated by natural, rather than artificial, light, and that the design include flowing water. That approach is described by W. Richard West Jr., director of the Indian museum, as 'design from the bottom up, outside in.'

"To the Mall's polite formality - its 'tulips all in a line,' in Ms. House's words - has come a contrasting renegade presence: a wetland visible from the Capitol sprouting cattails, wild rice and about 1,440 water lilies. Visitors meander past a meadow of buttercups, panic grass and other Potomac Valley plants and a somewhat surreal field of corn, tobacco, squash and other crops. Massive boulders, shipped from as far away as the Northwest Territories, echo the curvaceous form of the building, its rough-hewn limestone surface meant to recall a cliff face sculptured by the wind.

"To acquaint herself with the Middle Atlantic region, Ms. House consulted fellow botanists, but also set out on the Potomac River in a canoe. In a sense, she has served both as a botanist and the conscience of the landscape, guiding the planting to reflect both the museum's collection - which includes artifacts like a 2,000-year-old Paiute duck decoy made of bulrushes - and Indian beliefs and values.

"'When you take a piece of a tree to use,' Ms. House said, 'you acknowledge them, thank them. You don't learn that in architecture school.'

"To Vine Deloria Jr., a leading scholar on the American Indian, Ms. House's understanding of the symbolic and ceremonial role of plants, in addition to their everyday uses as food and medicine, is itself an endangered species. 'She has a tremendous knowledge of place and what is being lost,' he said.

"It is a knowledge that Ms. House, who often measures plants according to the scale of her huge turquoise ring, has been acquiring since girlhood. She grew up in Oak Springs, Ariz., on the Navajo reservation, about a four-hour drive west of Albuquerque, a place so small that a larger town on the reservation, Shiprock, N. M. (pop. 8,156), 'seemed like New York to us,' she said. Fittingly perhaps, she was born in Washington, where her father was a guard at the Pentagon during the Korean War. In Navajo tradition, the place where a baby is born (and where the umbilical cord is usually buried) is the place the child is meant to come home to. When she landed the museum job, her mother said, 'Oh, you're building your home,' Ms. House recalled.

"The eldest of nine children, she learned the nuances of the land by climbing trees and joining family members who were healers as they gathered sacred plants. The timing of those walks varied with the time of day, the phases of the moon and the changes in the temperature, the winds and the orientation of the stars in the night sky. Ms. House said apologetically that she could not share stories about specific plants on this visit, because it was summertime. 'In Navajo tradition,' she said, 'you don't talk about plants in the summer, because they're up from the ground, and with you. So they hear the stories you're talking.' It is never polite to gossip.

"She campaigned against the placement of identifying labels alongside the plants outside the museum. 'That's not a native experience,' she said. 'It's putting a tag on beings.'

"Her parents practiced plant-based Dineh medicine - 'the alternative to penicillin, Valium, Viagra or whatever' - because it was more readily accessible than the nearest hospital, 100 miles away. Ms. House traveled to school on dirt roads, four hours round trip. Even then, she grew accustomed to bridging worlds: as she grew older, her family moved closer to her school, which was in the more modern electrified community of Fort Defiance, founded as an Army post to patrol Navajo country. When school wasn't in session, they returned home, a place of 'kerosene lamps and butchering sheep, where prairie dogs were a delicacy,' she said.

"Ms. House, who said her grandfather was forcibly taken from his home by federal authorities at age 8 to attend a faraway Bureau of Indian Affairs school, found herself drawn to school, especially to science. 'There was a sense that Western knowledge was a curiosity, like the curve in a canyon you're hiking,' she said.

Vowing to become 'a super-contemporary Navajo,' she enrolled in pre-med at the University of Utah, eventually becoming the first person from Oak Springs to graduate from college. But philosophically unable to dissect animals or insects, she changed course midstream, disappointing her family as well as the faculty, she said. She graduated with a degree in environmental science, focusing on botany. 'I respect the Dineh - I respect the knowledge,' she said. 'I want to keep that ethos and knowledge continuing.'

"Now she frequently receives calls at odd hours from tribes worried about endangered plants. During her eight years advising the Nature Conservancy about conservation on Indian lands, Ms. House worked with the Tohono O'odham (the Papago) in southern Arizona, on whose lands grows Kearney's blue star, a wildflower that federal botanists declared the rarest plant in Arizona in the late 1980s, believing that it was down to its last eight specimens.

"A few years later, Ms. House showed a picture of the plant to Jefford Francisco, now the tribe's natural resources technician, and he thought he recognized it from the days when his father took him deer hunting. Ms. House traveled with him to the shady canyon of his childhood memories, where they found scores of blue stars. 'They knew more about their ecosystem than I did, no matter how much I read,' she said of the tribe. 'Elders know the birds, the paths the animals take, the plants. A lot of knowledge you can't find in a library.'

"She is now involved with a coalition of local and national environmental groups, tribal governments and ranchers to restrict oil and gas development at El Huerfano Mesa in New Mexico, one of the Navajos' most sacred places, central to their accounts of origin. The mesa has natural springs, herbs still used in ceremonies and Navajo and Anasazi burial sites and artifacts.

"The Natural Resources Defense Council and Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit conservation law center, have filed suit in Federal District Court in Washington to try to limit the drilling. Ms. House recently spoke about the issue at a public meeting in Boulder, Colo., sponsored by a group of federal agencies. 'She's got a commanding presence and has the long native view,' said Michael Chiropolos, a director of the law center. 'She's got tight relationships with elders but can also communicate with those making decisions on how lands are managed.'

"She believes in operating within a given culture: in Española, a largely Hispanic community to the south of her home, she volunteers at the local community college helping students develop prototype solar-powered low-riders, street-hugging cars popular among Latinos.

"She is looking forward to returning full time from Washington to her chicken-wired adobe walls, finding city life, like the pavement, 'all hard.'

"Eventually, she plans to move back to Oak Springs on the reservation, where her parents still live. 'It is part of my genetics,' she said. But for now, she hopes to be back in New Mexico in time for the fall arrival of the sandhill cranes, who alight on her cornfields by the hundred on their migration from western Canada. 'My seasonal clock,' she calls them, 'bringing a sense of life and time.'

"She was overjoyed recently to discover that a great blue heron had arrived on the Mall and was perched on a dead cypress trunk in the museum wetland. Ducks were feasting on the wild rice, somewhat to her chagrin, and the dragonflies were soaring four stories high. It is a habitat - 'one little quark,' she said, 'in the huge galaxy of the native world' - coming to life."

At the Indian Museum, A Past Without Pedestals: A departure from antique museumology

From the Washington Post, September 13, Jacqueline Trescott's story the new museum was headlined, "At the Indian Museum, A Past Without Pedestals: A departure from antique museumology."

"More than 500 years ago a Chimu Indian living in Peru hammered a sheet of gold into a mask," Trescott's story began. "He gave it two eyes of turquoise.

"For centuries, few people have seen this object. But in eight days, visitors will see 8,000 such extraordinary artifacts -- from carved wood paddles to headdresses of macaw feathers -- when the National Museum of the American Indian opens on the Mall. Looking at objects, however, is far from the only experience the visitor will have as this museum dramatically illustrates 'a native authority' in its architecture, landscaping, exhibition text and even the food in the cafe.

"Perched between the Capitol and the National Air and Space Museum, NMAI is the newest of the Smithsonian Institution's system of 18 museums and the National Zoo. Its creators hope it will attract as many as 6 million visitors a year. It cost $219 million, almost half of which came from private donations.

Expect a departure from the antique museumology of fixed dates and heroes on pedestals. On a 4.5-acre plot, with almost three acres of garden, the Indian touch is everywhere. The skin of the building is Kasota dolomitic limestone from Minnesota. It purposely looks like a natural mass that has been hammered for years by wind and rain, a sign of native unity with nature. In some places the shelves of the two gift shops are inlaid with purple and white tiles crafted from quahog shells by the Wampanoag tribe of Martha's Vineyard.

"No other museum in the world has, on such a scale, devoted itself to this fresh and unusual approach to the story of Native Americans. Its planners have created what they call a 'museum different' that might make it very hard for museums on the drawing board ever again to tell a story about people from a detached, third-person point of view. The museum is built around native communities expressing their own authentic voices and their own interpretations of events -- part of its mission to change myths and stereotypes.

"It rings with 'the first-person voice,' says Director W. Richard West, a Southern Cheyenne and Stanford-educated Washington corporate lawyer. 'I see the National Museum of the American Indian as a symbol or metaphor for something far more fundamental that sort of transcends the fact that you are opening a museum,' West said in a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors. 'It is reflective of a turning point in American history where the United States is beginning to reckon with the history in various ways of the first citizens of the hemisphere.'

Objects of inquiry "That is a loaded quest for any museum. Every step of the way, the Native American community has been involved in curating the museum. This might be due to the Smithsonian's own history and bruises. The institution learned one lesson about extensive consultation on controversial topics in 1995 when it developed plans to display the Enola Gay on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Veterans and others objected vehemently to the text proposed to accompany the display.

Yet this ambitious undertaking also might be postmodern philosophy struggling with 10,000 years of culture. The museum deliberately rejected interpreting its materials from the anthropological point of view that is the basis of most museums' treatment of Native Americans.

"This is a direct slap at the National Museum of Natural History across the Mall, which has collected its extensive Indian materials through the anthropology department. Though the materials there have been striking, the presentations have sometimes treated Indians as objects of inquiry, like gems or elephants.

"For years Natural History displayed artifacts in old-fashioned dioramas with mannequins of Indians in sparse hunting gear. As part of its renovation, it has been tearing up those exhibitions. This summer it dismantled the hall in which they resided. It has also returned to tribes many items that had been collected and donated by scientists. One of the most famous was the brain of Ishi, who for years was believed to be the last Yahi-Yana of Northern California. His brain was sent to the Smithsonian by an anthropologist and remained in museum storage for 83 years. It was returned to his kin from other tribes in 2000.

"In trying to correct past museum practices, curators and designers of the new museum met with nearly 150 communities from Central and South America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. 'It is a marker,' West says of the scale of involvement. 'We are evoking the authentic voices of native peoples themselves in having a look at their own cultures.'

What they created, in function and spirit, is a museum, a memorial, a clubhouse and a cathedral. Inside the atrium -- called the Potomac for its proximity to the original riverbed settlements of the Piscataway -- eight prisms reflect the light in surprising arrangements with the grace of a stained-glass window. Its impressive overhang at the front entrance is aimed directly at the U. S. Capitol. What is that message?

"West says cultural redemption and reconciliation. Indians, he says, 'are a present cultural phenomena, a set of communities, a set of peoples. We want people to understand that, because for much of American history, until rather recently, native communities were relatively invisible. We are still here and making vital contributions to contemporary American culture and art.'

Two creators "The displays don't wallow in the genocide, broken promises and bloody wars of the 19th century, West says. Planners didn't want Native Americans viewed as victims, but as fully dimensional people. Yes, there have been horrors, West says, but they are presented through native voices and treated as part of a long history.

"This history is presented from a distinctly native perspective. For example, there is no reference in the entire museum to the scientific hypothesis that Indians came to North America via a land bridge at the Bering Strait, says spokesman Thomas Sweeney. Instead, beliefs such as the ones of the Tohono O'odham of Arizona are expressed. In that view two creators, Earth Medicine Man and I'itoi, produced the world and everything needed for physical, mental and spiritual sustenance, and the Tohono O'odham have been here since the start of time.

In addition, current controversies are addressed, West says. In one gallery there is an examination of casino operations by the Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians in California. And yes, there is world-class craftsmanship. Another gallery is devoted to contemporary art. The first temporary exhibit there shows the work of George Morrison, of the Grand Portage Band of the Chippewa, and Allan Houser, a Chiricahua Apache. Along corridor walls are cases full of 3,500 objects, from dolls to baskets to ritual cups.

"To mark the opening on Sept. 21, the museum has invited Native Americans to a procession on the Mall. At least 15,000 Indians in ceremonial dress are expected to gather, as well as 600,000 other visitors over the first few days. A six-day festival similar to the Smithsonian's annual summer Folklife Festival will follow the dedication ceremony. The museum initially will remain open for nearly 30 hours straight to accommodate the expected crowds. After that, passes with specific entrance times will be distributed every day, with these free tickets reservable on the Internet. For the opening, however, museum officials have put aside 6,000 tickets for the opening all-nighter on a first-come, first-served basis.

"The museum's history dates to discussions that began in 1980 about the fate of a vast collection of Indian materials, the bulk of which was sitting in a cramped warehouse in an out-of-the-way area of the Bronx. The man behind the collection was George Gustav Heye, a rich financier who was a 'boxcar collector,' stopping at villages, buying up everything in sight and shipping it back to New York. He accumulated the largest private collection of Native American objects in the world. The artifacts include materials from Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America to the Arctic Circle.

"In 1987, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) introduced a bill to establish a Smithsonian museum based on the Heye collection, but a lot of push and pull between New York and Washington interests ensued. In January 1989, the board of directors of the Heye collection and the Smithsonian regents agreed most of the materials should be transferred to Washington. In May, Inouye, joined shortly by then-Rep. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), introduced legislation to build a National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall. In November, President George H.W. Bush signed it into law. Groundbreaking took place in September 1999. To accommodate the size of the collection, the Smithsonian opened a vast research and study center in Suitland that year.

"'Without, hopefully, being accused of undue ethnocentrism, I think a case can be made that native America, as the originating element of American heritage, should have been among the first to be acknowledged with a museum on the National Mall -- and yet we arrived last,' West said earlier this year.

"The large undertaking also provided a model for fundraising, with the government setting goals for the private sector campaign. Three tribes -- the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut, the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut and the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, each operators of lucrative casinos -- donated $10 million apiece. Overall, the museum raised $100 million privately. The government contributed $119 million.

"Inside the building, the exhibitions cover less than 30 percent of the space. The rest is devoted to other functions, including two theaters, the ceremonial atrium and performance pit, a library center, the gift shops, and a food court serving primarily Indian fare. (If you want typical fast food, stop next door at the Air and Space Museum.) West says the space devoted to displays is similar to the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has large areas for reflection. 'I think museums, including ours, have proceeded beyond the point of addressing their visitors as simply being displayers of objects,' he says.

"Some of the objects they are displaying, nonetheless, certainly are unusual for a Mall museum. Nearly 40 huge 'grandfather' rocks are set by a manufactured stream outside the building. These boulders were taken from a quarry in Alma, Quebec, and blessed by the Montagnais First Nations of Quebec before they were loaded on a tractor-trailer. They received a welcome from the Monacan Nation of Virginia when they arrived. Thousands of carefully considered plantings thrive at the site, forming a garden and a wetlands. A family of ducks migrated from the Potomac and settled in, eating the wild rice."

Museum With an American Indian Voice

A Dissenting View: In "Museum With an American Indian Voice," published in The New York Times on September 21 New York Times, Edward Rothstein expresses some doubts about the new museum..

Datelined Washington, D. C., the story began, "Early Tuesday morning, 20,000 members of more than 500 Indian tribes from all over the American hemisphere are expected to gather on the Mall to begin a ceremonial march toward the National Museum of the American Indian. But they will not just be celebrating the opening of the Smithsonian's new building. This Native Nations Procession, organized by the museum and forming, perhaps, the largest assembly of America's native peoples in modern times, will also be a self-celebration.

"That will be perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the museum. The celebration is echoed in the museum's exhibitions. It is even asserted in the way the museum's mesa-like structure of Kasota limestone thrusts itself eastward toward the Capitol building, as if declaring - after centuries of battle, disruption, compromise, betrayal, defeat and reinvention - 'We are still here.'

"In fact, that kind of assertion, along with a six-day First Americans Festival of music, dance and storytelling that the museum predicts will attract 600,000 people, is not unrelated to the museum's project. The museum will, of course, mount exhibitions that draw on the 800,000 objects that the Smithsonian acquired from George Gustav Heye's famed historical collection of what he called 'aboriginal art.' But its mission statement also asserts another 'special responsibility': to 'protect, support and enhance the development, maintenance and perpetuation of native culture and community.'

"In other words, the museum will advocate not just for artifacts but also for the living cultures that once created them. Most museums invoke the past to give shape to the present here the interests of the present will be used to shape the past. And that makes all the difference.

"So it is probably no accident that Tuesday's procession begins in front of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, which still has a major collection of Indian artifacts, and heads toward the new museum. Because that is precisely the path the Indian museum's director, W. Richard West Jr. (who is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma), has had in mind. In public statements he rejected 'the older image of the museum as a temple with its superior, self-governing priesthood.' Instead, he said, he would create a 'museum different.' Indians would tell their own stories no outside anthropologists would intrude. The objects would even be available for ritual tribal use.

"Unfortunately, the result proves that a genuinely celebratory march should really be heading in the other direction.

"The Museum of the American Indian has much to boast of: raising $100 million of its $219 million from private sources (a third of that from Indian tribes made wealthy from gambling casinos), a building whose initial design - by the Canadian architect (and Blackfoot) Douglas Cardinal - hints at what might have been, a collection of surpassing aesthetic and cultural value. And with its verve and theatricality it could easily wind up welcoming the 4 million visitors a year it anticipates.

"But the ambition of creating a 'museum different' -- the goal of making that museum answer to the needs, tastes and traditions of perhaps 600 diverse tribes, ranging from the Tapirape of the Brazilian jungles to the Yupik of Alaska - results in so many constituencies that the museum often ends up filtering away detail rather than displaying it, and minimizing difference even while it claims to be discovering it.

"On top of that, the studious avoidance of scholarship makes one wish that the National Museum of Natural History's American Indian Program, with its scholarly staff (directed by an anthropologist, JoAllyn Archambault, herself a Standing Rock Sioux), could have proceeded with its once-planned revision of its aging exhibits instead of having to close them down, scuttle hopes of renewal and slink into insignificance in response to its new competition.

"Some of these problems seem palpable in the Indian museum's building itself, which fills the last open spot on the Mall. In 1998 Mr. Cardinal was fired from the architect job and multiple voices came into play he called the result a 'forgery' and refuses to take credit. His vision of a sweeping earth-form, shaped by nature's force fields, can still be sensed. But the northwest corner of the building is leaden, its Mall-facing facade only half-heartedly awakening as it leads toward the east-facing front. The landscaping, which includes 33,000 plants of 150 species along with various invocations of Native American elements - a boulder from Hawaii, growing stalks of corn and a recreated Chesapeake wetlands - is marred by fussiness.

"But the exhibits are where the problems begin in earnest. The display for the Santa Clara Pueblo of New Mexico, for example, explains: 'We are made up of two major clans, Summer and Winter people.' But, the Pueblo curator writes: 'There is no dividing line. There is just a sense.' The exhibit's commentary is limited to comments like 'Respect and sharing of your self is very important.' One does not learn what daily life is like or even what the tribe's religious ceremonies consist of.

"Similarly with the Anishinaabe, who are 200,000 strong in the Great Lakes region. The explanatory panel reads: 'Everything has a spirit and everything is interconnected.' The central image is a 'teaching lodge' in which the tribe learns seven teachings: 'honesty, love, courage, truth, wisdom, humility and respect.' A diorama with life-size mannequins shows various tribe members, including children, in the lodge. They use a bowl from 1880 and a dress made in 1920, but no information is given about whether or not these objects are like the ones currently used or precisely what the 'clan system' is that one comment refers to.

"Such detail, apparently, was not what the tribal curators thought important. In fact, there is an astonishing uniformity in the exhibits' accounts of religious beliefs, which may have been homogenized by subtle forces within the museum itself. The building emphasizes a kind of warm, earthy mysticism with comforting homilies behind every facade, reviving an old pastoral romance about the Indian.

"But these were communities that at least at one time were vastly different, which farmed or hunted, engaged in war, suffered indignity, inspired outrage. The notion that tribal voices should 'be heard' becomes a problem when the selected voices have so little to say. Moreover, since American Indians largely had no detailed written languages and since so much trauma had decimated the tribes, the need for scholarship and analysis of secondary sources is all the more crucial.

"But the museum almost seems afraid of distinctions. There are display cases of objects made with beads, organized with no particular logic a beaded horse-head cover from 1900 North Dakota appears near a mid-19th-century sea-otter hat from the Aleutian Islands. One wall holds 'star' objects, whose only connection is that they have pictures of stars on them. Some tribes are asked to present 10 crucial moments in their history the Tohono Oodham in Arizona choose, as their first, 'Birds teach people to call for rain." 'Their last is in the year 2000, a 'desert walk for health.'

"The result is that a monotony sets in every tribe is equal, and so is every idea. No unified intelligence has been applied. Moreover, with a net cast so wide, including South and Central America as well as Alaska, the only commonality may be the encounter with colonizers - and even this must be simplified. The accidental epidemics that killed perhaps 75 to 90 percent of North American Indians is made far less central than the wars and forced migrations that followed. Internecine tribal wars such as those mentioned in the exhibit of the Brazilian tribe, the Tapirape, don't fit the model, either.

"The focal point becomes a series of displays called 'The Storm,' which reflect three forces most terrible: 'guns, churches and government.' There are hundreds of guns and rifles on display, ranging from a 17th-century pistol to a 1985 Uzi. The church display includes nearly 200 Bibles translated into 175 languages. The government's assaults are in documents: laws, land deeds, violated treaties.

"From this apocalypse one is meant to pass to an anthology of current-day tribal life, which includes examples of casinos, ice fishing, social clubs and platitudes.

"But a great opportunity was missed in this museum. Individual tribes could have been explored in depth. Even the 'storm' could have been illuminated with more detail rather than by just invoking the forces involved.

"The museum, though, seems satisfied with serving a sociological function for Indians of the Americas. It may indeed succeed, because it has packaged a self-celebratory romance. Understanding though, requires something more. It is not a matter of whose voice is heard. It is a matter of detail, qualification, nuance and context. It is a matter of scholarship."

American Indian Museum Opens

The first of two stories in The New York Times on September 21, 2004 on the new museum was an Associated Press story titled, "American Indian Museum Opens"

"A colorful Native Nations procession heralded the opening Tuesday of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian, the newest addition to the historical treasure-trove dotting the National Mall," the story began..

"A group of five White Mountain Apache Indians from White River, Ariz., drew a crowd with their exotic dress. Four had their chests painted black with white lettering while the fifth was painted white with black lettering. Pine needles were wrapped around their arms and waists, and wooden headgear reached two feet above their heads, which were covered in masks. As they danced, metal balls around their shoes added to the sounds of an accompanying drummer.

"Nearby, Aztec Indians from San Francisco danced with headfeathers that reached as high as six feet above their heads.

"Onlookers cheered as the procession made its way to the new museum near the U. S. Capitol, and the air was filled with the smell of burned sage and the sounds of drums, bells and music.

"Among those celebrating was Nicole Soulier, 19, a Ojibwa Indian from Bad River, Wis., who wore a blue dress with 365 metal 'jingles' -- one for each day of the year -- and an eagle's feather on her head.

"'It's very important to represent where I came from, to celebrate with all the other nations,'' she said.

"Leading the procession was museum director Richard West, wearing a Cheyenne Indian headdress, along with Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Lawrence Small, the Smithsonian secretary.

"In the afternoon, the museum was to open to the public, and musicians, dancers and storytellers were to begin the First Americans Festival, which will last the rest of the week.

"Deanette Ives, vice chairman of the Port Sklallam Gamble Tribe near Kingston, Wash., said she took her 14-year-old daughter out of school to attend the ceremony. 'I thought it was important to share this historic moment,' said Ives, wearing a black and red shall embroidered with the tribe's logo, a killer whale. 'This is a time she'll remember for the rest of her life.'

"On Monday, hundreds of people already were milling about the museum to get an early peek. 'At last we're getting some kind of recognition as Indian people,' said Lawrence Orcutt, from the Yurok tribe in northern California.

"Dave Anderson, who heads the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the museum will allow Indians to open a new chapter in the United States. 'I look at this whole museum opening as an opportunity for healing, for optimism,' he said.

"Missing from the opening festivities, however, was the architect who designed the stunning tan building, layered in swooping levels of Minnesota limestone rounded to depict the curves of the Earth, sun and moon.

"Douglas J. Cardinal, a Canadian, was hired as architect in 1993, but he wound up in a dispute with the architectural firm that he subcontracted for, GBQC of Philadelphia, claiming he was losing money. The Smithsonian failed to settle the differences between the two parties and fired both in 1998. Another architectural team finished the work.

"Two months ago, West wrote Cardinal a three-page letter, asking him to attend Tuesday's opening ceremonies and offering to pay for Cardinal's travel and accommodations. But Cardinal, a Blackfeet Indian, turned down the offer after consulting with family members and tribal elders.

"'It was not a gift but professional work for which I should be reimbursed,' wrote Cardinal, who claims he is owed $1 million for the work he did on the museum.

"Responded Smithsonian spokesman Thomas Sweeney: 'The Smithsonian Institution paid Mr. Cardinal up to the time of the termination.'

"Cardinal's design is unlike any other structure in Washington's wealth of monuments and museum. Built at a cost of $214 million, the sweeping lines represent a communing with nature as the country's tribal peoples did. It houses 8,000 objects from across the Western Hemisphere. Four million visitors a year are expected for the museum's movies and music paintings, photographs and sculptures masks, weapons and animals jewelry and medals even food and plants.

"Cardinal, 70, said he's seen photos of the museum and that the 'broad strokes' are consistent with his original design. 'I would have wanted every note to carry the detail,' he added. 'The play between the glass and the stone. I usually recess the glass into stone so you can't see the frames.' "

Drums and Bells Open Indian Museum

"Drums and Bells Open Indian Museum" read the headline for James Dao's story in The Tines the next day, September 22.

"To thundering drums, jubilant whoops and bell-jingling dancers," Dao wrote, "the Smithsonian on Tuesday opened the National Museum of the American Indian, dedicated to the history, culture and painful travails of native people in the Western Hemisphere.

"With the glistening white dome of the Capitol as a backdrop, more than 20,000 people from Alaska to Peru paraded across the Mall to witness the event. Under gauzy blue skies, they formed a brilliant river of deerskin jackets, feathered headdresses and beaded skirts, in conflict with Washington's pinstriped style.

"The opening capped a 17-year quest by tribal leaders and elected officials to commemorate Indian culture and history in the capital. Housed in a yellow limestone building with wave-shaped walls at the southeastern corner of the Mall, the museum expects to draw more than four million visitors a year.

"But there have been some rumblings of discontent. Some critics have complained about the truncated treatment of native history. Others have expressed dismay that casino money is helping defray the $219 million cost. Some Indians oppose gambling on Indian land.

"But the event on Tuesday was overwhelmingly celebratory. Their voices cracking with emotion, visitors from as far as Hawaii and as near as Virginia likened the gathering to a joyous family reunion, calling it a long-overdue tribute to native perseverance in the face of disease, war and colonization.

"'It's more than all the colors and feathers, it's about coming home the way it should have been a long time ago,' Pamela Best Minick of the Cherokee and Pottawattamie tribes of Illinois said as tears streamed down her face. 'To come back in the same way and have people not laugh but respect you - it shows we've come full circle.'

"The day began with a three-hour procession from the Smithsonian castle to the front of the new museum. Officials of the Smithsonian Institution estimated that nearly 25,000 people walked in the parade as tens of thousands watched.

"A group of Chippewa women from the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin wore colorful dresses fringed with silver bells made from discarded chewing-tobacco tins. Behind them, five men wearing baseball caps thumped on a drum while children in moccasins danced.

"'For me, this is of immense spiritual significance,' a tribe member, Ann-Marie Evenson, 35, said. 'It's like a big family reunion.'

"Behind them walked a group from the Cheyenne River Lakota Akicita from South Dakota, led by men wearing military fatigues.

"'We are proud to serve,' said Lyle Cook, 43, a former Army medic and Lakota tribe member. 'We do it not to serve the United States, but to protect our people. This is still our land, even if it is called the United States.'

"There were Aztecs from Mexico wearing rattles around their ankles, young men in Metallica T-shirts chanting traditional songs and sun-weathered older people using digital cameras to record the festivities.

"Marta Frausto of the Otomi tribe in central Mexico had traveled for two days. 'The museum is a way for the people to know we exist,' she said. 'We're thriving as a nation, and we hope to thrive in the future.'

"On the ground floor, a group of Hawaiians in deep red robes called kiheis and wearing necklaces made from black and white nuts, posed for pictures in front of a traditional Hawaiian canoe.

"The Hawaiians, though not formally recognized by the federal government as a native tribe, were invited by the Smithsonian.

"'There is a sense among native people of belonging,' Keone Nunes of Oahu said. 'This museum will hopefully educate people that native people are still around.'

"The museum holds nearly 8,000 objects organized in three major spaces that focus on the histories, spiritual beliefs, daily lives and traditions of 24 tribes. Videotaped oral histories provide the narrative backbone to many displays. Over the years, the exhibitions will rotate to feature other tribes.

"The 'Our Lives' exhibition, about the Metis of St.-Laurent, Manitoba, includes an odd-looking vehicle used for ice fishing on Lake Manitoba. Called a Bombardier, the vehicle has tracks in the rear and skids in front, portholes on the side and a roof rack filled with fishing gear.

A Metis, Josh Gareau, 18, laughed when he saw the vehicle. 'It's pretty weird to come all the way here and see all this stuff from our little town,' Mr. Gareau said. 'It's pretty neat, too.'

"Speech after speech echoed a similar refrain, that we are still here. Some statements had touches of defiance. President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, that nation's first democratically elected Indian president, called the museum a 'profound symbol of reconciliation.'

"Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he began pushing for the museum 17 years ago, when he learned that not one of the 400 monuments here was dedicated to an Indian.

"And Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne chief from Colorado who also sponsored legislation creating the museum, called it 'a monument to the millions of native people who died of sickness, slavery starvation and war. Only 400 years after the Old World collided with their world, the native people of this land became America's first endangered species,' said Mr. Campbell, a Republican who wore a full headdress that he wore onto the Senate floor for an appropriations debate."

A Melding of Spain and Peru

On September 24, Roberta Smithy's review of "The Colonial Andes" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was published in The New York Times with the headline "A Melding of Spain and Peru."

The story began: "The dream of cities with streets of gold that lured Spanish adventurers to the New World in the early 16th century lives on in the Spanish phrase 'Vale un Perù,' which has the idiomatic meaning of 'Worth the world.' For it was in the Viceroyalty of Peru (present-day Peru and Bolivia) that the fantasy of treasure beyond measure was most memorably realized.

"Wish fulfillment began in earnest in 1532, when Francisco Pizarro and his troops arrived in Cuzco, the capital of the Incan empire, took hostage the Incan king, Atahualpa, and demanded ransom. For several months the Incas gathered riches from the four corners of their well-organized realm.

"The Spanish were astounded by the scores of objects (and ingots) of silver and gold and mounds of exquisite tapestries that poured in. It all equaled tens of millions in today's dollars. But they murdered Atahualpa anyway, selected a puppet ruler from the Incan aristocracy and set about subduing the larger population through the imposition of Spanish power, culture and religion. The goal, in principle, was to save native souls through conversion to Roman Catholicism in practice, it was to extract maximum wealth at minimum expense and open new land to European immigrants.

"The forced mixing of these two great and already heterogeneous cultures is the subject of 'The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830,' a sumptuous, groundbreaking exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that opens on Wednesday after a members' preview the day before.

"In sharp contrast to the isolation and frequent eradication of native peoples by the Europeans who laid claim to North America, the exploitation of the local Andean population was, relatively speaking, a story of integration, assimilation and exchange that created a new synthesis.

"The Spanish influence on Incan crafts began with the books, prints, domestic objects and textiles imported from Spain by the conquerors. It continued with instruction from priests and from European artists and artisans (including Flemish weavers and German silversmiths), as well as with commissions from wealthy colonists. And it was further complicated by the influx of Chinese objects, textiles and even artisans that began when Spain opened sea routes to Asia. By the early 1600s, the Spanish had re-established workshops like those overseen by the Incas (although conditions were much harsher). By late in the century, what scholars now call the Andean Baroque was in full swing.

"'The Colonial Andes' is the first in-depth combined examination of the silverwork and textiles that were the fruit of this development. It was organized by Elena Phipps, a textiles conservator at the Met, and Johanna Hecht, an associate curator in its department of European sculpture and decorative arts, in consultation with Cristina Esteras Martín, a specialist in Spanish colonial silver. It presents about 150 examples of tapestry and silverwork from public and private collections on four continents, many of which have never been exhibited before, much less together.

"Their display is enhanced by a selection of queros, the handsome wood beakers (whose richly colored designs are inlaid, not just painted on) from which the Incans drank maize beer for pleasure and ritually to seal agreements, and by large paintings, almost all depicting objects similar to those in the show. Among the women's mantles with their bands of inventively divided cubic forms that can be seen in the show's early galleries is displayed a painting of a proud Incan noblewoman wearing one. Although shown in the portrait style of European royalty, she rests her hand on a red-fringed Incan crown and is accompanied by one of the hunchback dwarfs, here holding a feathered parasol, who frequently served the Incan elite.

"In one gallery, large silver altar coverings can be seen. In the next, three large late-17th-century paintings of the annual Corpus Christi procession in Cuzco feature multi-tiered silver-clad altars being carried through the streets one of these paintings is actually framed in slices from just such an altar cover.

"Initially, these richly patterned tapestries, heavily tooled silver trays, coffers and religious objects and statues may seem familiarly European. But they soon distinguish themselves in all sorts of ways: in the profuse and vigorous foliate ornamentation (especially in the silver pieces) that create a sometimes overwhelming surface energy in depictions of figures in traditional Incan dress and in incongruous details like the fine white-on-dark patterns on tapestry that were inspired by European lace, which the Incas loved.

"Plus there is a kind of abandon, even a casualness, in the silverwork, as well as a scale and density that suggest how abundant the metal was. Exhibit A on this score are two ornate lifesize sculptures of pelicans with gemstone eyes - extremely tangible symbols of the Eucharist. Indeed, the Spanish discovered the world's largest silver lode in Potosí in 1545, quickly pressing Incan miners, with Incan overseers, into abusive labor.

"Above all, there is the concentrated fineness of the Incan tapestries, whose perfection often has what amounts to a devotional quality. They are double sided, which is to say their backs are as finished as their fronts their color transitions are interlocked - a sophisticated, labor-intensive technique that results in unusually tight, smooth surfaces.

"The Incan civilization, while less than 100 years old at the time of the conquest, represented the culmination of more than three millenniums of progress by successive, merging and sometimes warring Andean empires and kingdoms, the earliest of which date back to the time of the first Egyptians. Weaving, having preceded ceramics in the Andes cultures by about 1,000 years (usually it was the other way around), enjoyed an unequaled centrality.

"The Incan textiles, which were woven from memory rather than from drawings, even in colonial times, served purposes more political than religious: they were primarily garments worn by the ruling elite, from the king to the royal emissaries who circulated among the empire's far-flung villages and cities. The boldly geometric style of the men's poncho-like tunics were especially heraldic. Dominated by black-and-white checkerboard patterns, they were instantly recognizable in a culture that never developed a written language, and announced the representatives and the stability of the empire like flags or coats of arms.

"The importance of textiles is evident in the gallery of preconquest material at the beginning of the show. Also included here is a small Incan silver votive figure completely outfitted in miniature garments that is thought to represent a child, in this case prepared for sacrifice infant Jesus figures in churches got the same sartorial treatment, as reflected by several tiny tunics included in the show.

"Partly because their contrasting colors make them easy to read, the tapestries show the hybrid nature of colonial culture most clearly. Especially notable is the Incan ability to adapt and subvert outside motifs and techniques in ways that consciously or unconsciously make their own presence felt. (In much the same way, their nature-centered faith reshaped Catholicism into what one writer in the show's excellent catalog calls 'a local religion.')

"In some cases Incan weavers' penchant for abstraction clarified imported motifs. In the two tapestries whose juxtaposition in the show's second gallery is a high point, the repeating hexagonal lozenges of Hispanic-Moorish carpets are reduced to an interplay of lines that create an acute, pulsating rhythm.

"But the Incas, who frequently detailed their checkered tunics and banded mantles with tiny schematized depictions of insects, plants and animals, easily took to more specific forms of representation. Among the women's mantles is one from Lake Titicaca with the traditional edge-to-edge bands of abstract pattern. But instead of dividing blank fields of color, the bands alternate with expanses of flora, fauna and figures that include four depictions of Eve emerging from Adam's rib.

"The same theme is tackled in a tapestry from the southern Andes, in which the image has the scale of a European painting and the bands have been replaced by concentric, framelike borders filled with foliate patterns. Still, a sampling of Andean animals - oddly disgruntled looking - crowds the scene, and Adam has the handlebar mustache of a conquistador. These two works, both dating from the early 17th century, also demonstrate that assimilation occurred throughout the region at different rates.

"In embracing representation as they never had in the preconquest era, the Incas were able to record their own existence. A work owned by the Met that has just emerged from five years of conservation has two concentric borders dominated by foliate patterns. But between them is a wide, beautifully colored band that mixes figures from Incan, Christian and Greek myths with scenes of everyday life: hunters, houses, a man thwacking a goat with a stick, a brown-and-white cow (outlined in blue) tending her pink-and-brown calf (outlined in white).

"In the show's final gallery, in an armorial tapestry from the British Museum, a similarly wide band is populated by Incan noblemen and women in their traditional tunics and mantles, accompanied by those hunchback dwarfs again, still wielding feathered parasols. The work dates from the late-18th century, a few decades before the people of the Andes would rid themselves of their Spanish masters and achieve independence."

Summer_2004

Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya

Holland Cotter's April 9 New York Times review of "Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya" was subtitled "A Mystique of Blood and Beauty." Read more about Kathleen Berrin, one of the show's co-curators, in a Media File story from San Francisco magazine later in this issue.

Datelined Washington, DC, the story began: "Textbook history? I believe barely a word of it. It has as much credibility as a Hollywood movie. Like the movies, it's all about formulas: good guys, bad guys win, lose. But, as the news of the day keeps reminding us, every win is a setup for a loss angels and devils change sides all the time.

"Consider the Maya, who flourished in Mexico and other parts of Central America. Their civilization, in what we call its Classical phase, was one of the most advanced in the ancient world. And it had a strong, high run for the better part of a millennium before hitting some kind of wall in the ninth century A.D. Was it famine? War? Exhaustion? We don't know. But in a flash, a world was over.

"It was not, however, entirely lost. When 18th-century travelers stumbled on the remains of Maya cities, they filed glowing reports on the vanished inhabitants.

"The Maya, they decided, were peaceable elitists with the minds of accountants and the souls of cosmologists, fixated on dates and stars. They created an urbane figurative art and a complex, if undecipherable, written language, one with a suave graphic pizazz when carved in stone, a little like today's bubble-style street graffiti. With their handsome faces, festive attire and hand-painted dinnerware, they were the sort of neighbors you would want to have.

"Then more art came to light we started to understand their writing and the grim truth emerged. The Maya were neighbors from hell, incessantly at war, often, self-defeatingly, with each other. Much of their chic couture turned out to be shock-and-awe battle gear. Addicted to power, armed conflict and human sacrifice, they subjected enemy captives to unspeakable torments and practiced ritual self-mutilation. They had a thing for blood. They couldn't get enough of it.

"But is this tabloid-style revision of Maya history any more accurate than the old romantic one? That's one question inspired by 'Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya,' a regal and engrossing exhibition at the National Gallery of Art here. And there is a second question: Is the power of beauty in art necessarily a power for good? To both queries the show gives the only plausible reply: yes no maybe sometimes.

"Maya art was certainly beautiful. You see this the minute you enter the first gallery of this exhibition, where the stucco portrait head of the seventh-century ruler named Pakal is on display. It's gorgeous he is an exotic knockout. With his shapely lips and grave eyes he brings Classical Greek sculpture to mind, while his elongated skull and prominent, Picassoid nose conform to a Maya type of youthful perfection.

"To the Maya, such beauty was literally divine: they associated it with the maize god, the deity whose yearly death and resurrection produced a life-sustaining harvest. So it is little wonder that variations on this physical ideal recur everywhere, carved in stone, painted on plates, molded on ceramic incense burners and incorporated into the aristocratic likenesses that dominate this art.

"We see it, again in the first gallery, on a superb limestone relief of a royal audience, in which a ruler seated on an elevated platform throne looks intently down at another man who balletically genuflects, like a Van Dyck courtier. In almost any culture, these two figures would be models of aristocratic grace, but they are not alone in this scene. Huddled beneath the throne, which closes down on them like a lid, are three bound prisoners, one stoical or stunned, another weeping, a third staring upward, wild-eyed, in panicked suspense, as if hearing his fate being sealed.

"He had every reason to panic, to judge by images in a later section of the show titled 'The Court at War.' Some are scenes of degradation, with captives stripped naked, trussed like animals, crushed underfoot. Others are records of ritualized mortal cruelty. In a mural from the site of Bonampak, seen here in a modern copy, prisoners have their nails torn out or their fingers sliced off others plead for mercy still others await further mutilation and death.

"Bloodletting seems to have been a religious and political imperative for the Maya, and it was often self-inflicted. In a limestone relief from the city of Yaxchilan, a queen named Lady Xok is shown pulling a thorn-studded rope through her tongue as her husband impassively watches. Despite its chilling subject, the sculpture is formally sublime, with a kind of monumental, sado-masochistic delicacy familiar from Italian Renaissance paintings of crucifixions and martyrdoms.

"The queen's left hand, with its neat nails and raised pinky, caresses the barbed rope as if it were the stem of a flower. And an entire history of long vanished Maya textiles is preserved in fantastic carved and incised detail. The queen's robes and her husband's body-fitting armor incorporate layer upon layer of patterned weaving and intricate embroidery, ornamented with tassels, fringes and hand-stitched borders. Once you zero in on all of this, it's hard to see anything else. The thorned rope, the basket of blood-spattered paper at the queen's feet disappear into the larger, abstract pattern.

"This piece, and several others here, were included in an influential earlier exhibition, 'The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art,' organized by the Kimbell Art Museum in Houston in 1986. Mary Ellen Miller, who teaches at Yale, was a curator for that show. And she, along with Kathleen Berrin, a curator at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, is responsible for this exhibition at the National Gallery.

"While the two exhibitions have much in common, they are by no means carbon copies. 'Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya,' with its excellent catalog, not only includes recently found objects, but also reflects information gained from the continuing study of Maya writing over the last 18 years. It also focuses on aspects of the culture little examined before, among them the role of women, meaning, in the strictly hierarchical Maya society, women of the ruling class.

"Although generally subordinate to men, certain women had signficant influence. Lady Xok obviously did: in another frieze from Yaxchila she receives hallucinatory visions that will affect her husband's success in battle. And even less prominent women had active lives, as indicated by vivid little ceramic sculptures from the cemetery island of Jaina. In one, a lady sits, rather loftily, at a loom in another, a woman prepares tortillas. If the idea was to have the rich and famous pass as just plains folks, the tortilla maker, wearing a major turban and gems the size of guavas, spectacularly fails the test.

"Possibly the artist was in on the joke. The Maya had a wicked eye for caricature, and the high and mighty were fair game. This is particularly evident in the fleet, cartoon-strip paintings that adorn the surface of cylindrical cups. An epicene potentate on one cup is straight from Aubrey Beardsley. And a brilliant painting on another cup, of the doddering god of the underworld making moves on a nude young woman who may or may not be his daughter, is like the medieval European theme of "Death and the Maiden" as conceived by R. Crumb.

"The Maya exalted their artists, and this is the work of a star, at once funny, sophisticated, and deeply creepy, with a high-polish decadence familiar from our own contemporary art. Possibly it is this quality, rather than the classical ideal represented by Pakal's portrait, that will prove to be our 21st-century Maya connection. Or maybe the link will lie in the cult of violence that the Maya recorded in stone and paint and we recycle endlessly on film.

"Will historians of the distant future locate our reality in our basest fictions and obsessions, and will they be right or wrong to do so? Do the Maya depictions of blood-letting exaggerate an aberrant streak in an otherwise humane culture, or are they accurate indicators of a society that spent its best energies on battling its way to a height of power only to bleed itself to death?

"Maybe the present is never in a position to make final judgment calls on the past. We can no more know its realities than we can know the thoughts behind Pakal's angelic face. But if we find ourselves responding to the Maya art here with an unresolvable mix of captivation and repulsion, we're probably somewhere in the vicinity of historical truth."

"Artifacts for Art's Sake: An Eclectic Array"

The exhibit of Charles and Valerie Diker's collection of American Indian art was the subject of "Artifacts for Art's Sake: An Eclectic Array" by Grace Glueck in April 23 The New York Times.

"Can a carved and painted Native American mask from the 19th century provide the same aesthetic frisson as, say, a 20th-century Modernist work?" Glueck asks. "By the standards of Charles and Valerie Diker, longtime collectors, yes indeed. In their Manhattan apartment they prove the point by setting out top-flight historical Native American objects with works by Joan Miró, Mark Rothko, Louise Nevelson and others of the Modernist persuasion.

"In their eyes, there is no difference between the aesthetic and emotional pleasures derived from European and American art and that of Native Americans. And they are spreading the word.

"A show of 200 Native American objects from their holdings, 'First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art,' opens tomorrow at the National Museum of the American Indian. It puts forward their view of these objects as art rather than ethnological artifacts. Seen together, they form one of the most beautiful gatherings of Native American art you are likely to find in a private holding.

"The works assembled by the Dikers, native New Yorkers and longtime supporters of the museum (they are co-chairmen of the board of the George Gustav Heye Center, which houses the museum, and Mr. Diker is on the museum's national board), have been selected specifically for their aesthetic appeal, not their utility (although most pieces are functional, too).

"What's more, the exhibition helps to satisfy an important goal of the museum. In the show's catalog, the curators, Bruce Bernstein, assistant director for cultural resources at the museum, and his deputy Gerald McMaster, a Plains Cree, state, 'This exhibition and catalogue mark a cumulative moment in an ongoing shift in which people are coming to enjoy the art rather than to learn about Indians.'

"The show - rife with masks, painted hides, baby carriers, clothing, drawings, baskets, pottery, bags, carved wooden pieces, ceremonial objects and beaded moccasins (there may be one too many pairs of these) - partly reflects the outcome of a two-day seminar in which Native and non-Native artists and scholars assembled at the Dikers' apartment to discuss how 'First American Art' should be presented.

"It was agreed that seven vaguely defined principles of Native aesthetics - 'idea, emotion, intimacy, movement, integrity, vocabulary, composition' - were present in every Native American artwork. (And in most art, it might be added.) So the show is divided into seven sections whose objects supposedly fit at least one of these qualities.

"Fortunately, the categories are more elastic than not, and the arrangement is less rigid than it sounds. Under 'Idea,' for example, defined in part as "the cultural system of beliefs through which artists perceive and interpret the world," we find almost every type of object, from pots to baskets to beadwork to a Tlingit halibut hook of carved wood from 1850 (and, yes, a couple of pairs of beaded moccasins).

"A stunning carrying bag, for example, from the Mississauga Ojibwe culture (around 1800), is made of black-dyed hide adorned with porcupine quills and glass beads, and is fringed at the bottom with hair. It bears on its front three images: Turtle, Thunderbird and a human figure. Its forms express not only the idea that the human world is controlled by spiritual forces, with Thunderbird as the central power, but also the maker's personal and family way of looking at creation itself. For example, the wavy lines running across the side and bottom of the bag symbolize the water that was central to Ojibwe life.

"In this section, too, is a large Acoma water jar of whitish clay (around 1770) made to fetch water from a public well to a family home. Meant to be carried on the head, it was designed to be seen in motion as a woman bore it through the village and climbed down a ladder to enter her home through an opening in the roof. It is embellished on its sides with intricate motifs of plants and birds, which represent a prayer for rain in the high, dry climate of New Mexico's desert.

"Under the rubric 'Movement' - expressed through kinetic qualities of the object itself (like fringes on clothing), and also through the animation of pattern and design - a lively entry is a Kiowa baby carrier (around 1870). A protective case that was carried on a mother's back, this one is made of hide fastened to a wood frame and cotton fabric heavily embroidered with glass beads, predominantly in blue and white. Not only did it offer the child a view from on high, but it was also eminently visible as the mother backpacked from place to place.

"The category 'Emotion' is defined as the viewer's response to objects of beauty. This can come in the form of joy or awe, or the feeling of finding one's place in the cosmos. One of the most striking works in this section is a Cubist-style mask (around 1850) from the Tlingit culture of coastal Alaska and British Columbia. With its deeply modeled planes, large black eyes, wide-stretched mouth painted a lurid red and its inscrutable gaze, it conveys a sense of mystical power.

"Mysticism, too, informs a drawing, 'Medicine Vision' (1882) by Artist A, of the so-called Henderson Ledger, one of many books done by 19th-century Plains warrior-artists, in which they expressed personal thoughts.

"This drawing depicts a shield and a figure on horseback along its top, but on the lower panel, connected to the upper by wavy lines, appears an elongated upside-down man who seems to be in a trancelike state. If turned right side up, he could be on a hill with his arms raised, bow and arrows next to him. The drawing expresses the power of dreams, which were regarded as potent portents for living.

"The Diker collection is very strong on baskets, expressive necessities of Native American life, which appear in virtually every category of the show. One of the most outstanding is a 'Presentation Bowl' (1907), a fat, round, but extraordinarily dignified container woven of willow and redbud by Datsolalee of the Washoe tribe. It has a rhythmic all-over motif of seven triangles on a ziggurat base.

"Another is a smallish lidded jar (around 1910) by Elizabeth Conrad Hickox, a Karuk from northwestern California. Made of shoots, roots and grasses, and elegantly patterned with thick and thin zigzag lines on a tan ground, it has a rightness about it that comes from perfect pitch in matters of design and technique.

"And a third is a tightly woven, almost cylindrical bowl of spruce root and grasses, made by an unknown Tlingit artist (around 1910) and adorned with stylized symbols like an open-mouthed whale, in red and brown on tan. Made for the tourist trade, it still comes off as a deep expression of Tlingit culture.

"One cavil: the exhibition, perhaps because it is so committed to an aesthetic point of view, does not provide enough basic enlightenment for the viewer about the cultures it represents. (And it would have been a nice touch, though perhaps an unrealizable one, to display some of the Dikers' Modernist art in conjunction with this show.)

"What it does do is affirm the distance we've come toward understanding that historic Native American art - particularly object-making - has a worthy aesthetic place in world culture."

'Beadwork' Lets Navajos Tell Own Story.

A book review by David Steinberg from the Sunday, March 14, Albuquerque Journal was called "'Beadwork' Lets Navajos Tell Own Story."

The story began: "Within a span of about 18 years, Ellen K. Moore went from teaching high school English in Massachusetts to writing a book on an obscure aspect of Navajo culture- beadwork.

"That transition began after Moore made her first trip out West in 1985. On that trip, she visited the Navajo reservation and became enamored with the culture.

"And Moore has been back to the rez many times since then. The book, 'Navajo Beadwork, Architectures of Light,' was Moore's master's thesis.

"'I feel this book is important because no one has ever written on it, and beadwork is a new endeavor for Navajos compared to other tribes,' said Moore, the education director of the Roswell Museum and Art Center. 'Apparently Navajos have been doing beadwork, from what I can gather, at least since the 1930s, and possibly earlier.' She has seen two pieces of beadwork, attributed to Navajos, one dated in the 1860s and the other 1902.

"Even more important than the fact that her book covers new territory, Moore said, is the fact that beadwork has never been explored using her technique- letting the beadworkers talk. 'There is a lot about Navajo culture and art that analyze it from a collector's point of view. There are some books that get into the voices of the people. But this is extensive voices of the beadworkers,' Moore said. 'The other thing is it's about how they use color and light to structure their designs....

"A section of the book centers on how Navajos perceive certain combinations of color in terms of nature- dawn, the sunset, the rainbows and clouds.

"The Navajo oral tradition, Moore said, talks about certain colors being associated with dawn and sunset that are 'almost in chromatic order...' As for rainbows, Navajos have created stylized color combinations, such as red, white and blue that are based on them, she said.

"And there are long passages in the book in which Navajos talk about watching the skies, sunsets and cloud layers. 'And "Moore said she met with beadworkers all over (and off) the reservation from Kayenta, Ariz., to Monument Valley and from Tuba City, Ariz., to Shiprock, N. M. 'I interviewed 23 beadworkers in all and had more than 25 Navajo consultants,' she said. 'The (University of Arizona) press says the book is a history. It's an ethnography. I did field work and wrote about it. ... It uses visual arts, linguistics, history, oral tradition, anthropology.'

"The back of the book has a glossary of terms about Navajo culture and a description and drawings of beadworking "Navajo Beadwork, Architectures of Light" by Ellen K. Moore,

Whose Art Is It Anyway?

In the May issue of San Francisco magazine, "Whose Art Is It Anyway?" an important article by Michael Stoll focused on new acquisitions by the San Francisco's de Young Museum for its expanded tribal art department.

The story began: "George Hecksher's sixth-floor gallery space, next door to his penthouse at the pinnacle of Pacific Heights, has views that sweep majestically from Twin Peaks to the ocean to the Golden Gate Bridge. In their own way, the treasures passing through are glorious too - objects from the Philippines and Indonesia, collected on the advice of tribal art dealers and such well-placed friends as Harry S. Parker III, the charismatic director of the M.H. de Young Museum, and Kathleen Berrin, the de Young's nationally known curator of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Hecksher, who is tall and bookish, retired three years ago at the age of 47, after making his fortune as a stockbroker. Now he's a full-time collector and connoisseur. He is passionate about art and the de Young, where he has been a trustee since 1999.

"So it made sense when Hecksher decided, a year ago January, to play matchmaker between the de Young and two sellers, Thomas Murray and Joel Greene, who had assembled impressive collections of Philippine tribal art. The de Young was just beginning its ambitious $200 million reconstruction in Golden Gate Park and was in the market for iconic art from the far corners of the world. Murray, a Mill Valley resident who has placed pieces in over 30 museums, and Greene, a San Francisco art collector and historian, told Hecksher that their respective Philippine troves would full an important niche in the museum's collections and round out its recent prize acquisitions from New Guinea and Indonesia.

"Hecksher spent several hours helping Murray and Greene haul more than 80 weathered-looking tribal statues and other objects to the magnificent gallery space. Together they arranged the treasures - including figurative bowls, charms and ceremonial sculptures (Bul-uls) associated with the rice harvest, some as big as Hecksher himself - across a vast Oriental carpet, using the million-dollar bayscape as a dramatic backdrop. Over the next couple of weeks, Parker and Berrin visited the gallery, tagging the pieces they hoped to purchase and repositioning them on the carpet to see how they looked together. Parker and Berrin had already discussed discounted prices for the two deals - half a million dollars for Murray's, a $30,000-a-year annuity for Greene's. But one crucial step remained.

"One day in late January, Berrin arranged to have an outside expert, Yoshiko Yamamoto, inspect the two collections. As Hecksher's wife, Marie, served salad and homemade bread, Yamamoto, the director of San Francisco State University's Treganza Anthropology Museum, examined the objects and began asking questions. Where did these carvings come from, and who made them? How old were they? And what documentation did the dealers have to prove it? Murray and Greene were not present. But they had told Hecksher that the pieces were modern and 19th-century artifacts made by the Ifugao people in the isolated mountains of the Philippine island of Luzon. Both said they had obtained most of the carvings between 1975 and 1986, before the Ifugao had much contact with tourists.

"After going over the pieces one by one, Yamamoto came to a different assessment. Some of the statues, though undeniably beautiful and possibly worthy of celebration, looked like tourist art, she declared. She could authenticate only three of the eighty. Berrin seemed stunned Greene would later question Yamamoto's objectivity, claiming that the expert is 'antimuseums and anticollecting.'

"But Yamamoto knows a thing or two about the Ifugao. Twenty years before, she had worked in the mountain community, even helping it establish its own museum. In her opinion, a number of the pieces were mass-produced for sale as souvenirs or collectibles, not created individually for ceremonial purposes. No one could say for certain, since the objects' origins - known in the art world as provenance - were documented mainly in field notes and articles each of the two sellers had written themselves and, except in a few cases, not through independent scholarship. 'I am the provenance,' the two vendors said in separate interview.

"But even if all the Philippine sculptures could be proved to be solely for tribal use, Yamamoto went on, the museum faced an ethical dilemma. The Ifugao are a small community and produce only a few ritual statues every year. By purchasing so many artifacts, the de Young would be abetting the obliteration of the material history of an entire people. Did the museum want that hanging over its head? "It's unethical. It's like stealing a Virgin Mary from a church,' said Yamamoto.

"It was a sobering assessment that summed up many of the thorny issues facing the de Young and any other museum bent on building a world-class collection of art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas (known inelegantly as AOA). Upon further reflection, the de Young decided against the purchase. Berrin and Parker concede that Yamamoto's critique was thought-provoking, but they deny it was the deal killer. 'As it turned out, the owners of those collections each wished to keep them intact,' Berrin says. Parker says a more extraordinary opportunity came along: a superb Dogon figure, half male and half female, from Mali, offered by Parisian dealers for more than $1 million. 'Would you rather have one great object or 75 OK objects?' he asks. 'We came down on the side of one truly great piece.' Parker chalks up the Ifugao episode as a routine transaction in the perilous tribal art market. 'There is this kind of Indiana Jones quality to [the marketplace],' he says. 'A lot is being done by people who didn't know what the hell they were doing. We bend over backwards to be as super-responsible as we can possibly be.'

"Whatever the museum's reason for walking away, one thing is certain, says Yamamoto. Parker and Berrin should not have needed a Philippine expert to point out the most obvious problem: the pieces' lack of reliable provenance.

"For most of its 109-year history, the de Young was the blueblood dowager of San Francisco museums: eccentric, provincial and unfocused, more noteworthy for its civic ties than its artistic endeavors. That started changing in the late 1980s, thanks to two earthshaking events: the arrival of Harry Parker as director of the Fine Arts Museums (including the de Young and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park), and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The 7.1 temblor hit Golden Gate Park hard, badly damaging the de Young's Mediterranean-style building. Parker and the trustees agreed that a new building, reflecting San Francisco's sophistication and stature, was necessary.

"The de Young has been dogged by controversy ever since. Over the past ten years, friends and foes alike have argued about the new museum's location (after flirting with a move closer to downtown, it will remain in the park), financing (after losing bond measures in 1996 and 1998, it has raised more than $173 million from the city's philanthropic community), architecture (the ultra-modern design suggests a beached, copper-clad aircraft carrier) and parking garage (litigation with environmentalists is pending). The price tag, originally estimated at $200 million, also turned some stomachs - and that was before the current parking garage battle and other delays pushed costs even higher.

"What has escaped public notice is the de Young's recent shift in curatorial direction. Since its founding, the museum has had a mostly Western orientation, with a strong collection of textiles, some beautiful examples of Early American art (including a number of paintings donated by the Rockefeller family), and a coherent modern art department. In the early 1970s, the de Young began acquiring new AOA pieces - primitive art as the field was condescendingly known then - but these were relegated to three modest rooms near the entrance of the old building. When the de Young reopens in the fall of 2005, all that will change. The AOA collection will take center stage, occupying nearly half of the permanent space and accounting for almost two-thirds of the objects in the museum's collection.

"To achieve this transformation, the museum has been on an acquisitions binge, courting collectors like Hecksher for donations of both art and money. Between them. the de Young and its Europe-focused sibling, the Legion of Honor, are taking in an estimated $10 million to $12 million of art a year, almost a quarter of that earmarked for AOA pieces. Parker's ambitious philosophy is to acquire the kind of blockbuster 'collection icons' that attract millions of visitors a year - and, not incidentally, make irresistible posters, postcards and refrigerator magnets for tourists to take home.

"Supporters argue that when it opens, the de Young will be a destination museum for AOA art, rivaling the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum. 'Visitors are going to have truly extraordinary experiences with this art," Parker exults. 'It will change their lives and transform them. They'll look at life differently after they experience it.' "

"But the de Young's spectacular promise comes with enormous risk. The relatively limited legal trade in AOA art is, for the most part, overshadowed by a $5 million a year black market fueled by swashbuckling smugglers, collectors and dealers who intentionally or unwittingly launder ill-gotten artifacts to anyone willing to turn a blink eye to their origins.

"Collecting AOA is fraught with complex legal and ethical quagmires. Artworks can turn out to have been looted (illegally excavated) or smuggled (unlawfully exported, imported, or both, depending on national laws and international treaties). Fakes - either outright forgeries, or objects produced for the international market by modern artists and never intended for tribal use - are a constant concern. Along with authenticity, the issue of provenance - the ability to document an object's origin and history of ownership - is extremely important, more so to museums than to private collectors.

"Institutions now are under more pressure to research pieces thoroughly - so that scholars will know more, certainly, but also to better protect themselves from having to repatriate works or admit to having accepted fakes. Before acquiring a piece, the most careful museums, notably the Field Museum in Chicago, insist on detailed provenance. This often includes independent scholarship and, for more recently imported pieces, proof of legality from both the United States and the country of origin. (This can mean both import and export papers.) Such cautiousness is taking hold in smaller, more academic museums faster than in big-city institutions that rely on blockbuster art to compete for consumers' cultural dollars. Still, says Stephen Little, director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and a former curator at the Asian Art Museum here, 'There's never been a time when museums have had to be more self-critical and more transparent in their dealings, and it's only going to increase.'

"Even when all the paperwork is in order, ethical issues assert themselves at every turn. In recent decades, the perception has been growing that the antiquities market is a force of evil, encouraging the destruction of archeological sites, the decimation of entire cultures' historical records and the flow of art from poor to rich countries. Critics argue that by actively collecting AOA pieces, institutions like the de Young - whose aims include furthering scholarship and educating the public - are actually undermining both by stoking the market for fake, looted and illegally exported artifacts. Museums today face questions of whether they should be acquiring AOA art, period. 'They're under the spell of the new, new, new,' Dr. Thomas Hoving, the Met's influential former director (and Parker's onetime boss), says of institutions with a voracious acquisitive streak. 'They should spend more time showing us what they have, instead of continuing to gorge themselves on new collections.

"Despite such caveats, the de Young has proceeded at breakneck speed. Though the museum's staff is already stretched to the limits as it readies its existing collections for display next year, Parker and Berrin - with the help of just one junior AOA curator - have excitedly pursued hundreds of new artifacts since 1999. While many are legitimate and aesthetically unmatched, a number of significant pieces have murky paper trails the authenticity of others in under debate. When presented with the opportunity to acquire a great object, the museum sometimes avoids asking probing questions about its history, adopting instead a museum-world version of 'Don't ask, don't tell.' What's more, contrary to its own policy, the de Young has refused to disclose the identities of some of its biggest donors and vendors, relenting only when faced with a legal request under California's public records act and the city's open government law.

"In today's AOA market, relaxing research into provenance may be the only way to bring in pieces of note. Retracing the journey of a looted eighth-century limestone Maya stela may have killed the de Young's recent purchase of what Parker calls 'the most important object the museum has acquired in the last ten to fifteen years.' And challenging the expertise of temperamental New York collector John Friede as he and his wife, Marcia, contemplated donating hundreds of unique tribal artworks from New Guinea might have kept the museum from getting a collection one scholar calls 'way more important' than a similar one at the Met.

"'Harry Parker is impatient, bold, willing to gamble,' says Ellen Werner, one of the de Young's first AOA docents and a staffer in the museum's AOA department for a quarter-century. 'He's willing to play hardball if that's what it takes.'

Undoubtedly, many San Franciscans will be proud to see their museum so respectfully feature these long-ignored masterpieces. And a sizeable number will conclude that it's worth glossing over what they consider to be a niggling obsession with provenance are irritating PC debates about the ethical treatment of Third World cultures.

"Still, the de Young is a public trust that belongs to the city and its people. Operating as a city agency, it gets free rent on the park and taxpayers foot a quarter of its $22 million dollar annual budget. That contribution, however, is dwarfed by the philanthropic largesse of the private donors the museum has been forced to cultivate over the past decade. Left at the altar by city taxpayers in the 1990s, the de Young recruited the city's wealthiest patrons to finance not just a new building but a grand new mission. San Franciscans may have themselves to blame if the museum occasionally acts as if it's none of the public's business how it spends its money or where it gets its art from. To some, though, that attitude is a throwback to an earlier, more imperial era. Says Karen Bruhns, San Francisco State professor of archeology and one of the museum's most vocal critics, 'Their acquisitions policies are sheer 19th century: "If we can take them, we will."' "

"The de Young's decision to rethink its focus goes back five years, when the renowned Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron began submitting sketches of the new building. The space its architects envisioned was so expansive that it practically invited Parker and his board to reconceive the museum's entire mission. But Parker's fascination with AOA art dates back much further, to the early 1960s, when he was at Harvard, studying painting with a myopic Euro-centricity of the time. Michael C. Rockefeller, who was in the class ahead of him, returned from a trip to New Guinea with a boatload of tribal artifacts, alluring art forms none of his less-traveled peers had ever seen. Parker recalls, 'It was very exciting.'

"But not exciting enough to derail him from his chosen specialty, 15th century Dutch painting, which he studied on a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Utrecht, then in grad school at New York University. He joined the Met while still at NYU, eventually becoming the vice director of education under Hoving. In the 1970s, the museum acquired the Rockefeller collection and for the first time put AOA art on a par with other genres. Parker's enthusiasm was piqued anew when he moved to Texas in 1974 to head the Dallas Museum of Art and grew infatuated with the artistic riches of pre-Columbian Mexico. He revitalized that institution by greatly expanding its collection of AOA art, which he found more moving, primal and 'close to the soul' than most European art - not to mention eminently more affordable.

"While in Dallas, Parker also got a taste of the risks endemic to the field. Just before he was hired away to the de Young in 1987, he was one of three American museum directors burned by one of the greatest AOA forgery scandals ever. A magazine proved that a master faker in Mexico had made the three "ancient" clay sculptures that Parker had heralded as among the most significant in the museum's collection. Though he issued a heartfelt mea culpa at the time, the incident did little to dampen his passion for AOA. 'Harry has never been shy around controversy,' says John A. Lane, the current director in Dallas and former head of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 'He seems to thrive on it.'

"In the Bay Area, Parker, a gregarious man of 64 with a perma-smile, quickly made friends in the AOA community of collectors and dealers. When the opportunity presented itself, he pushed for an expansion of non-Western art by convening a Tribal Art Study Committee. The well-connected group met a few times a year, identifying potential gifts and purchases and reviewing ambitious floor plans. Their enthusiasm was infectious. 'If you're interested in spending the public's tax dollars well,' says Dave DeRoche, owner of an invitation-only tribal art business in Piedmont, 'you get more bang for your buck with art from the Third World.' Randolph R. Scott, a de Young trustee who is African American, also argued that AOA could help the museum attract a younger, more diverse audience - a theory supported by visitor polls and surveys. 'We need to build a museum for the future,' adds Dede Wilsey, president of the Board of Trustees. 'If you look at the Bay Area's demographics, you discover that Africa, Oceania and the Americas - that's our community. Nobody else in the area is showing this stuff.'

Dealers in AOA art, of whom there are more than two dozen in the Bay Area, were eager to jump on board. Many had sold and donated pieces to the museum in the past. Some saw any official connection with de Young donors and decision makers as a business opportunity. (In 2002, this relationship grew even cozier when the de Young began sponsoring the annual opening-night gala at the San Francisco Tribal and Textile Arts show, where many of the world's most successful dealers have booths.) As a gesture of good will, committee member (and would-be Ifugao vendor ) Thomas Murray says he even sold one piece - an eight-foot Indonesian statue of a woman, nicknamed 'Big Mama' - to Hecksher at a below-market price. Hecksher says he expects to donate the wooden sculpture to the museum eventually.

"Such tight-knit relationships between collectors, dealers and museums are common throughout the art world, and so is a climate of trust. That may not be a problem if you're dealing, say, in Dutch masters it's extremely unlikely these days that a Rembrandt will turn out to be smuggled or fake. But in the murky field of AOA art, being too trusting has special risks.

"The de Youngs' acquisitions policy, written in 1983, details that the museum should be 'reasonably certain' that a potential acquisition is lawful and should consider provenance information in making this determination. Parker calls Berrin - who's contributed to six publications, including the catalog of a Maya show she put together that is now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. - 'a cautious and responsible curator.' Describing her detective work, Berrin says, 'Before we bring up artwork before our board's acquisitions committee, the first question out of my mouth is "When did it leave the country of origin and what do you have to prove that?"' But she doesn't have a formula or checklist for researching provenance because, she says, 'every piece is different.'

"Such an ad hoc approach leaves Berrin relying heavily on her relationships with individual donors and dealers. Consider the de Young's stance when it accepted a major donation of New Guinea antiquities from John Friede, 65, an heir to the Annenberg fortune and a retired biotech executive who is a distinguished connoisseur in the field, as is his wife, Marcia.

The Friede collection is remarkable - said to rival the Rockefeller holdings in the Met. John Friede spoke to more than 20 museums about a donation, looking for an institution that would accept his specifications, which included displaying the pieces as a group and crediting him and his wife. 'We did discuss it with the Met, but their gallery is called the Rockefeller, and that is not my name,' he says. The de Young, however, offered to custom-build a gallery to showcase the entire collection, and it invited Friede to join the Board of Trustees in 2002. When it came to verifying the authenticity, origins and ownership history of the individual pieces, the de Young was also unusually deferential: Accept now, answer questions later. Says Friede, 'Since I am so marinated in this stuff that I taste like it, the de Young decided that instead of making their own decisions about it, they just talk to me about what should be done.'

"While most of the pieces have impressive provenance, the potential for fakes is ever-present. Private collectors tend to be less picky than museums about details of provenance and can make mistakes. Says Michael Hamson, a dealer of New Guinea art in Palos Verdes Estates who was a graduate student when he first met Friede, 'He has enough experience collecting that he doesn't pay attention to provenance. He's got the eye, and once you develop a good eye for the masterpiece, it's like X-ray vision.' Robert Welsch, a visiting professor of anthropology at Dartmouth University, who has been supported for years in his research by Friede, agrees. But he is also cautious. 'This is a hobby for John. He's good at it compared with his peers, but he's not a scholar.'

"For her part, Berrin says the collector is 'tremendously knowledgeable and an expert. I have rarely seen a collector more concerned with the quality of a collection.' What's more, she herself has had training in New Guinea art, and before agreeing to Friede's terms, examined many of the pieces. The de Young also called in outside experts, including Welsch, to review and correct he provenance of each piece.

"But that will take money and manpower, both of which are in short supply. City budget cuts and the need to raise funds for the building have strained the de Young's finances. Two years ago, in the Fine Arts Museums' reaccreditation report, Henry Adams, professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University and the former curator of American paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art, took the museums to task for letting positions go unfilled.

"Museum professionals express dismay when told that just two people - Berrin and her assistant curator - are responsible for two-thirds of the objects in the de Young. The consensus is that in a museum of the de Young's size, budget and national stature, Africa, Oceania and the Americas should each have a curator. That's especially true in times of heavy acquisition.

"To be fair, when a piece is outside her expertise, Berrin calls freely on independent experts to help her sort things out. Then it's up to her to assess the risks. Last year, for instance, she was considering a mysterious ceremonial drinking cup, or kero, from the extinct Huari culture in coastal Peru. No one could say when or where the cup was excavated, only that is was remarkable for a wood piece to have been preserved in the ground for more than a millennium. The provenance didn't make things much clearer. An American businessman whom Berrin wouldn't name picked the kero up in Peru 'in the late 1960s,' she says, and gave it to a family member in 1978. Berrin showed the piece around. Carbon-dating verified its age, and five experts said it looked authentic. But not Dr. Anita G. Cook, an anthropologist at Catholic University of America in Washington. D. C. The iconography was too unusual, Cook said, plus 'I happen to know that an extremely skilled wood-carver and artisan in Moquenga [Peru] has reproduced and perhaps created new wooden keros for sale to tourists.' Despite the caution, Berrin advised going ahead. The kero will be featured in the new de Young.

"Of all the pieces coming to the de Young in recent years, none better exemplifies the museum's aggressive collecting philosophy than the seven-foot Maya stela purchased in 1999. As the museum concedes, it was looted from an ancient site and acquired under uncertain circumstances by a dealer whose identity the museum sought to conceal.

"The de Yong's pursuit of the stela dates from 1997, when philanthropist Phyllis Wattis made a $10 million grant. Parker began pondering how to spend the windfall. Within a year, the rare stela came to his attention, although he couldn't recall how he and John Stokes, the New York-based owner and dealer, became acquainted. 'It's like, did you meet your wife, or did she meet you?' Parker jokes.

"Stokes, 73, sells out of his century-old brick and slate cottage on the five-acre Bradley Estate, overlooking the lower Hudson River. The pieces in his living room, acquired during his lifetime travels, represent a better survey of pre-Columbian art than the collections of many museums in Mesoamerica. Stokes went to southern Mexico in the 1950s to attend graduate school and ended up collecting and selling artifacts. He loved the expatriate life, and his trade became lucrative. He eventually married the daughter of a wealthy Spaniard, transitioned into antiquities, and amassed a collection of Olmec and Maya artifacts worth millions. Even after his family moved back to New York, he, his wife and their three daughters would take to the road for many months at a time, driving across the United States and into Mexico in an Oldsmobile convertible. Back then, Stokes says, the border was free and easy, and he would return with all sorts of treasures he would declare as gifts - without a hassle.

"In private, often after a few glasses of rum, Stokes used to tell visitors on long walks across his gated property stories about his adventures in collecting in Mexico. He complains the international treaties eventually made it hard to collect. Which is a shame, he says, because the Mexicans don't know how to treat their art. Says one acquaintance, who asked not to be identified, 'John feels that he's saving these pieces - because in Cancun and such places, they bulldoze these things over, and the only ones who care about them are the Indians, the smugglers and the art collectors.'

Parker and Berrin knew just by looking at the limestone relief in a walk-in safe in Stokes's basement that it was one of the greatest surviving Maya tableaux. The intricately carved stela depicts the body of a noblewoman. She is entwined with a 'vision serpent,' out of whose gaping mouth emerges the deity K'awil. Art historians later confirmed: There was nothing quite like it anywhere.

"That, however, was the problem. The surviving hieroglyphs reveal the date of the dedication, AD 761, but not the site of origin. Epigraphers deciphered that the noblewoman was from Tikal or Dos Pilas, both ancient cities in Guatemala. But the iconography of the vision serpent is nearly always found in the Yaxchilan area in Mexico, across the Usumacinta River from Guatemala. Besides the looters, no one can say for sure what country the piece is from (Belize, which also contains important Maya sites, in another possibility). The only near certainty is that the stela, which is broken into nearly a dozen fragments, was stolen from a temple complex deep in the jungle. Experts consulted by the de Young concluded that looters used chicle saws to pry it from its backing for easy transport.

"There was another unanswered question: When, and how, did it get into the United States? According to Parker, Stokes, as proof of legality, offered a notarized piece of paper stating the stela was in a storage warehouse in the border town of El Paso, Texas, on March 24, 1971. Coincidentally or otherwise, that was the day a bilateral treaty prohibiting the export of ancient architectural materials from Mexico took effect. Parker says Stokes provided no export papers or U. S. Customs declaration, nor anything to address legal issues that might arise with Guatemala under that country's 1947 Cultural Patrimony law.

"Decades after he got his hands on the piece, Stokes was offering it to a major museum for $1.5 million in cash. Parker knew the stela would be a crowd-pleaser. But what would his colleagues in the museum community - not to mention the rest of the world - think?

"In the Third World, where the legacy of Western colonialism is palpable and billions of dollars' worth of ancient art is stolen every year, it remains an uphill battle to reclaim what is lost, especially if there is no proof of its origins. Museum acquisition policies, say the critics, should set a strict example to stem the trade. Not everyone, however, agrees with that assessment. Many dealers, for example, believe they perform an essential service by salvaging the world's art and selling it to museums and aficionados with the dedication and resources to preserve it. Some scholars agree. For his part, Parker argues that it's acceptable - noble, actually - to showcase important pieces of another country's cultural patrimony. 'Art traveling the world can do more to communicate what's interesting and vital,' he says. 'The idea that the only ethical place for an art object to be is in its place of origin is very provincial.'

"In his pursuit of the stela, one of Parker's first stops was Stanford legal scholar John Henry Merryman, who sees the obsession with provenance as another misguided attempt by excessively nationalistic forces to undo past injustices. 'The archeological establishment, including in the U. S., has embarked on a jihad against collectors, dealers and museums,' he says. 'They use terms like rape. They get very emotional about this." Rather, he blames the current 'excessive restrictions on export' for fueling the black market. Though the de Young won't release Merryman's written opinion, legally, the stela's ambiguous origin was a tactical advantage, since no country could make a solid enough claim of ownership to sue for its repatriation.

"Even so, the de Young decided to consult with both Mexico and Guatemala. Parker made two trips to Guatemala in 1998 to discuss the possible purchase with officials and experts there, including Frederico Fahsen, a former Guatemalan ambassador to the United States as well and as epigrapher who studies ancient Mayan. Fahsen was not happy about the quandary the Guatemalan government found itself in.

"He felt the purchase was unethical. But to his deep regret, he told Parker Guatemala couldn't legally stop it. He acknowledged that he could not be certain from the photographs he was provided that the stela came from his country. Still, if it was Guatemalan and exported without a permit after 1947, then it had to be illegal.

Six years later, Fahsen still has misgivings. 'If we had known the precise origin, we would have reclaimed it. Honestly, they shouldn't have [bought] it, because it makes it easy for looters to loot pieces and have a market for them. Suppose a draft of the U. S. Constitution were looted from Washington and transported to Guatemala? Wouldn't the U. S. lose part of its history? That's the tragedy.' Still, Fahsen has maintained cordial relations with the museum. At Berrin's request, he even wrote a paper accompanying the Maya show at the National. But he declined to write about the stela doing so would provide tacit approval for the acquisition.

"Berrin, meanwhile, called on Dr. Joaquin Garcia Barcena, president of the National Anthropology Council of Mexico, who also recognized his country's weak legal standing. 'We would prefer it to be here, but they have assured us it will be perfectly handled and acknowledged as cultural patrimony, and displayed so scholars and the public can have access to it," Barcena says now. 'Given the ambiguity, it was what we call in Mexico the least-bad solution.'

"Emily Sano, director of San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, points to Parker's trips as an example of responsible patronage. 'Going to the country of origin and investigating, Harry did what I consider to be the best thing,' she says, although she cautions that she doesn't know the full circumstances surrounding his due diligence.

"Some other knowledgeable Bay Area art world figures, however, expressed qualms. Back in San Francisco, Parker got a call from Berrin's predecessor as AOA curator, Tom Seligman, who has become director of Stanford University's Cantor Art Center. Seligman had received a worried call from Wattis, who was unsure that the purchase was ethical. Seligman agreed with the Guatemalans.

"Pillaging ancient sites devastates the archeological record as effectively as ripping the pages out of a history book. Responsible museums, Seligman argued, have a duty to stem the destruction by not buying pieces that were excavated illegally, even if they were imported legally. 'They could have taken the money and rented a stela from Mexico or Guatemala and helped those countries, and not contributed to the marketplace of looted material,' Seligman says now. 'I wondered out loud whether they should have gotten involved with a piece with questionable provenance.' Throughout Latin America, he knew, the market pressure has led to the destruction of nearly all archeological sites. (Reports Stanford archeologist John Rick: 'I walk into prehistoric cemeteries on the coast of Peru many square kilometers in size and see strewn about the fragmented remains, broken pottery, textiles ripped apart.')

"Parker decided to bring his prize home anyway. On January 14, 1999, after it had been approved by the acquisitions committee, he made his pitch to the trustees, recounting his negotiations, consultations, and travels - without detailing any objections. The board approved the deal unanimously and without discussion.

"In the years after San Francisco Chronicle publisher Michael Harry de Young opened the Memorial Museum in 1895, it was little more than an attic filled with curios - a hodgepodge of bird eggs, Napoleonic clocks, pistols, keys, and other mildly interesting collectibles, many left over from the California Midwinter International Exposition. But even then, the de Young recognized its potential as a public institution, with free admission and an educational agenda. He predicted that its acquisitions 'will one day make the collection a priceless one and the pride of the golden state.'

"The stela goes a long way toward fulfilling de Young's vision. Yet, just months before the museum reopens with the Maya masterpiece as its centerpiece, Parker remains reluctant to discuss its history. When asked by San Francisco about Stokes, Parker treated his identity as a state secret. 'How did you get his name?' he queried.

"Pressed on this issue at a subsequent interview, Parker said he hope that Stokes would not answer questions about the stela. He also says he never asked Stokes where he got the piece. 'I knew it met my basic criteria for being purchasable,' Parker said. 'I did not want to pry into those areas too much. You may think that was dishonest. I think it was prudent.'

"Reached by phone, Stokes countered that he told the de Young where he got the stela and whom he bought it from. (Parker says he doesn't recall getting that information.) 'I bought it in this country - it was a completely legal object,' Stokes claimed. While he would not disclose the original vendor's name to San Francisco, Stokes readily admitted that he didn't ask where the object had come from or how it got to the United States either. 'I learned a long time ago that you're not going to get a straight answer.'

"Such reluctance to inquire into a piece's history is endemic to the field, and often motivated by fear of being accused of acting unethically or getting tangled in embarrassing international disputes. Laws restricting export of cultural works include the UNESCO accords, which were drafted in 1970 and set a new standard for museums, prompting many to rewrite their policies to reject blatant pillage as a standard operating procedure.

"Without true consensus, though, different standards abound. The International Council of Museums, which predates UNESCO, has the strictest guidelines, advising against acquisition if full provenance history is lacking or if there is reasonable cause to suspect looting. The looser guidelines of the American Association of Museums, to which the de Young's own 1983 code of ethics hews closely, discourages illicit trade and says collection should be 'unencumbered' and 'lawfully held,' a reference to the UNESCO accords and bilateral treaties.

"Emboldened by UNESCO, many nations - and more recently, survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and their descendants - have hired lawyers to scour auction houses for treasures with suspicious provenance and file suit for their repatriation. "Museums are more scared,' Hoving says. 'They know it's an issue that can get in the press and embarrass them.' In the famed case of the Elgin Marbles, Greece for decades has claimed ownership of the stone friezes and sculptures from the Parthenon. It designed a museum space for them and called for their return home in time for the Athens Olympics this summer. But the British Museum refuses, saying that as a 'universal museum,' it has a duty to protect the common heritage of humanity. Other institutions, however, have done the opposite. Last year Emory University in Atlanta returned a mummy to Egypt when scholars concluded that it was likely that of the Pharaoh Ramses I, though technically Egypt had no claim on the remains.

"Parker says the de Young is trying to steer a middle course as it shops, 'asking the country of origin if they would object to you buying a work from their culture.' Still, since Parker arrived, the museum has usually gotten what it wants. Seventeen years ago, early in his tenure, the de Young did return most of a set of looted murals from the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Mexico, which had been bequeathed by a San Francisco collector's estate. But the museum wasn't ready to release any of it until Mexico requested formal repatriation, and, in the end, the de Young kept the most important 30 percent of the murals. Berrin told the Wall Street Journal in 1993, 'you could have put my body on a train track I wouldn't have let those pieces go.'

"Could the de Young end up visiting similar terrain? If any of the newly acquired pieces with questionable provenance are viewed as cultural patrimony, claims for repatriation will undoubtedly follow. Already, some New Guineans have made claims on objects similar to those in the Friede collection. 'There are no any good examples of some of those materials in this country,' says Simon Boraituk, deputy director of the Papua, New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery in the country's capital, Port Moresby. Parker says the de Young would be happy to discuss 'exchanges or loans' sometime in the future. But Friede says he won't allow the collection to be repatriated. 'If New Guinea wishes to have it, it will be taken from the museum and returned to my family.'

Sometime next year, after the de Young reopens, Parker will retire to the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, giving the trustees a chance to hire a new top manager. Board president Wilsey, who is raising the bulk of the funds for the new building, has also talked of resigning, though her term does not end until 2007. She has backed up Parker's initial refusal to release some information about the provenance of objects in the de Young's collection, even though it violates the museum's own disclosure policy. Wilsey feels those guidelines are outdated, and that the de Young's 'unspoken rule' of respecting collectors' anonymity is the right approach. She expresses 'absolute confidence' in Parker and his staff. Indeed, during Wilsey's six-year tenure, the full board has never questioned Parker or Berrin on the propriety of any acquisition.

"Is such a hands-off approach the right one, in light of the museum's aggressive AOA acquisitions? What happens when a dealer or donor is culturally insensitive, is sloppy, or has a motive to obscure a piece's provenance? Wilsey says the trustees have other things to worry about - like raising money for the new building, fending off neighborhood attempts to stop the parking garage, and trying to avoid major layoffs.

"With new blood and a new museum, there is opportunity for a fresh approach. Extra curators are expensive. And it's hard to rally donors to write fat checks for personnel - not very sexy. (Friede, whose collection remains unresearched, is a significant exception he says he's looking for a New Guinea-specific curator whom he will endow.)

"Meanwhile, the museum's acquisition, authentication and provenance policies are gathering cobwebs, unrevised since 1983 and no longer on a par with those of a number of other leading museums. The Getty Museum, for example, completely revamped its acquisition standards in 1995, requiring every piece to have detailed provenance and come from an 'established collection that is known to the world.' It also declared it would put more of its energies toward international conservation, education, and research projects. Then, four years later, it returned a looted fifth-century BC drinking cup to Italy.

"Will the de Young revisit its standards? Will it do a better job of following the ones already in place? Will it open files to scholars and the public?

"On Parker's recommendation, George Hecksher recently negotiated to buy a small clutch of antique Indonesian tribal carvings, with the understanding that Hecksher and his wife would donate all 11 of the pieces to the de Young. Bay Area dealer James Willis, a one-time member of the de Young's AOA committee, represented the owners, Dr. Robert and Helen Kuhn of Los Angeles, collectors of Oceanic art better known for their African holdings.

"Despite their connoisseurship, the Kuhn's, like many of the best collectors, have been duped before. In 1961, the couple sold ostensibly ancient West African terra-cotta figurines at a celebrated Sotheby's auction. A freelance journalist for Archeology magazine traveling in Mali managed to track down the real artist, a man named Amadou, who showed how he fabricated two-thirds of one figurine and sabotaged radioactive dating methods.

"The Indonesian collection, though, was fairly well documented in a 1985 scholarly book. So for four years, while the donations go through, Hecksher has had in his home an elaborately carved door, statues of abstracted people, and architectural shapes resembling mythological dragons. All make wonderful decorations. The dark brown patina of the pieces goes well with the maroon walls. Ask him about the details, however, and the collector throws up his hands with a chuckle, seemingly unaware of the potential for trouble sitting on his mantel.

"'How old is this material? Hecksher asks, inspecting a staff that he was told came from northern Sumatra. 'Everyone says 19th century. The material could be much older. That could be 15th century. I don't know. It's very difficult to date. There was no written record. It's word-of-mouth transmission down through generations. Who knows what will be discovered over the years?' "

Rebuttal Letters from Two Tribal Art Dealers and Response from the Editor

In the July issue of San Francisco magazine, letters from two of the tribal art dealers mentioned in the article were published. The two letters follow:

"During discussions with Michael Stoll for "Whose Art is This Anyway?", I reviewed the sequence of events regarding the de Young's possible acquisition of my collection, among other issues. We covered a great deal of territory, but none of my perspective appeared in the story.

"In 1968, I conceived and curated at the de Young the first all-Dogon exhibition at any major American museum. In more than three dozen trips to the Philippines between 1974 and 1982, my goals in collecting indigenous tribal sculpture always remained clear: to acquire only truly authentic, representative and aesthetically exciting examples of an art form largely unknown to the outside world, and ultimately to transfer the collection to a museum or educational institution. I was able to rescue wonderful objects often on their way to destruction due to religious changes.

"At the beginning, I was one of the few engaged in this collecting, but by the early eighties, European art dealers had descended on the Philippines, causing the prices to escalate. And fakes started entering the marketplace. Time for me to call a halt, so my Philippine collection remains today very much what it was over 20 years ago.

"To rebut some the more egregious errors in your article: It says that Harry Parker and Kathleen Berrin discussed discounted prices for the pieces the de Young wanted from my collection and Thomas Murray's: 'A $30,000-a-year annuity for Greene's.' This statement is not entirely accurate and was taken out of context. The de Young and I had discussed a variety of possibilities for my proposed contribution of part or all of my collection. We had talked about the possibility of my receiving an annuity in exchange for my gift, but no specific agreement had been reached.

"Your article says I told George Hecksher the pieces were modern and 19th century. I have never use the word 'modern' in relation to any object in the collection. The objects conservatively range from early 20th century to possibly several centuries old. In describing tribal artifacts, 'modern' is a pejorative and connotes that the objects have been created and used in a nontribal manner.

In December, 2002, I was asked to loan parts of my collection for display at Hecksher's apartment, with the possibility that the de Young would acquire some of it. It was with the proviso that only the objects were wanted: no labels or identifying tags. Had I known that an anthropologist would be called in, I would have insisted that my documentation be present for professional examination.

"Your article says Yoshiko Yamamoto could authenticate only three of the eighty objects. The inference drawn that therefore the other objects were not authentic and probably 'tourist' pieces is without foundation. During the preceding months, Berrin had been to my home twice. She had examined the collection, and I had discussed with her not only where and how the pieces were collected but also that there were pertinent supporting field notes as well as notes from scholars and tribal art historians who had examined the collection over the years.

"The Bay Area has lost an invaluable asset. The de Young may pay lip service to cultural diversity in the arts, but that's apparently as far as it goes. Ironically, discussions are now underway for possible repatriation of the collection to its homeland. Unlike the powers that be at the de Young, the Philippines has long recognized the collection's importance."

Joel Greene, San Francisco

......................

Second Letter from a Tribal Art Dealer

"'Whose Art is This Anyway?' raised through-provoking issues concerning the acquisition of ethnographic art. Regrettably, an opportunity was lost to present a more nuanced view on this topic, one that recognizes that there are legitimate, ethical, and respectful approaches to collecting traditional art. Further, the article disparaged my name and collection of Philippine tribal art. Setting the record straight on a personal level requires setting it straight on the bigger picture to give readers an understanding of buying and selling of traditional art with integrity.

"To know how it was possible for me to form this collection, it is necessary to understand how traditional objects come on the market. Pressure from the outside world has had a tremendous impact on indigenous cultural values around the world. These dynamics were at work in the Mountain Province of Luzon, northern Philippines, in 1980 when I arrived for the first of many visits. Traditional culture was already in a state of flux formerly sacred objects were being sold as works of art.

"The erosion of traditional belief systems was primarily brought about by the adoption of Christianity. The missionaries' message ordained that rice gods and their ceremonies constituted pagan idolatry, a sin that condemned the soul to the pains of hellfire - a threat taken very seriously by the tribal people. In addition, new schools brought such worthy advances as modern education, promoting a rational system based on science. Rice grew because of chlorophyll, not because of special rituals. New clinics were established that practiced Western medicine their effectiveness undermined the belief in the magic of the shaman. Further, the region's former autonomy was compromised as political and military power was imposed by the ruling elite from distant cities, thus undermining the authority of village chiefs. Finally, the arrival of tourism and television created new desires in local people for commodities outside of the traditional culture.

"Pressure from priests to get rid of charms, figures, and so forth coincided with the advance of a cash economy. Rather than destroy the pieces, indigenous people recognized their artifacts as commodities that could be marketed. The money realized might then be used to build a modern house, educate a child, or purchase water buffalos. I felt compelled (even at a tremendous financial hardship, as a young anthropology major fresh out of school) to collect and document the art and culture of the Ifugao, Bontoc, and other tribes, as few others were interested, most especially Filipinos.

"The majority of my art objects were field-collected in the mountains of Luzon in 1981 to 1983, where I took very precise notes as to provenance and regional sub-styles. Some of my greatest pieces I bought at the same time from the Philippine family of the famous anthropologist H. Otley Beyer, who arrived in the Mountain Province circa 1906. Two subsequent trips, in 1984 and 1986, produced fewer pieces for the collection, but more follow-up research. By then I had turned my attention to early European and American collections as sources in an effort to increase the range and depth of my collection. All of this was included in documentation provided to the museum and present at Hechsher's apartment on the day of the curator's visit.

"When Greene and I described ourselves as 'the provenance,' it was simply a statement that we were the primary collectors of record since the objects came to the West. Our collections have been kept intact for 25 years. How is this less significant than your sidebar asserting 'no risk' for a Natak container and a Lega figure because of their provenance from two well-known collections in Los Angeles - with no reference to their original owners in Sumatra or Zaire?

"My collection was formed using the highest ethical standards. The buying and selling of these objects were, and remain, perfectly legal in both the Philippines and the United States. There are no export restrictions. The suggestion that our collections can in any way be compared to a Virgin Mary stolen from a church is inflammatory rhetoric. Closer to the truth is that the Church robbed the Ifugao of their beliefs far be it for us to judge their conversion. None of these objects were stolen. All pieces were paid for. After 24 years spent studying the material culture of the Philippines, I am recognized as an expert on the subject for the purpose of authenticating and appraising gifts to museums, the IRS also grants me that status.

"The article's statement that Yamamoto could authenticate only three out of the eighty-plus pieces for our collections, art objects widely acknowledged by connoisseurs to be the finest in the United States, points more to her inexperience than her expertise. Consider also the brevity of her visit to view the pieces, several hours at most, which meant she had only a few minutes to look at each figure. From that she can make such a sweeping pronouncement? It would not be difficult to imagine after reading Stoll's article that she and the other anthropologists quoted have developed a new strategy in their war on the collecting of material culture. By declaring all tribal art either 'fake' or 'stolen,' they try to dampen the market for it without regard to either the complexity of the issues or whom they damage with their cavalier remarks.

"Art functions as diplomacy. Tribal art in particular promotes awareness of other cultures and chronicles a way of life and traditions that have by now largely disappeared. Stoll's parochial article shortchanges the achievements of those of us who would act with integrity and knowledge to preserve, exhibit, and publish non-Western art as an essential part of world heritage."

Thomas Murray, Mill Valley

.................................................................................................

Response from the Editor

The magazine's editor responds: "'Whose Art is This Anyway' did not mean to imply that the bulk of Greene's and Murray's collections were inauthentic. Rather, the point was that the de Young Museum , whose acquisition practices were the focus of the article, hadn't independently researched the provenance of the collections, which many museums now insist on doing before purchasing tribal art."

Discovery Pushes Back Date of 'Classic' Maya

"Discovery Pushes Back Date of 'Classic' Maya" was the headline for John Noble Wilford's May 5 story in The New York Times.

"A discovery of monumental carved masks and elaborate jade ritual objects in 2,000-year-old ruins of a city in Guatemala is raising serious questions about the chronology of the enigmatic Mayan civilization," Wilford's story began. "In many respects, the city appeared to be ahead of its time. "The leader of excavations there, Dr. Francisco Estrada-Belli of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said yesterday that the city, Cival, appeared to have been one of the earliest and largest in what is generally regarded as the preclassic period. But it has been found to have all the hallmarks of a classic Mayan city: kings, complex iconography, grand palaces, polychrome ceramics and writing.

"'It's pretty clear that "preclassic" is a misnomer,' Dr. Estrada-Belli said in a telephone interview. But he added, 'It may be too late to change the names' in the established framework of Maya history.

"Archaeologists have long dated the start of the classic Mayan civilization at A.D. 250, which had seemed to be the time of the earliest written inscriptions in city plazas and temples. The period ended around 900 with the mysterious collapse of the largest Mayan cities in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and parts of Mexico. The postclassic period of general decline continued until the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century.

"The preclassic period may have begun as early as 2000 B.C. Cival reached its prime about 150 B.C. and was abandoned shortly before A.D. 100.

"The new findings from Cival were announced by the National Geographic Society, which was a supporter of the research. Besides the two huge stucco masks, the discoveries included 120 pieces of polished jade, a ceremonial center that spanned a half mile and an inscribed stone slab dating to 300 B.C.

"It is perhaps the earliest such monument ever found in the Mayan lowlands, Dr. Estrada-Belli said.

"Other archaeologists not involved in the research said they were amazed by the size of the city but not surprised to learn that the preclassic Maya were capable of such advanced architecture, art and other classic-type culture.

"Previous discoveries had already overturned the former model of the preclassic Maya as a culture of simple farming villages, Dr. David Webster, a Pennsylvania State University archaeologist, wrote in his book 'The Fall of the Ancient Maya' (Thames & Hudson, 2002).

"The ruins of El Mirador, also in Guatemala, have revealed a preclassic city with a highly developed culture as early as 500 B.C., a pyramid that rivaled in size those of Egypt and a population that may have reached 100,000. Cival may have had 10,000 inhabitants at its peak.

"Two years ago a Harvard researcher, Dr. William Saturno, discovered a 1,900-year-old mural at San Bartolo, Guatemala, that experts hailed as a masterpiece and as fine as any wall painting ever found in Mayan ruins.

"Dr. Ian Graham, a Harvard archaeologist who specializes in Maya inscriptions, said he accepted the interpretation of the Cival discovery because it seemed to corroborate other evidence of an unexpected flowering of preclassic culture.

"'Extraordinary things are emerging from preclassic sites,' he said. 'They are simply mind-boggling.'

"Dr. Graham said that when he mapped the Cival site two decades ago, the jungle concealed all but some outlines of the stone buildings and pyramids that once stood there. The central plaza appeared to have been less than half the size of what has now been uncovered.

"The Harvard team did not linger for extensive excavations.

"Dr. Estrada-Belli's painstaking investigation began paying off with spectacular results a year ago. He was inspecting a dank tunnel in the main pyramid. Reaching into a fissure in the wall, his hand met a piece of carved stucco. Later, he saw before him the mask of an anthropomorphic face, 15 feet by 9 feet, with snake fangs in its squared mouth.

"'The mask's preservation is astounding,' Dr. Estrada-Belli said in a statement about the discoveries.

"Last week, the archaeologist said, a second mask, apparently identical, was excavated from the same pyramid. The second mask is made of carved stone overlaid with thick plaster. Its eyes appear to be adorned with corn husks, suggesting the Mayan maize deity.

"A study of ceramics associated with the mask, Dr. Estrada-Belli said, indicated that the two artifacts were part of the backdrop for elaborate rituals in about 150 B.C., plus or minus 100 years.

"Other evidence suggested that Cival was occupied as early as 600 B.C. and that the broad plaza was being used for important ceremonies and ritual offerings by 500 B.C. The central axis of the main buildings and the plaza is oriented to sunrise at the equinox, presumably for solar rituals associated with the agricultural cycle.

"The remains of a hastily erected defensive wall around the city attest to Cival's probable fate. Overwhelmed by an invading enemy, the city was abandoned, apparently for good."

Explorers Still Seek El Dorado in the Mountains of Peru

"Explorers Still Seek El Dorado in the Mountains of Peru" was the headline for Juan Forero's May 13 New York Times story.

Datelined Cuzco, Peru, the story began, "It was just a sparkle on the horizon, where the sun hit what appeared to be a flat plain on an otherwise steep, untamed mountain in the Peruvian Andes. But Peter Frost, a British-born explorer and mountain guide, surmised that the perch would have made a perfect ceremonial platform for Inca rulers.

"So Mr. Frost and the adventure hikers he was leading slogged through heavy jungle growth and at 13,000 feet uncovered remnants of the Inca civilization that flourished here. They found looted tombs, a circular building foundation and the stonework of an aqueduct.

"The discovery in 1999 of Qoriwayrachina (pronounced co-ree-why-rah-CHEE-nah) was instantly hailed as a major find. It evoked the romantic image of the swashbuckling explorer unearthing a Lost City, an image embodied by Hiram Bingham, the American who in 1911 made the greatest Inca discovery of them all, Machu Picchu.

"In the 21st century it would seem that the remote, rugged mountains around Cuzco would have given up all of their secrets. But this region of southern Peru is still chock full of ruins, from settlements to cobblestone roads to water channels.

"Recent carbon dating at Caral, north of Lima, has shown that an advanced civilization existed in Peru nearly 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptian pyramids were being constructed.

"Mummies, well preserved, have been found at 20,000 feet or unearthed at construction sites around Lima. The Lord of Sipían tomb, considered one of the richest pre-Columbian sites ever found, was discovered in 1987, firing the ambitions of those hoping to make similar spectacular finds.

"'Peru has one of the oldest continuous civilizations in the history of the planet,' Mr. Frost explained. 'That amounts to an awful lot of culture buried under the ground, or under vegetation.'

"It is in the mountains just northwest of here - the Vilcabamba range - that perhaps holds the most tantalizing, spectacular ruins.

"Vilcabamba, which includes such sites as Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo and Inca Wasi, was the center of a great empire that 500 years ago stretched from modern-day Colombia to Chile. The Spaniards snuffed it all out, wiping out the last Inca holdouts in 1572 and then promptly abandoning much of the region.

"That left it to men like Mr. Bingham, a Yale University historian who in one remarkable year discovered Machu Picchu and several other important settlements. But he did not find them all. He even forgot to take proper map bearings of one, leaving much of Vilcabamba open to modern-day explorers.

"'I've run across foundations of buildings, foundations of roads, water channels, probably dozens of them,' Mr. Frost said in an interview in his Cuzco home.

"The finds are significant because while modern Peru is synonymous with the Inca, attracting hundreds of thousands of tourists who each year traipse across Inca ruins, archaeologists actually know very little about their civilization.

"'About 90 percent has not been investigated,' said Ives B'ejar, a Peruvian archaeologist. 'There are maybe 1,000 books on Machu Picchu, but only five or six are really scientific.'

"Johan Reinhard, 60, an archaeologist and anthropologist who holds the title of explorer in residence at National Geographic, is a proponent of vigorous exploration combined with serious scientific research.

"Known for his discovery of frozen mummies at 22,000 feet in Argentina, Mr. Reinhard says it is important to find and catalog sites in Peru before they are looted or destroyed. 'If you don't do it now, some of these things will be gone, and they'll be gone forever,' he said.

"To many like Mr. Frost and Mr. Reinhard, the powerful hold of discovering ruins swallowed by jungle is as strong today as it was early last century when Mr. Bingham laced his boots and embarked on what he called his 'unbelievable dream.'

"'It's the Indiana Jones fantasy,' said Scott Gorsuch, 52, whose sharp eye led to the discovery of Qoriwayrachina, with Mr. Frost. "It's really not more complicated than that - the search for El Dorado, this idea that there are lost cities out there waiting to be found.'

"The lure of fame and fortune in Peru has brought explorers of all kinds, including Gene Savoy, a larger-than-life American with a handlebar mustache who started a church that revolves around him and his discoveries. Still, he is credited with finding Espíritu Pampa, the last refuge of the Incas, and Gran Vilaya, which holds thousands of stone buildings.

"Others are much less flamboyant, like Vincent Lee, recognized for quietly but systematically making important discoveries year after year. Many, like Mr. Gorsuch, who came to explore Peru on a lark and has been back 11 times since Qoriwayrachina was discovered, had professions completely alien to archaeology. He was a psychologist.

"But exploring is not all about adventure. Serious explorers carefully read the old Spanish chronicles, accounts of Inca history as relayed to the conquistadors, pore over topographical maps and charts and interview local residents, who often lead them to sites. The work also requires raising money to finance expeditions.

"'Anyone can blunder around in a jungle,' wrote Hugh Thompson, a British explorer, in his recent book about exploring for Inca ruins, 'The White Rock.'

"Indeed, the annals of Peruvian exploration are littered by failures. One explorer, Robert Nichols, was killed with two Frenchmen by Indians in his search for the fabled Paititi three decades ago. Those more fortunate go home with hands and wallets empty.

"Mr. Frost, 58, who has a wiry build and a mop of white hair, is not an archaeologist. But through his work as a tour guide, photographer and author of the popular travel book, 'Exploring Cuzco,' he has dedicated much of the last 30 years to learning everything he can about the ancient highlanders.

"'Some people like the thrill of finding something and moving on to something else,' he said. 'But you want to do something useful with it.'

"In two lengthy expeditions to Qoriwayrachina in 2001 and 2002, financed by the National Geographic Society, a team led by Mr. Frost found a sort of blue-collar settlement spread across more than 16 square miles. They found the ruins of 200 structures and storehouses, an intricately engineered aqueduct, colorful pottery and tombs.

"The people who once lived there toiled in mines or cultivated diverse crops at various altitudes. The explorers believe that Qoriwayrachina may have been used to supply a more important Inca center, Choquequirau, but much remains unknown.

"Mr. Frost is now trying to raise money for future expeditions to Qoriwayrachina, but he is already dreaming of other finds.

"'I know of two sites that are sort of undiscovered, that I'd like to discover,' he said, explaining with a wry smile that he cannot reveal their locations. 'It's not a big thing, but I feel it's wise not to broadcast intentions.' "

Humans are the Only Animals that Wear Hats

ATADA members Tom Murray, Andres Moraga and Mac Grimmer were all quoted in Wendy Moonan's May 14 New York Times Antiques column, titled Proclaiming Your Status from the Top." The story was about the New York Tribal and Textile Arts Show and the Sotheby's May 14 tribal art sale.

"'Humans are the only animals that wear hats,' said Thomas Murray, a dealer who specializes in artifacts from Indonesia and island cultures. 'In fact, wearing hats is what makes us human. It's a fundamental commonality to our human-ness.'

"In tribal societies, headdresses rule. It's not the clothes but the hat that often makes a man (or woman). The headdress is a universal adornment. 'It's the great unifier,' Mr. Murray said.

"This could be called headdress week in New York. Mr. Murray, the owner of Asiatica Ethnographica in Mill Valley, Calif., has organized an exhibition of more than 50 of them, from Africa, Asia and the Americas, at the New York International Tribal and Textile Arts Show at the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street.

"The fair, which is open to the public tomorrow through Monday, is timed to coincide with Sotheby's auction today of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art.

"'Positioned atop the highest, most conspicuous feature of the human body, headgear is a billboard, broadcasting information about its wearer and his or her place in the world,' Diane Mott, textiles curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, writes in a catalog essay.

"Explaining that her museum is actively building a collection of headdresses, Ms. Mott illustrates her essay with recent acquisitions: an embroidered felt dervish hat from Iran a man's feather headdress from the Amazon Basin in Brazil a ritual Sarawak hat in rattan from western Borneo a woman's ceremonial headdress in yak hair from Ladakh, a region of eastern Kashmir and a beaded cotton crown from the Yoruba people in Nigeria.

"'Headdresses are important signifiers,' Mr. Murray said. 'All over the world now there are two kinds of people: those who want to be modern and take up Western values, and those who are trying to keep traditional culture alive. Happily, old headdresses are still available and affordable.'

"A headdress is typically made of materials at hand: vegetation (leaves, grasses, seeds, cane, bark and vines) animal parts (feathers, bone, hair, claws, hides, teeth, horns, shells and pearls) and minerals (metals, precious and semiprecious stones).

"Lot 55 in Sotheby's sale today is a carved wooden Mambila mask from Nigeria, intricately shaped into a zoomorphic form, with an elongated, pierced snout, wildly protruding cylindrical eyes and two large swept-back horns. 'Though there is a Cubistic quality to this, it represents an antelope,' said Susan Kloman, a specialist in African art at Sotheby's. 'The antelope was the bringer of knowledge about how to till the soil someone of rank would have worn this during harvest ceremonies.'

"Lot 54 is a wooden sculpture of a voluptuous woman who supports a leopard, teeth bared, on her head. 'One can surmise it has to do with fertility,' Ms. Kloman said. She pointed out the scarification on the woman's face, seen in ridges carved on the forehead and cheeks, as a symbol of rank and prestige.

"Lot 29 at Sotheby's sale is a Bamana culture headdress from Mali. The wooden base is covered with a mélange of elements: pig fur, vegetal materials, menacing horns and mud. Cowrie shells form the eyes. Metal chains define the spine.

"'The idea is to have an encrusted surface, a layering of materials, to build up the power of the mask,' Ms. Kloman said. 'This mask is meant to scare new initiates in the Komo male secret society.'

Ms. Mott writes, "To nature's inventory, humans have added objects of their own contrivance - mirrors, buttons, sequins, coins, thimbles, bells, tassels, cloth, beads, zippers and amulets are just a few.' She did not mention chains.

"Headdresses mark ritual or ceremonial occasions. 'They also figure in important life transitions, such as initiation, marriage and death,' Ms. Mott writes.

"Some are worn daily some are worn only for special occasions. Some are intended for one-time use, others to be preserved and handed down to the next generation."

The Heard Museum Pulls 'Culturally Sensitive' Material from Exhibit

"The Heard Museum has removed a group of artifacts deemed 'culturally sensitive' from its current show, 'The Collecting Passions of Dennis and Janis Lyon.'

"The items include Hohokam and pre-Pueblo jewelry and historic pots. In all, 59 items in three display cases were returned to collectors Dennis and Janis Lyon. The items may be funerary relics and their display is therefore considered offensive to some Tohono O'odham tribal members. The Tohono O'odham are generally believed to be the descendants of the Hohokam civilization that prospered in central Arizona from 200 B.C. to A.D. 1450.

"The exhibit opened May 1 and two weeks later, the museum was notified that there were culturally sensitive items in the show.

"'I called the staff together,' said Heard Museum director Frank Goodyear, 'and we concluded the material may have come from burial sites. In respect to our Native American peers, we said, let's take it off exhibition.'

There was no definitive conclusion whether the material was or was not from burial sites, Goodyear said, 'but we wanted to respect the feelings of Native Americans.'

"The exhibit closed for two days and reopened May 19.

"The Heard Museum was instrumental in the development of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed in Congress in 1990, and has been in the forefront of the issue of cultural sensitivity.

"'The museum has been sensitive to what NAGPRA stands for and has been open with tribes since the law was passed," said Gloria Lomahaftewa, the museum's assistant to the director of Native American relations."

N. M. Dealer Indicted on Embezzlement Charge

"N. M. Art Dealer Indicted," read the Albuquerque Journal's headline on June 3. "Charge is embezzlement," read the sub-headline of the story by John Arnold.

Datelined Santa Fe, the story read: "A local art dealer has been indicted on a charge that he defrauded former U. S. Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt. Joshua Baer - who pleaded guilty two years ago to illegally selling Native American religious objects - faces one count of embezzlement.

"Levitt consigned three antique Navajo blankets to Baer, who sold the artifacts in 2000 and 2001, Santa Fe Deputy Police Chief Eric Johnson said, citing a police report. Baer failed to pay Levitt his share of the sale, Johnson said.

"The blankets, listed in the police report as 'Chief's Blanket,' 'Shield' and 'Child's Blanket,' were worth about $200,000, Johnson added.

"A grand jury indicted Baer on May 27.

"Baer told the Journal he was aware he was under investigation, but did not know he had been indicted. Baer said he had been working with his creditors to pay what he owes.

"Baer said the Arthur Levitt he is accused of defrauding is the former SEC chairman appointed by President Clinton in 1993. Levitt left the SEC in 2001 as the longest serving chairman of the commission. Baer said the two had done business before and were friends.

"The criminal indictment is not Baer's only art-related legal problem at the moment.

"A civil lawsuit filed in U. S. District Court accused Baer of breaching consignment agreements for three Navaho weavings worth $825,000.

"In September, 2002, Baer pleaded guilty to nine counts of a 17-count indictment accusing him of selling migratory bird and eagle feathers and Native American religious objects in violation of federal law.

"U. S. District Judge John Edwards Conway sentenced Baer to three years' probation and 100 hours community service.

Spring_2004

From Norman Hurst: A Lost Artifact Rediscovered, January 22, 2004

"For more than a century," the story begins, "the Peabody Museum at Harvard University has owned a small paper label that says, in a spindly, old-fashioned script, 'Indian Necklace made of the claws of the Grizzly Bear - Presented by Capt. Lewis and Clark.' Whether the museum actually owned the necklace itself was uncertain until last month, when it turned up under the wrong name and among the wrong artifacts. The point of a museum is not only to preserve remarkable objects but also to find them at will. Yet somehow the fact that this necklace was lost for so long makes it seem all the more remarkable - as if it had come fresh from the hands of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

"This necklace carries with it, of course, the power of association, the unrecorded occasion when a Native American placed it into the hands of Lewis or Clark some 200 years ago. The necklace would have had a considerably greater power to them than it does to us, for they knew the grizzly bear firsthand. They had killed grizzlies on the way westward, presenting the claws of one bear to the Nez Percé, and they had come to admire the courage and ferocity of those creatures, which were once common across the West. 'These bear being so hard to die rather intimidates us,' Lewis wrote. 'I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had rather fight two Indians than one bear.'

"But the 38 claws in this necklace had been gathered by Indians, who would perhaps rather have fought one bear than two white men. Each claw was once covered in red pigment and is bound with rawhide to a fur foundation. We know nothing about the men who killed the bears or the women who made the necklace or the animal who gave its fur for it or the bears who surrendered their claws or even where the red pigment came from. But all those lives are interwoven in this one artifact, a diplomatic gift bestowed upon Lewis and Clark at a time when such gestures were about to be overridden by history. Until last month, only six of the Indian objects Lewis and Clark brought back with them existed, all of them at the Peabody. Now there is a seventh."

André Breton headdress returned to tribe

"André Breton headdress returned to tribe the artist's daughter has handed it back to the Kwakwaka'wakws," was the headline for Emma Beatty's story in The Art Newspaper, January 2004:

"Aube Breton-Elléouët, daughter of the Surrealist poet and artist André Breton, has returned a tribal headdress from her father's collection to the Kwakwaka'wakws, a people indigenous to Western Canada. They have rechristened Ms Breton-Elléouët 'U'Ma' or 'She who gives back,' the story began.

"The headdress was seized from the Kwakwaka'wakws under a Canadian law of 1884 which outlawed traditional indigenous potlatch ceremonies with their ritual dances, songs and costumes because it was believed that banning them would pave the way for indigenous assimilation into white society.

"In 1922 Canadian authorities arrested 45 Kwakwaka'wakws for dancing and their tribal masks were confiscated and then sold to a New York dealer. One of the headdresses seized in the raid was eventually bought by André Breton.

"His extensive collection, which included paintings, photographs, books and works of art, was auctioned off by Ms Breton-Elléouët in a series of sales through the French auction house Calmels-Cohen in April. The sales made over £30 million.

"The Kwakwaka'wakw headdress was to be included in this sale but Ms Breton-Elléouët showed it to French anthropologist Marie Mauze before the auction. Dr Mauze recognised the object as a work of Kwakwaka'wakw craftsmanship.

"Since potlatch ceremonies were relegalised in 1950, the Kwakwaka'wakws have been trying to trace artefacts seized from them by the Canadian authorities and have been campaigning for their return. After Ms Breton-Elléouët withdrew the headdress from the sale, she decided to return it to the Kwakwaka'wakws in person. In September she traveled to Alert Bay, an island off the Canadian coast near Vancouver, with her daughter to hand the object back to its makers' descendents.

"In a special ceremony the headdress was received by Bill Cranmer, chief of the 'Namgis, one of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes, and son of the man who organised the ill-fated potlatch of 1922 when the headdress was originally confiscated.

"The headdress, known as a yaxwiwe, is in the form of a raven carved out of wood sitting above a hawk-like figure. An ermine cape was once connected to it to flow down the wearer's back, but not much of that remains. 'The headdress was always on my father's desk, facing his chair,' said Ms Breton-Elléouët. Indeed Breton mentioned the Kwakwaka'wakw headdress in an article he wrote for the magazine Neuf in 1950, in which he described the 'power of art that animates these masks.'

"The headdress will now be housed in the museum of the U'mista Cultural Society in Alert Bay (Umista translates as 'the place of lost things').

"Other items claimed by the Kwakwaka'wakws include a mask with a crest that opens up to reveal a human head in the reserve collection of the British Museum in London. Institutions that have returned items to the tribe include the National Museum of Man in Ottawa and the Royal Ontario Museum

US Customs art squad reassigned to war on terror The agents who had investigated stolen art will now work on cases related to terrorism and fraud.

Also from the January issue of The Art Newspaper, David D'Arcy wrote a story with the headline, "US Customs art squad reassigned to war on terror The agents who had investigated stolen art will now work on cases related to terrorism and fraud."

Datelined New York, the story read, "The US Customs Art Fraud Investigation Center set up in 2000 to track and seize stolen art has been subsumed into the Department of Homeland Security. This was set up by Congress in response to the attacks of 11 September which destroyed US Customs headquarters at the Trade Center. The agents who had concentrated exclusively on tracking and seizing smuggled art have now been redeployed to investigate cases related to the war on terrorism and financial fraud.

"Although cases of stolen art will still be investigated by Customs agents, no employees will work exclusively on art investigations. The re-organisation has not been publicised, but government officials confirmed the move to The Art Newspaper at a ceremony in late November at the offices of the newly named Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"The occasion was the return of a 14th-century Hebrew manuscript looted during the Nazi era from the Jewish Library of Vienna. The work, valued at around $68,000, had been traced to an auctioneer in New York and has now been returned to representatives of the Jewish Community of Vienna.

"Speaking to The Art Newspaper, ICE Acting Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia said, that following 11 September, 'we made some adjustments given the new priorities that came our way.' These 'adjustments'include redirecting the department's efforts to focus on 'financial transactions and terrorism.' The Department of Homeland Security now encompasses 22 former agencies, employs 170,000 and its current annual budget is $36.1 billion.

"The Art Fraud Investigation Center was set up just three years ago to bolster Customs investigations of art theft. At its launch, the-then Commissioner of the US Customs Service, Raymond Kelly, said that stolen art 'is a big business that is getting bigger' and warned that the US would 'not be a safe haven for stolen art.' He went on to say: 'Countries realise more than ever before that antiquities have been stolen from them. They want them back. This unit is now in one place so it will be easier for us to deal with foreign governments.' Commissioner Kelly had announced that the squad would have an annual budget of between $800,000 to $900,000. Half a dozen agents were said to be working exclusively on art cases.

"In 2000, agents working for the seized a 5th-century BC solid gold platter worth $1.2 million from the collection of the New York financier Michael Steinhardt. Italy had said that the platter had been illicitly excavated from a site in Sicily and had called for its restitution. It was handed over to Italian authorities by Commissioner Kelly and is now on view in a museum in Palermo. At the time, Commissioner Kelly estimated that the value of works seized by Customs art specialists was around $30 million, 80% of which were recovered in New York

"Last year, Customs agents seized a baroque altar allegedly smuggled from Peru which a dealer in Santa Fe was offering for sale. Agents also returned to Honduras Mayan objects which were for sale in Ohio.

"Speaking to The Art Newspaper, ICE New York Special Agent-in-Charge Martin Ficke, said, that because of the looting of museums in Iraq, ICE has more active art cases than ever before. He insisted that the consolidation of resources and databases will make retrained agents more efficient. 'We work these leads to exhaustion. Nothing goes uninvestigated. It is not a situation where we get a lead here in a particular area and say "we're not going to do it," because we're investigating counter-terrorism or money or narcotics. We don't have a specific unit now that investigates art theft, but we've got a lot of expertise in the office.'

"Others question whether the dedication to investigating cases of stolen or smuggled art will survive the ICE age. According to one insider, agents working for the Art Fraud Investigation Center 'were in active communication' with various foreign governments that protect their cultural property. 'They were looking for cases and developing them. Now that will no longer happen unless something falls on agents' toes and they have to respond to it, that won't take place. Legislation is just words on paper unless somebody puts some teeth in it and that's what Customs did. Considering the amount of money that has been made available for national security since 11 September, I do not think that a few Customs people in New York dealing with art would have made a big dent on that budget.'

"One critic of a conspiratorial bent hinted that aggressive investigators aggravated enough influential collectors and dealers in New York for them to lobby privately for the redeployment of the art squad: 'When they finally saw the opportunity with the Bush administration's new war on terror, they made a few phone calls to people in high places and took care of it.' The Art Newspaper has no evidence of such lobbying.

"The Art Newspaper made several phone calls to ICE headquarters in Manhattan seeking information about art related investigations. More often than not, the staffers in the press department who 'came from Immigration' and referred to pre-ICE Customs as 'Legacy Customs' knew nothing about ongoing art cases.

"Lawyers involved in art recovery hope the ICE learning process will be quick. 'Customs was instrumental in numerous recoveries over the last five years, and I just hope they find a way to re-energise their efforts, which the acting commissioner said they were going to reconsider,' said Thomas Kline, a lawyer who has represented various international institutions that have sought the restitution of works of art from the US.

"'Art theft is the only crime for which the victim has to become the policeman,' said Mr Kline. 'There's only so much in terms of resources that the victims can marshal. Having law enforcement involved in recovering stolen moveable objects is very important.' "

Jean Rouch, an Ethnologist and Filmmaker, Dies at 86

In the February 20, 2004 issue of The New York Times, an obituary written by Alan Riding was headlined, "Jean Rouch, an Ethnologist and Filmmaker, Dies at 86."

Datelined Paris, the obituary began: "Jean Rouch, a French explorer, ethnologist and film director who played a significant role in forging the cinéma-vérité style, died on Wednesday night in a car crash in the west central African nation of Niger, the French Embassy there said. He was 86.

"Mr. Rouch (pronounced roosh) was attending a film festival in Niger, where he first worked as a civil engineer more than 60 years ago. Reuters reported from Niamey, the Niger capital, that Mr. Rouch's wife, Jocylene Lamothe, the Niger filmmaker Moustapha Alassane and a Niger actor, Damouré Zika, were also injured in the accident.

"With a movie career that stretched back more than half a century and included about 120 films, Mr. Rouch had a special place in French cinema. His best-known films, "The Mad Masters" and "I, a Black," made in the 1950s, presented not only a new ethnographic view of Africa to French audiences, but also demonstrated to new wave directors like Jean-Luc Godard what could be done with a hand-held camera.

"Although he also ran the Cinémathèque Française in Paris from 1987 to 1991, Africa was always Mr. Rouch's first love. African myths and rituals were the focus of many of his documentaries, but he also occasionally turned them into fictional material for feature films.

"Born in Paris into a family of scientists (his father directed the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco), he studied humanities and civil engineering. Drafted into the French Army in 1939, he avoided capture when France fell in June 1940. The next year he was sent to Niger, then a French colony, to work as an engineer.

"During the 1940s he explored Niger, traveling down the Niger River by canoe and crossing the country on horseback. At one moment in those years he witnessed what he described as a 'marvelous and horrible' funeral ceremony. 'I told myself,' he later recounted, 'this can't be described in words, it has to be filmed.' In 1947, using a borrowed camera, he made his first documentary, 'In the Country of the Black Magicians.'

"Although much of his life's work focused on Africa, he also made documentaries and feature films about France, including 'Chronicle of a Summer' (1960), with the sociologist Edgar Morin, and the 1965 film 'Paris Vu Par . . . ,' made with several new wave directors, including Mr. Godard, Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer.

"While in recent years his movies went largely unnoticed by a larger public, Mr. Rouch remained prolific, making about a half dozen movies in the 1990s. Recently he campaigned publicly against plans to disperse the ethnographic works at the Musée de l'Homme to boost the collection of a new museum of primitive art, to be called the Musée du Quai Branly, created on orders of President Jacques Chirac."

Loot: Along the Antiquities Trail: one artifact's journey to New York reveals the inner motivations and mechanics of the worldwide market for looted antiquities.

In a February 23 front page story that is the first in a series called "Loot: Along the Antiquities Trail," The New York Times focuses on how "one artifact's journey to New York reveals the inner motivations and mechanics of the worldwide market for looted antiquities." The story, by Barry Meier and Martin Gottleib, returns to the Frederick Schultz case (see past Newsletters), this time relating the damning details. The headline read, "An Illicit Journey Out of Egypt, Only a Few Questions Asked."

"The past is everywhere in the Upper Egypt city of Akhmim," the story began, "and mining it is a constant occupation. At a government archaeological site, workers haul bucketfuls of soil and sand from a vast crease in the earth, gradually revealing a mammoth temple from the reign of Ramses II. But unsanctioned digging goes on all over Akhmim - at an ancient cemetery riddled with holes left by looters at farms and construction sites inside homes where residents, sometimes inspired by the divinations of fortune tellers, hunt for treasure beneath dirt floors.

"A decade ago, laborers excavating a building site in Akhmim hit a four-foot-high, tombstone-shaped slab of limestone incised with hieroglyphics and the image of Osiris, god of the lower world. The ancient Egyptians offered this kind of monument, known as a stele, as a tribute to a god or a dead relative.

"Under Egyptian law, the stele should have been turned over to the government, a recovered shard of the national patrimony. Instead, something considerably more commonplace happened. It became an outlaw. Quietly, it passed into the global antiquities market. Five years later, cleansed of its illicit origins, it emerged in New York as a rich man's prize, in the foyer of a Fifth Avenue apartment.

"Journeys like this one are traced by countless artifacts from Akhmims all over the world. Typically they begin in silence and end in silence, few questions asked.

"But the stele from Akhmim has given up its secrets. Two years ago, it was seized by federal agents in New York as part of a court case. The records from that case, together with dozens of interviews and documents gathered on three continents, provide that rarest of commodities in the antiquities trade: a detailed account of the smuggling, marketing and selling of a piece of loot.

"That narrative reveals the inner motivations and mechanics of the flourishing worldwide market for high-end antiquities. And while much of the material flowing through that market is unassailably clean, the stele's progress shows how seamlessly looted objects can blend in, whether dealers are aware of it or not.

"'People think that there is an illicit market and a legitimate market,' said Ricardo J. Elia, associate professor of archaeology at Boston University and a frequent critic of the antiquities industry. 'In fact, it is the same.'

"The trade in looted antiquities is, of course, as old as antiquity. Its precise dimensions are necessarily unknown, though Interpol, the international police organization, says looting is probably vastly underreported, since so many countries lack the resources to safeguard historical sites.

"Even so, what is clear is that the decade of the stele's passage was one of enormous changes in the antiquities world, all accompanied by heightened legal scrutiny and the ratcheting up of a long and bitter debate about the ethics of the trade.

"Political upheaval opened up new sources of loot all over the globe. Economic globalization and the rise of the Internet helped speed those goods to market.

"To critics of the industry - largely archaeologists and some foreign governments - the market's voracious demand for fresh objects is responsible for the continuing destruction of sites.

"But dealers say they have become increasingly vigilant in recent years, far more conscientious about operating within the antiquities laws of countries like Egypt. They say they make every effort to sell only legitimate artifacts.

"'I think 15 years ago, people took a more relaxed view of things,' said James Ede, a London-based dealer and head of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art. 'The feeling was that these were stupid laws, they were laws in other countries, they didn't apply to us.' Today, he said, that feeling has completely changed.

"Still, the stele's journey out of Egypt illuminates the powerful, persistent tension between efforts to stanch the trade in loot and the raw instincts of the marketplace.

"Across more than 5,000 miles, five owners and two snookered would-be owners, every person involved with the stele propelled it onward. At any moment, the story could have been brought up short. But no one seemed eager to ask or answer a couple of simple questions: Where did this object come from? How did it arrive at my door?

"One dealer who handled the stele, Bernard Blondeel, has an explanation for that. 'Perhaps if you ask too many questions,' he said, 'too many things will disappear.'

Akhmim: Fertile Ground

"Late on a steamy June night in 1994, a man named Ali Farag, his eyes blindfolded by a towel, sat in a car traveling disorienting circles through the earthen alleyways of Akhmim. When the car stopped, the towel was removed, and Mr. Farag found himself at a construction site on the edge of town.

"It was there that the Akhmim stele had been unearthed several months before, along with several small statues, a painted wooden sarcophagus and three smaller steles. An interesting find, but hardly a surprising one in Akhmim.

"Modern Akhmim, a weaving and trading center 350 miles south of Cairo, has the look of a Nileside boomtown, chockablock with construction cranes and apartment towers hastily built for people flowing in from the countryside. But beneath the surface lies an archaeological layer cake, rich with the leavings of the past - the early Islamic layer upon the Roman layer upon the Greek layer upon the monuments and everyday objects of the city the ancient Egyptians named for the fertility god Min.

"This ancient wealth - together with Akhmim's poverty, rapid development and easy corruption - has made the city a fertile source of fresh goods for smugglers.

"Places like this can be found all over the world. Some countries, like Egypt, Italy and Greece, have been feeding the market for centuries. Others - like China, Afghanistan and the old East bloc lands - have risen to prominence just in recent years.

"In Akhmim, as elsewhere, the trade begins with the impoverished amateurs.

"On a recent night, Mamdouh al-Qaoud, a blacksmith, walked a visitor toward Al Salamouni mountain, a long limestone ridge pockmarked with the violated tombs of a sprawling ancient necropolis.

"'Everyone digs for antiquities in the mountains,' Mr. Qaoud said. 'They feel it is their birthright to inherit these antiquities from their great ancestors."'

"The authorities tend to view the idea of cultural patrimony a little differently. Under a law passed in 1983, all newly discovered artifacts are property of the state, export prohibited.

"'Poor people who are digging in their houses get arrested all the time,' said Makhlouf Abdel Karim Khalifa, a butcher. 'But those who are really in the business of smuggling are careful and protected.'

"Mr. Farag, a thin man with a thick mustache, was very much in the business, according to the Egyptian authorities. For much of the 1990s, they say, he and his brothers ran one of Egypt's biggest smuggling rings out of a curio shop-turned-jewelry emporium housed in a 19th-century Euro-Islamic building in downtown Cairo.

"Farmers stopped by on market days to sell artifacts from their fields. Village leaders and looters called in tips about new discoveries. None of it would have worked without the complicity of government officials bribed to look the other way and even provide artifacts, court records show.

"The Farags also offered builders a profitable way around a big problem: what to do with a significant archaeological find that could lead the authorities to shut down a job. Still, when Ali Farag arrived in Akhmim in June of 1994, the builders knew they had to handle him with care, according to a journal kept by one of his close associates. If he knew the precise site of the strike, he could bargain down the price by threatening to expose the builders to the police.

"But with the men gathered at the site and Mr. Farag's blindfold lifted, negotiations began. Mr. Farag was shown the hidden artifacts, along with blueprints of the project and where each piece had been found, according to the journal. The builders wanted $70,000 for everything.

"Just how much they settled for is not clear, but soon after Mr. Farag left Akhmim, the deal was done.

Cairo: The Smuggler

"Every local smuggler needs a bridge to the West. For Ali Farag, it was an Englishman named Jonathan Tokeley-Parry.

"For several years, Mr. Tokeley-Parry had been a regular visitor to an apartment in a Cairo suburb where the Farags hid their latest finds. Nearly a decade later, he still recalls the smell of the place, that deep, dank scent of fresh-dug earth.

"'It was the smell of tombs and ancient places,' he said in a recent interview. 'It was like being in a suspended bubble in time.'

"Mr. Tokeley-Parry says he met Mr. Farag in 1988, at the old Windsor Hotel in Cairo. Mr. Tokeley-Parry, movie-star handsome and Cambridge-educated, then in his late 30s, had gone to Egypt as an adviser to a Danish dealer. The arrangement, he admits, was compromised by his own naïveté. On his advice, the dealer had just spent $20,000 on a collection of amulets that quickly proved counterfeit.

"If Mr. Farag found his bridge, Mr. Tokeley-Parry found a partner who, piece by piece, taught him the finer points of the trade. Smuggling, it turned out, was a comfortable fit for his unusual mix of inclinations and skills. He was already well known as a talented restorer of antiquities. His self-image, though, was rather more ornate: He saw himself as a throwback to the days when aristocratic adventurers roamed the exotic East claiming treasures at will.

"Of Egypt he later wrote, 'You feel that anything might turn up at any moment, as you'd feel an approaching train.'

"Smugglers use a variety of ruses to move their goods. Mr. Tokeley-Parry used one particularly suited to his restorer's skills: He disguised artifacts as tourist junk and walked them through customs.

"To take a massive head of Pharaoh Amenhotep III out of Egypt, for example, he coated it with a removable adhesive called Paraloid B72, then covered it with a plaster carapace in the shape of a souvenir bust. He painted the piece in garish reds and golds and completed the illusion by mounting it on a base inscribed with the name of a Cairo hotel that sold curios.

"Ali Farag could not be located for this article. But Mr. Tokeley-Parry says that by the summer of 1994, their six-year partnership had produced a formidable record: more than 60 trips between Egypt and England, more than 2,000 objects smuggled without incident.

"As he walked into the Farags' Cairo hideaway and saw the stele propped against a wall, Mr. Tokeley-Parry was struck by its size and its crisp condition. But he also worried that it might be about as genuine as that $20,000 heap of amulets.

"Sitting on the dusty floor, he recalls, he gazed at the stele almost trancelike, seeing if it felt right, if any details seemed out of place. Trolling the raw umber surface, he saw a typical memorial scene - four human figures approaching Osiris with a table of offerings, and above them two piercing eyes representing the sun god Ra. Among the eight columns of hieroglyphics, Mr. Tokeley-Parry recognized the cartouche - a characteristic oblong symbol - of Psamtik I, a pharaoh of the 26th Dynasty, whose reign began around 660 B.C. Objects from that period, a time of great artistic flowering, were much prized by collectors.

"Next, he slowly moved a photographer's loupe across the limestone face, inspecting the way it had aged, and the minuscule markings left by the carver. Ancient copper tools, he says, leave softer incisions than modern steel chisels.

"The Akhmim stele bore the gratifying signature of copper.

Oxford: The Expert

"Soon after the stele was discovered, Dr. Jaromir Malek, director of the Griffith Institute of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, received a photograph of it in the mail, along with a note from a man named Kim Pegler, who identified himself as a lawyer. He was hoping, he said, to obtain some expert information for a client.

"'I am extremely grateful to you for your help and hope to show the pieces and meet you in the near future,' Mr. Pegler wrote.

"The Griffith is the world's foremost archive of Egyptology, and like many scholarly institutions, it is generous with its expertise. That generosity, though, can sometimes be abused by smugglers, which was exactly what was going on with the stele.

"Having established its authenticity, Mr. Tokeley-Parry says, he knew that the stele might have a different problem: Perhaps it had not been unearthed by accident but had actually been stolen from a known archaeological site or a storeroom. If so, a record might exist - a photograph or description in a journal - that would identify it and kill its market value.

"One defense was to dupe an expert like Dr. Malek into researching the piece. Hence the letter from Mr. Pegler, who was not a lawyer but a friend of Mr. Tokeley-Parry, according to court documents.

"Dr. Malek translated the stele's hieroglyphics, which told of an important government official charged with keeping track of horse populations, who had commissioned the stele as a family memorial.

"'The owner of the stela is Pasenenkhons, "Scribe of the Horse,"' Dr. Malek wrote to Mr. Pegler.

"Dr. Malek also consulted the institute's compendium of all known Egyptian monuments - known in the trade as 'Porter & Moss' - for references to the stele or to Pasenenkhons (pronounced Pa-sen-en-CONS). He found none it was unknown.

"For Mr. Tokeley-Parry, that meant it was good to go.

New York: The Dealer

"Not long after, the fax machine in the galleries of Frederick Schultz Ancient Art on 57th Street in Manhattan disgorged a letter from Mr. Tokeley-Parry, excitedly describing the discovery at Akhmim. The stele of Pasenenkhons, he wrote, was the 'best I've seen for years on the market' and could be bought, with the rest of the hoard, for $70,000.

"The letter was a remarkable document, putting into writing what is normally only hinted at - that looted artifacts were for sale. What made it even more remarkable was its timing.

"Increasingly, the antiquities trade was being accused of illicitly trafficking in plunder. A number of major museums had begun demanding that dealers provide greater documentation of pieces' ownership histories, or provenance. At the same time, several countries, most notably Greece and Turkey, were asking American courts to order the return of objects they claimed under their national antiquities laws.

"The dealers counterattacked. They argued that the United States should not recognize those foreign laws, that there was a bright legal line separating objects stolen from an individual owner - a museum or collector - and those that were looted, that is, unearthed and taken from the country of origin.

"Frederick Schultz was a key figure in the industry's lobbying campaign he would soon become president of a leading trade group, the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art.

"By all accounts, Mr. Schultz - a preppy-looking Princeton graduate whose father had been deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve - was an articulate voice for his industry. He was also a politically savvy one, and he warned his colleagues that, legal principle notwithstanding, any obvious missteps would help arm their critics.

"'Always use a customs agent when importing objects,' he wrote in his notes for one speech. 'Be careful who your suppliers are, and stress to them the importance that stolen things not be circulated.'

"For Mr. Schultz, in his early 40s and still relatively new to the business, that high-profile spokesman's role served to enhance his standing. So did his relationship with Jonathan Tokeley-Parry.

"In each branch of the antiquities market - Classical, pre-Columbian, Far Eastern and so forth - there are perhaps a few dozen dealers of significance. But the very top ranks are occupied by the dealers with the choicest pieces - the rare and the never before seen. Put another way, given the nature of the hierarchy, Mr. Schultz's ambition came with a certain incentive to deal in plunder, the stock in trade of Mr. Tokeley-Parry.

"A case in point, according to papers from a later court case, was the piece that began their partnership, the head of Amenhotep III. Mr. Tokeley-Parry had bought it from a builder for $6,000. Mr. Schultz sold it for $1.2 million, and it was soon acquired by the leading dealer of the day, Robin Symes.

"To complete that journey, though, the smugglers had not simply sheathed Amenhotep in red and gold and sped him through customs as tourist schlock. They also had to deal with the increasingly sticky issue of provenance.

"Dealers and auction houses often point out that many pieces without clear provenance are still perfectly legitimate, having been purchased by collectors before countries began restricting the trade. But dealers also sometimes used that argument as a sort of wink-and-a-nod cover story, describing questionable pieces as coming from, say, an 'old English' or 'old Swiss' collection.

"In 1991, with the spotlight coming on the industry, Mr. Schultz and Mr. Tokeley-Parry simply constructed a more detailed cover story for Amenhotep III. They created a phony collection, supposedly amassed by a civil engineer named Thomas Alcock, who roamed the British Empire in the early 1900s. Mr. Tokeley-Parry used 1920s conservation techniques to create a veneer of authentic provenance display stickers, for instance, were made from Victorian-era pharmacy labels soaked in tea for the yellowed brittleness of age.

"Now their portfolio was poised to grow again, with the addition of the stele of Pasenenkhons. In 1995, financial records indicate, Mr. Schultz wired at least $52,000 to Swiss bank accounts controlled by Mr. Tokeley-Parry or Mr. Farag, as down payment for the pieces.

"The next spring, Mr. Tokeley-Parry traveled to Geneva. He had an added incentive to complete the deal, he recalls. He had been arrested in Britain and charged with illicit trafficking in antiquities. The Akhmim stele, he hoped, would mean one more big score, an infusion of cash before he had to stand trial.

"He says Ali Farag had assured him the stele would be in Geneva any day. He waited for two weeks, but it never showed up.

Zurich: The Free Port

"In the best Swiss tradition, the next phase of the stele's journey remains obscure. For a time, a half ton of stone seems simply to have disappeared. Mr. Tokeley-Parry says he does not know what happened. Somewhere in the fog, perhaps, there was a double cross. Certainly, there was a change in plans, and a whole new set of characters.

"The paper trail picks up again in late 1997, with a shipping manifest showing that the stele of Pasenenkhons, along with two of the smaller Akhmim steles, had been processed at a warehouse in Zurich.

"The warehouse was part of a network of sprawling complexes, known as free ports, that handle huge volumes of valuable - and usually perfectly legitimate - cargo, from tractors to machine parts to ancient art. Still, duty free and governed by the Swiss system of business discretion, the free ports have helped make Switzerland a crossroads of the smuggler's world.

"They are self-contained and secretive places, secured behind cyclone fences in major cities and at the airports. Forklifts transport merchandise down silent cinder-block corridors to bare storage lockers and opulent showrooms set behind metal doors identified by numbers, not company names. Smuggled cargo can enter a free port, change hands and be sent on its way with the barest wisp of a paper trail.

"To finance the civil war in Sierra Leone, for example, rebel armies used Swiss free ports to disguise the source of tens of millions of dollars of 'blood diamonds' dispersed to the West, according to a United Nations report.

"As for antiquities, Swiss officials say that in the last five years, they have received 75 requests from foreign governments to help track artifacts they believe were smuggled into the country. 'When there is a case, there is often a link with Switzerland,' said Marc-André Renold, director of the Art Law Centre in Geneva.

"Just who brought the stele of Pasenenkhons into the country, and when, is not clear. But an official of a shipper at the free port that processed the stele and its companion pieces, Rolf Kutny of Rodolphe Haller A.G., said they had been stored in a locker leased to a company called 'H. H. Antiques.'

"An executive of the free port, Adriano Bienz, said that as a matter of policy, he could not disclose any details about H. H. Antiques. But Mr. Kutny said the company had rented a locker for a short period and then disappeared.

"'It was a fantasy company,' he said.

"And in November 1997, the stele was on the move again. A shipping manifest shows that a truck left Zurich for Geneva, carrying the three pieces from Akhmim.

Geneva: The Gallery

"Phoenix Ancient Art, on a winding cobblestone street in downtown Geneva, has the feel of a private museum, its minimalist display space a palette of grays. On any given day, a visitor might find sculpted torsos from Greece, silver ceremonial vessels from Mesopotamia, jewelry inlaid with lapis lazuli. It was there that the stele of Pasenenkhons surfaced in late 1997.

"The gallery is owned by two brothers, Ali and Hicham Aboutaam, and in the ebb and flow at the heights of the dealing world, they were very much on the way up.

"The brothers had inherited the business from their father, Sleiman Aboutaam, who had started it in the 1960s in Beirut, then a hub of the market. But the sons, tall, urbane and in their 30s, had transformed it into an enterprise of an entirely different order.

"They were selling to museums like the Metropolitan in New York, as well as to major collectors like the financier Michael Steinhardt and the designer Bill Blass. They were fearless players on the auction scene and supplied artifacts to other dealers in Europe and America, including Frederick Schultz. They opened a Manhattan gallery, just off Madison Avenue, and created a digital photographic archive of their changing inventory of as many as 5,000 pieces.

"'They are on the top of the world,' said Robert Hecht, an American dealer who in the 70s was there himself. 'They have realized their father's dreams.'

"It was their father, the brothers said, who purchased the stele of Pasenenkhons and its two companion pieces at the Zurich free port from H. H. Antiques. As for who was behind H. H. Antiques, the brothers say they have no idea. Their father, who may have, died in a Swissair crash in 1998.

"At the request of The New York Times, the Aboutaams checked their files for clues to the seller's identity. They said they could find no records - a check, an invoice or a ledger entry - describing the sale.

"'Nothing could lead me to who was the actual person who had these when they were offered to my father,' Hicham Aboutaam said. 'I expected our papers to be better than that.'

"At the time of the purchase, the brothers said, they did not know that the pieces had been looted. But they did try to make sure they had not been stolen.

"As with any object involving a substantial investment - they estimated their father had paid about $70,000 for the three steles - they sent pictures to the Art Loss Register, an organization that keeps a database of artworks reported stolen. The search came up negative.

"The Aboutaams also took a step to help market their investment. They asked a scholar, Massimo Patanè of the University of Geneva, to translate the hieroglyphics on the three steles and write a scholarly paper about them. Archaeologists are divided over the propriety of such articles, with some arguing that they can give unprovenanced artifacts a sheen of legitimacy.

"Professor Patanè's article was published in a small German journal in autumn 1998. 'This group,' he wrote, 'remarkable both for its variety and the genealogical and religious information it contains, shows once again what happy surprises the antiquities trade has to offer.'

Paris: The Buyer

"An article like Professor Patanè's is but one element in the sort of marketing campaign used to propel a piece to its ultimate destination - a museum or private collection. It fell to Bernard Blondeel to shepherd the stele of Pasenenkhons onward.

"Mr. Blondeel, a Belgian with a gallery in Paris, had long specialized in medieval tapestry. But he was looking for a way into the antiquities market, and when he walked into Phoenix Ancient Art on a July afternoon in 1998, the stele caught his eye. By day's end, he had spent about $500,000 for the stele, its companions and other artifacts.

"The stele changed hands with few hard questions asked. Mr. Blondeel said he did not know which brother he had dealt with. But in either case, he said, the Aboutaams' reputation was all the assurance he needed.

"'He said that there was no problem with the provenance,' recalled Mr. Blondeel. He declined to make available any sales documents given him by the Aboutaams.

"With the deal closed, Mr. Blondeel purchased a full-page advertisement in Revue du Louvre, a glossy Paris gallery guide, that showed the stele at its monumental best, bathed in light against a black background.

"Mr. Blondeel also took the Akhmim pieces on tour. In the fall of 1998, the Pasenenkhons stele was shown at the Biennale Internationale des Antiquaires in Paris. Mr. Blondeel says he believes that he brought one of the smaller steles that year to the annual antiques show at the Seventh Regiment Armory in Manhattan. A few booths away sat Frederick Schultz, who had paid for that piece and lost it a few years before.

"Mr. Blondeel's efforts bore fruit in May 1999, he says, when he was approached by a New York developer, H. Henry Elghanayan, who had seen an advertisement for the stele of Pasenenkhons in an antiquities magazine. The dealer said Mr. Elghanayan, chief executive of the Rockrose Development Corporation, later saw the piece at his Paris gallery and agreed to buy it.

"For his part, Mr. Elghanayan would not say if he had asked Mr. Blondeel for details of the stele's provenance, or what, if anything, the dealer had told him. 'The dealer is a reputable one,' he said. 'The dealer stood behind the work.' What's more, he added, the dealer had promised a refund in the unlikely event of a problem.

"The price was $210,000, a fair bit of appreciation for one piece in a haul that had begun with a $70,000 asking price. Five years later, it had finally come to rest, in an apartment on Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

New York: The Recovery

"For Frederick Schultz, the stele of Pasenenkhons was the one that got away. In the winter of 2002, it caught up with him.

"Legal trouble had been circling the dealer, in fact, ever since the stele had vanished somewhere between Cairo and Zurich in 1997. That year, his partner, Mr. Tokeley-Parry, had been convicted in the British smuggling case and sentenced to six years in prison. Soon the Scotland Yard detective on that case, Richard Ellis, had begun asking questions about Mr. Schultz.

"To make a case against the dealer, though, American investigators had to identify the pieces he and Mr. Tokeley-Parry had conspired to smuggle and sell. They believed that they would find evidence of them in the mountain of photographs and records Scotland Yard had seized from Mr. Tokeley-Parry's home.

"But as they sifted through the papers, investigators found themselves at a loss to distinguish among all the heads, statues and vases in the photographs, or to interpret Mr. Tokeley-Parry's professional slang.

"'We would look at his letters and say, "What does this look like?"' recalled Marcia Issacson, the lead prosecutor on the case. 'We didn't know what he was talking about.'

"For help, they went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where Edna R. Russmann, an Egyptologist, was asked to match the photographs with pieces she had seen in Mr. Schultz's gallery. After months of work, an F.B.I. agent, Patrick Gildea, showed her a few last odds and ends.

"'There was a kind of poor photo of a group of three steles,' Ms. Russmann recalled. Though she was impressed by the pieces, they rang no bells. But months later, she saw an article about a large stele and two smaller companions. The steles, she realized, were the ones Mr. Gildea had asked her about.

"In fact, the article was the one the Swiss professor, Mr. Patanè, had written at the request of the Aboutaams the photograph was credited to their gallery, Phoenix Ancient Art. The big piece was the stele of Pasenenkhons.

"Mr. Schultz had never sold, or even seen, the stele. But it became a stealth weapon for the prosecution: of all the pieces in the indictment, it was among the few on which the statute of limitations had yet to expire.

"Mr. Schultz declined to be interviewed for this article, beyond saying he was not guilty. But at trial in New York in early 2002, his lawyers argued that he was unaware of Egypt's antiquities law and had been duped by Mr. Tokeley-Parry, now embittered and turned star government witness.

"The dealer's conviction, for conspiring to smuggle stolen artifacts, set the stage for a legal battle over a fundamental issue, the one that had been at the heart of his lobbying efforts: Does American law consider pieces looted from countries like Egypt stolen property?

"Last July, a federal appeals panel in New York ruled that it does, as long as those countries actively enforce their antiquities laws. Mr. Schultz is serving a 33-month sentence at a federal prison in Fort Dix, N.J.

"Several months after the trial, two F.B.I. agents, assisted by three movers and several porters, removed the stele from Mr. Elghanayan's apartment. He has been reimbursed by Mr. Blondeel, who, in turn, has gotten his money back from the Aboutaams. As for the pieces Mr. Schultz and Mr. Tokeley-Parry handled, some have been recovered. Others are missing.

"The two smaller steles from Akhmim are still in the possession of Mr. Blondeel, who says he is waiting for instructions about where to send them. He is sure of one thing, he says: His fling with unprovenanced antiquities is over.

"And the stele of Pasenenkhons is now in the Cairo Museum, a hero, of sorts, in Egypt's campaign to reclaim its stolen treasures.

Epilogue: New Troubles

"There are signs that perhaps the age-old ways of the trade are beginning to give way.

"In the last year, two important Western nations on the antiquities trail have moved to crack down on smuggling. Swiss lawmakers are expected to pass a law requiring greater documentation for articles passing through its free ports, while Britain has made it a crime to handle an artifact knowing that it was looted after 2003.

"Among the dealers, there is concern that the new legal climate - and especially the appeals court's ruling in the Schultz case - will unfairly dam up the trade. On their own, the dealers say, they have become far more scrupulous about asking the tough questions of provenance.

"'Auctioneers, dealers, collectors and museums typically exercise exceptional care and diligence prior to buying and selling works of art,' the dealers group that Mr. Schultz once headed said in a statement.

"The Aboutaam brothers say they, too, have become exceptionally careful they devote more time than ever to researching provenance, they say. They know well, they say, the questions their competitors ask about them in private - questions about where they get some of their best pieces. But the truth of the matter, they insist, is that the Akhmim stele would never pass their muster now.

"'People are always badmouthing us,' Ali Aboutaam said in a recent interview. 'We are used to it.'

"It was not long, though, before the questioning went public.

"In mid-December, Hicham Aboutaam was arrested at his New York apartment and charged with smuggling a silver ceremonial drinking vessel known as a rhyton into the United States from Iran and falsely claiming that it came from Syria.

"The authorities say the piece, in the shape of a griffin, may be part of the Western Cave Treasure, hundreds of works in silver discovered in the late 1980s at a cave near the Iran-Iraq border. Soon afterward, treasure hunters plundered the site and many of the pieces, which date to 700 B.C., passed into the antiquities market.

"In 2000, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, Hicham Aboutaam hand-carried the piece on a flight from Zurich to Newark, planning to sell it to a collector in the United States. At the time, an affiliate of Phoenix Ancient Art based in the Grenadine Islands, Tanis Antiquities Ltd., issued a customs document identifying Syria as the piece's country of origin, the complaint adds. Imports from Iran are severely restricted and monitored.

"When the collector - Paula Cussi, a Metropolitan Museum trustee - had first seen the griffin the previous year at the Aboutaams' Geneva gallery, the brothers had told her it was from Iran, the complaint states. But Ms. Cussi demanded proof of authenticity. So in 2002, the complaint adds, Hicham Aboutaam sent the piece to three experts, who determined that its workmanship or metal content were consistent with other objects from the Western Cave and surrounding sites in Iran. Armed with those reports, Mr. Aboutaam closed the deal that year for $950,000, the court papers say.

"Mr. Aboutaam, who was released on $500,000 bail, has yet to be indicted, and neither he nor his lawyer, Peter Chavkin, returned calls seeking comment. A lawyer for Ms. Cussi, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, said she recently got back her money for the piece, which has been seized by the authorities.

"Ali Aboutaam is in trouble, too.

"At about the same time as Hicham was arrested in New York, Ali's name was being read out in a Cairo courtroom, one of 31 people accused of being part of a long-running ring that had smuggled artifacts through Switzerland to Western dealers and galleries. The charges grew out of a raid last summer at the main Geneva free port.

"The indicted included several high-ranking Egyptian police and government officials the mastermind, prosecutors said, was Tariq al-Suwaysi, a politician and businessman whose lavish way of life had earned him the nickname 'the Prince.' Also among the accused were several members of the Farag family, the clan that had bought the stele of Pasenenkhons from the builders in Akhmim.

"Egypt's general prosecutor, Maher Abdel Wahed, said Mr. Aboutaam had been indicted based on telephone conversations secretly recorded last year, along with other information that showed he had received smuggled artifacts through Mr. Suwaysi's ring. The prosecutor said the two men had been recorded discussing, often in code, the delivery of smuggled pieces.

"'They were partners,' he said.

"After reviewing transcripts of the recorded conversations, Ali Aboutaam issued a statement saying he and his brother constantly received telephone calls from people seeking to sell them objects or claiming to be owed money by their father, Sleiman Aboutaam. The calls from Mr. Suwaysi, he said, fit into that category.

"A Swiss lawyer for Mr. Aboutaam, Mario Roberty, said that while his client knew of Mr. Suwaysi, it was only because Sleiman Aboutaam might have dealt with him.

"Added Ali, 'I never bought from him, for sure.' "

Antiquities Gallery Will Return Two Limestone Monuments to Egypt

The Times followed up on their February 23 story on April 2, 2004, with a story headlined "Antiquities Gallery Will Return Two Limestone Monuments to Egypt," again written by Barry Meier.

"One of the world's leading antiquities galleries," the story began "has agreed to return two limestone monuments smuggled out of Egypt in the mid-1990s.

"The agreement follows the publication of an article in The New York Times that traced the transit of the two pieces, along with a larger companion piece, through the antiquities trade.

"A lawyer for the dealer, Phoenix Ancient Art, which operates galleries in Geneva and New York, said he expected that the inscribed, tombstone-shaped slabs, known as steles, would be turned over to Egyptian officials next week.

"In separate interviews, both the lawyer, Mario Roberty, and the Egyptian consul general in New York, Mahmoud Allam, said the article had been instrumental in securing the return of the pieces to Egypt.

"'These objects have become too much talked about,' Mr. Roberty said.

"The two steles, along with the larger one, were illegally excavated in 1994 at a construction site in Akhmim, about 350 miles south of Cairo. The Times article, which appeared in February, focused on the decade-long journey of the larger stele as it moved from Egypt to Switzerland to Paris and eventually to New York, passing through the hands of smugglers, middlemen and several dealers.

"All three pieces were purchased in 1997 by Phoenix Ancient Art and then sold to another dealer.

"The current owners of Phoenix Ancient Art, Ali and Hicham Aboutaam, had said that their father, Sleiman Aboutaam, bought the three steles and never told them the identity of the seller.

"The brothers said they were unaware that the steles had been looted when the gallery acquired them. Their father died in 1998.

"During the 2002 trial of a New York-based antiquities dealer, Frederick Schultz, evidence showed that the three pieces had been smuggled out of Egypt. Under a 1983 Egyptian law, any antiquity discovered after that date is government property.

"The larger stele, which was seized in New York from the collector who had ended up buying it, was returned to Egypt last year. American officials had contacted the Aboutaams about returning the two companion pieces to Egypt.

"Some time ago the Aboutaams repaid the dealer who had bought the three steles.

"Mr. Roberty said that in recent weeks they had arranged to have the pieces returned to Egypt through a nonprofit foundation he operates.

"Separately, both Ali and Hicham Aboutaam face continuing legal problems in connection with their involvement with the antiquities trade.

"In December, Hicham Aboutaam was arrested in New York and charged with smuggling an Iranian artifact worth $1 million into the United States. He has not been indicted.

"Ali Aboutaam was recently accused in an Egyptian court of being involved with a ring that smuggled artifacts to Switzerland.

"He has denied any involvement."

MEDIA FILE 2001

Excerpts from recent magazine, newspaper and Internet articles of interest to the membership. All opinions are those of the writers of the stories and of the people quoted, not of ATADA. Members are encouraged to submit press clipping or e-mail links for publication in the next Newsletter.

"In Once-Lost Books, the Code Behind Indian Rock Art" reads the headline in Jim Robbins' June 19 story in The New York Times.

Datelined Portland, Ore., that story begins, "Throughout the Great Plains, images of men, horses and a nomadic way of life have been scratched into rock walls, a pictographic record whose precise meaning has long been a mystery to modern eyes.

"But researchers have recently unearthed documents that are helping them pry far more detail from the images found on rock faces from Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta to the cactus-studded plains of northern Mexico. They say most of the images are a form of picture writing, a cross-tribal code that was widely recognized.

"'Indians the length and breadth of the Plains were doing this stuff,' said Dr. James D. Keyser, a regional archaeologist for the United States Forest Service in Portland whose three decades of work have helped crack the code. 'Any American Plains Indian anywhere could have looked at these pictures and given you significant detail.'

"The documents that have emerged," the story continues, "are ledger books containing drawings by Plains Indians, some from the early 1800s, when the influx of white settlers and missionaries began pushing Indians from their territory. In addition to the ledger books, the new analysis has also been aided by finer dating techniques and new ethnographic literature. The new understanding comes as rock art faces increasing threats from vandals and weathering.

"Representational rock art is classified as ceremonial, in which the art was a depiction of a spiritual or shamanic event, and biographic, which is a narrative, usually about one person. Between 1600 and 1750, the biographic style of rock art began to develop, though the figures were generally crude, little more than stick figures. Although sexual encounters were sometimes depicted, the majority of images recorded battle exploits. Horses and guns were added to the art in the 18th century. 'Today you wave your stock portfolio,' Dr. Keyser said. " In those days you bragged about your warrior accomplishments. There was no higher honor."

"The artwork took a qualitative leap in the early 1800s. European artists like Karl Bodmer and George Catlin, who had come to the frontier to paint Indians and their way of life, influenced the tribal art in turn. The native forms evolved quickly from stick figures to become far more realistic, with fully executed, yet stylized, horses and people, most scratched in the West's abundant soft sandstone with an antler or bone or, less frequently, painted on cliffs, primarily in a soft ocher color. While the style evolved over three centuries, the symbols and the meaning of the work remained consistent, even during the trauma of the contact period. That 'language' is the focus of the lexicon.

"Details in the artwork had a larger, very specific meaning that served to broadcast tales of bravery not only within one's tribe, but to whoever chanced to pass these prehistoric billboards, usually written on prominent landmarks or at spiritually significant locations. The biographic imagery includes both pictograms - symbols like a stick-figure man - and ideograms, pictures that represent a concept. A floating hand, for example, means that whatever it was drawn near was seized by the artist.

"Other conventions include a right- to-left organization, with figures facing left. While the figures are fairly realistic, their organization is not, with action over a period of time all in a single image. In other words, a single image of a warrior off his horse standing over a falling opponent, and behind him a muzzle blast in the air and a dotted line across the ground, covers several things. The horse shows that he rode up, the dotted line shows that he dismounted to fight on foot, considered a very brave act, then fired a muzzle blast and proceeded to encounter his enemy in hand-to-hand combat. 'It's as if you put the action of a four-panel Peanuts cartoon in one panel,' Dr. Keyser said.

"The most represented items are people, horses and sometimes other animals, guns, teepees and horse tack. Later, soldiers, wagons and forts entered the pictures. In 1924 a pictograph of an automobile was carved at Writing-on-Stone by Bird Rattle, a Blackfoot chief.

"Specific acts of bravery were crucial because they were required for warriors to become chiefs. The artwork, in a sense, is a way of keeping score.

"As the free-roaming culture of the Plains Indian came to an end, they stopped carving pictures in the rock and instead painted pictures on buffalo robes and teepees, and in ledger books in the same pictograph language. Ledger books are large bound volumes of white paper, often with blue ruled lines that were used to keep accounts. The books, along with colored pencils and pen and ink, were given to captive Indians so they could spend part of their confinement telling stories in pictography, sometimes for art's sake and sometimes for small amounts of money. 'They drew what they knew: the good old days,' Dr. Keyser said.

"Some whites, fascinated by the language in the ledger books, annotated the drawings with explanations of what the artists were talking about in their preliterate rock art. These explanations of the Indian symbology, along with ethnography, are the heart of the new lexicon.

"Dr. Keyser and a dozen or so other researchers have uncovered lost or forgotten ledger books, one at a time. Each time, the annotated ledgers provided a few more interpretations of the rock art symbology. Dr. Keyser, who has compared rock art, early decorated buffalo robes and the ledger art, said the symbols remained remarkably consistent from the early rock art through the reservation period.

"One of the most informative contributions to the lexicon was by Five Crows, a chief of the Flathead Indians in northwest Montana, who went by the Anglicized name of Ambrose. After Christian missionaries arrived, the warrior chief sat down in 1842 and drew a series of battle pictographs with ink and paper. He explained what each meant to Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, and De Smet translated.

"The date of the ledger was crucial because it was done while the nomadic and warrior way of life was still taking place, not as a recollection. (The only ledger earlier is an 1834 one done by Four Bears, a Mandan chief.) Dr. Keyser pored over the ledger, comparing the symbols interpreted by De Smet with the hundreds of images he had traced and photographed on rock walls in his own three decades of research.

"One simple Ambrose line drawing interpreted by De Smet, for example, was a battle between Flathead Indians and five Blackfeet. It portrays an enemy Blackfoot warrior lying in a circle and Ambrose carrying a bag surrounded by tiny lightning bolts. The two are, in turn, surrounded by symbolic rifles. De Smet's interpretation shows that a warrior lying in a circle meant that he fought from a pit. The bag, with lightning, carried by Ambrose is described by De Smet as a medicine bundle, which conferred supernatural power.

"This drawing added a couple of symbols to the lexicon - the charged medicine bag and the circle indicating a foxhole were symbols familiar to Indians at the time. There are about 100 symbols in the lexicon and perhaps 50 to 100 more to decipher. The translation of the ledger and the basics of the approach are explained in Dr. Keyser's book, 'The Five Crows Ledger: Biographic Warrior Art of the Flathead Indians,' published last year by the University of Utah Press.

"Another symbol is the decorated horse halter, portrayed in rock art as comblike. All halters were assumed to represent scalps hung from the bridle. But variations can show different things. One type, hanging on the horse's jaw, was indeed a scalp, while another, drawn below the jaw, was a chain-mail bit from the Spanish Southwest. A third, suspended in front of a horse, referred to the Blackfeet's Horse Medicine Cult, whose members tied a bundle to the horse's halter to give the animal strength and speed and make it impervious to bullets.

"The evolving lexicon has had practical impact, most notably in the case of a scalp found in a storeroom at the Smithsonian Institution. It was rumored to belong to a young Nez Percé man, but without confirmation it could not be repatriated.

"A ledger drawing done by a Crow Indian named Medicine Crow - who was known to be at the battle - showed the Crow getting close enough to strike his opponent. The victim's hairstyle was Nez Percé, and details fit accounts of the battle. It was enough to repatriate the scalp to the man's ancestors in 1998, and it was buried.

"Speaking of Dr. Keyser's work, George Horse Capture, a member of the Gros Ventre tribe and a special assistant for cultural resources at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, said: 'It's a great study. He's going in the direction of specificity, far more than any of his predecessors were able to do.'

"Ledger books are scarce, though Dr. Keyser hopes that more will turn up. Current information has come from a couple dozen ledgers. They are also prized by art collectors and can fetch $50,000 to $100,000 each. Many ledger books have been cut up and the pictures sold, so the books' archaeological value has been lost.

"The rock art, too, is at risk. Much of it has naturally weathered, and some of it has fallen victim to humans. 'When a museum has jackhammered them out of a wall or someone has shot them up with a gun,' Mr. Horse Capture said, 'it makes you feel like crying.' '"

In her June 22 Antiques column in The New York Times, Wendy Moonan's story was headlined, "African Art for Sale, in Abundance"

"'You have to know how to get rid of ideas that turn out to be wrong,' said Hubert Goldet (1945-2000), a Parisian who collected contemporary paintings as a young man, then switched to African tribal art for the rest of his life," the story began.

"A dedicated aesthete," Moonan continues, "he was 26 when he bought his first piece of African sculpture. By the time he died he had accumulated 640 African objects - masks, jewelry, reliquaries, statues, beadwork and textiles - in his Paris apartment. In 1979 he told a reporter at Arts d'Afrique Noire, 'Today, if I were to no longer collect tribal art, I think that I would not collect anything.'

"Mr. Goldet's collection of African tribal art, considered one of the most important in the world, will be auctioned on June 30 and July 1 in Paris. Because it is too large to be displayed properly in the salesrooms of Drouot, the auctioneer François de Ricqlès has organized the sale at the Maison de la Chimie, 28 Rue St. Dominique, in the seventh arrondisement near Les Invalides... The 400-page catalog, in French and English, costs about $60. It can be viewed at www.dericqles.com (information: 011 331 4874 3893).

"'He bought things up until three months before he died,' said Alain de Monbrison, a Parisian friend and the owner of Galerie Alain de Monbrison. 'He sold fewer than 10 objects over the 30 years he collected.' In 1999 he donated three pieces to the Louvre.

"Mr. de Ricqlès expects the auction to total at least $5.3 million, and the figure could go higher. Many of Mr. Goldet's works came from well-known early French and Swiss collectors, including Maurice Nicaud, Henri Kamer, Charles Ratton, Robert Duperrier and Pierre Vérité. Several of the pieces have been exhibited in museums. 'This is the most important public sale of African art since the New York auction of the Helena Rubinstein collection in 1966,' Mr. de Ricqlès said.

"Mr. de Monbrison, who served as an expert for the Goldet sale, said, 'It is a unique collection in terms of its quality, quantity and diversity.'

"It was perhaps inevitable that Hubert Goldet would collect something. He came from a family whose fortune was made in banking and oil, and he grew up with Impressionist paintings. He wanted to be involved in the art world from an early age. After spending time in the sales department of one of his family's businesses, he quit to study at the École du Louvre. In 1968 he joined Sotheby's in London, writing catalogs in the Impressionist and Modern Art department. In 1971 he returned to Paris to become the founding editor of Art Press, a contemporary art monthly. He accumulated paintings by Dubuffet, Tapiès, Alexander Calder and contemporary American artists. He left the magazine in 1974 to devote himself fully to African art. He took his new passion very seriously, spending hours at the Musée de l'Homme, studying books, visiting primitive art galleries and attending auctions. He amassed an important library on African art, which he later donated to the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, scheduled to open in 2004.

"'He was fascinated by this "total art" that conferred enormous beauty on ordinary household utensils and ritual and religious articles,' Mr. de Monbrison said. He bought very rare Dogon, Punu, Kota, Fang and Baule sculptures as well as everyday objects like arm and ankle bracelets, stools and headrests. In the 1970s African art was a stepchild in the art world. There was a prejudice against it because it is not made as art and it is rarely signed or dated. 'The notion of authenticity, when it concerns Western painting and works of art, is based on a knowledge of the identity of the artist and that the piece in question was executed during a certain given period,' wrote Lynne Thornton in an article about the Goldet collection in the February 1981 Connoisseur Magazine. 'Here, the sculpture is not only anonymous but its age is generally of little importance.'

"For Ms. Thornton, authenticity in black African sculpture means that the object was made with a ritualistic significance (not for tourists) and shows signs of wear. The masks and figures that Mr. Goldet bought all have patina. They were used in daily rituals, festivities, funerals and fertility rites.

"African sculpture is made by animists who confer a soul on inanimate objects, even tools and spoons. The materials employed include terra cotta, stone, iron, wood, bronze, gold and ivory. In his 1968 book 'African Art,' Pierre Meauzé, curator of the Museum of African and Oceanic Art in Paris, wrote about how Africans view raw materials: 'Since wood is a living material, it is felt that the masks and statuettes derive their magical power from the branch or trunk of a tree whose roots drew nourishment from the earth. Such a process is not so much sculpture as the transmutation of power through the modification of form.'

"Lot 205 in the sale, a female Baule Kpan mask from Ivory Coast, is a good example of how objects can be imbued with magic. Totally arresting, the 18-inch-tall carved wood mask has closed eyes, a long, sharp nose and a small oval mouth with teeth showing. Its high headdress is a mix of carved braids and chignons. The cheeks and forehead are scarified with beadlike decoration. Though slightly cracked, in its simplicity it is riveting. The catalog reports that such masks are used as part of a masquerage, a daylong performance in which an entire village marks the death of a notable or an important celebration. The piece is considered very rare, and the estimate is $200,000 to $266,666.

"African art was not particularly popular in the 1970s, so Mr. Goldet initially did not find it difficult to purchase pieces from galleries and other collectors. He was also lucky to be able to buy newly imported sculptures. In the 1970s, African art was coming into Europe with immigrants from the African colonies as they achieved nationhood. There were few rules on exporting African art. 'In most of the former French colonies, you now need a permit to export art,' Mr. de Monbrison said. 'But it's really too late. Most of the important objects left Africa long ago. In the countries where Islam has been embraced, the destruction has been huge.'

"Mr. Goldet shared his collection with few people. Photographs of his apartment show shuttered windows and an assortment of good 18th-century French antiques covered with statues, sculptures and objects. What could not be placed on furniture ended up on the floor.

"Those in Paris for the Goldet sale can also see Dogon masks at Galerie Jean-Jacques Dutko, in a show celebrating the publication of 'Masques du Pays Dogon,' published by Adam Biro. Sotheby's May 19 sale of African and Oceanic works in New York totaled $6.8 million. (Christie's did not have an African art sale this spring.) And the Brooklyn Museum of Art has reinstalled 250 works from its substantial African holdings, making it much easier to study the art. Mr. Goldet was, predictably, ahead of his time."

From our Arizona correspondent, two links to online information and a poll concerning Kennewick Man:

AOL Research & Learn: Archaeology/Anthropology AOL Research & Learn: Poll

Stephen Kinzer's July 3 story in The New York Times was headlined, "An Indian Craftsman Sees Glass Full of Possibilities," and was datelined Taos, N. M.

The story began: "Glassmaking is not an art normally associated with American Indians, but Tony Jojola wants to change that. Mr. Jojola, considered by many collectors to be among the most original glassmakers in the country, recently showed more than 100 of his works at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, N. M. Although the exhibition won him the kind of praise that would send many artists back to their studios to produce more, Mr. Jojola has instead chosen to embark on a mission to introduce his art form to Pueblo Indians. "Last year Mr. Jojola opened a workshop here, where he teaches young people to express themselves in glass. He accepts all applicants who appear serious, but his main goal is to show Indians a path that few have considered. 'I got thrown out of high school myself, so I know the problems these kids face,' said Mr. Jojola (pronounced ho-HO-la) while a handful of his students blew glass through pipes or watched over their kilns. 'Crafts were part of my family heritage, and I tried making pottery and jewelry. Nothing really grabbed me until I discovered glass. I knew right away that there was definitely something there. To me glass is a lot like clay, but it takes clay a step further. It's like clay you can't touch. When I started doing this 25 years ago, there were only three or four Native Americans who had even tried making glass objects,' he continued. 'Now there are 10 or 12 who are serious about it.'

"Mr. Jojola, 43, an Isleta Pueblo, described glassmaking as 'a way to take old traditions and apply them in a new and very beautiful way.' Much of the work he and his students produce reflects tribal heritage. Some of their glass bowls and vessels are made in shapes originally developed by Indian basketmakers. Others are decorated with ancient patterns or symbols. Some older Indians worry that glassmaking will never provide as reliable an income as making jewelry, ceramic pottery or other traditional Indian crafts, and they are reluctant to encourage their children to study it. Mr. Jojola and his supporters reject this notion. 'Many people have a tendency to believe that Indian art becomes inauthentic when it becomes creative,' said Lloyd Kiva New, a Cherokee who founded the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe nearly 40 years ago. 'I don't hold with that idea. I think Indians have the same right to invent and create as anyone else in the world.

"'There are inconsistencies to people who object to Indians working in glass,' Mr. New said. 'In the 17th century Indians started working heavily in beads that had been imported from Italy and Czechoslovakia. They developed a very fine craft art, which people now accept without question as Indian. The same can be said about silver, which has led to a wonderful output of Indian jewelry design, but which Indians in this country didn't use until the Mexicans introduced them to it in the 1850s. They grabbed it, took it and ran with it. That's just what Tony wants to do with glass.'

"For some who doubt whether glassmaking can rise to the level of fine art, Mr. Jojola's recent exhibition may have been a revelation. Several of his pieces are translucent and flecked or lined with colorful patterns that are free, bold and abstract. Others refer to traditional motifs that have been handed down over generations. Many works convey a combination of earthiness and spirituality. One piece, a white-tinted bowl with golden spots, carries patterns inspired by petroglyphs. Another, a red crocodile, bears a row of yellow diamond shapes down its back. Also on display were a thunderbird inlaid with lapis lazuli, a vase made with bits of coral, a three-foot-long water serpent with a long curved horn, and an oval spirit face with an expression crafted from chips of colored glass.

"Mr. Jojola is among a group of Americans who have raised glassmaking to a new level of quality in the last few decades. He studied with Dale Chihuly, whose work has been exhibited in more than 180 museums and who has made large-scale glass installations across the United States and in many other countries. Mr. Chihuly donated several pieces of equipment to the Taos workshop.

"Among Mr. Chihuly's teachers was Harvey Littleton, whose pioneering work at the University of Wisconsin led him to be considered the father of the studio glass movement in the United States. If this chain of training can be said to have passed from Mr. Littleton to Mr. Chihuly to Mr. Jojola, the next link may be represented by the young people at the Taos workshop. One of these students is Floyd Marcus, 26, a San Juan Pueblo. He represents Mr. Jojola's ideal because his central ambition is not simply to become an artist but also to return to his town and teach glassmaking to other Indians. If enough students who emerge from the workshop take that route, the notion of spreading glassmaking through Southwestern tribes may come to fruition.

"'I want to help get kids out of the cycle of drinking and that whole path,' Mr. Marcus said after laying down a large set of pincers with which he had just placed a bowl into a firing oven. 'Glass represents a great responsibility as a material. It's very demanding and unforgiving. If a young person learns the idea of limits and boundaries in glasswork, plus the teamwork and collaboration you need in making glass, I think that will carry over into the rest of life. This is something that can have a real social as well as artistic impact.'

"Mr. Marcus said he planned to spend the next five years learning not just the craft of glassmaking but also the mechanics of setting up a workshop where he can teach it. He said he hoped to spread it through Indian communities across this region. 'Glass could become a real form of expression for us, on the same level as baskets and pottery,' he said. 'If I can get 10 or 15 people in my pueblo to focus on this for a while, we'd do work just as good as Chihuly. I'm sure of it. Who knows, we might come up with a Picasso from the pueblo.' "

"Smithsonian Official's Artifacts Investigated" read the headline of Elaine Sciolino's July 7 story in the New York Times.

"The United States Fish and Wildlife Service," the Washington-datelined story began, "is investigating whether the private collection of Amazonian artifacts owned by Lawrence M. Small, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, contains feathers and other items taken from endangered species, a senior official at the service said today.

"The wildlife service, an agency of the Department of the Interior, has received enough information about the collection both from published photographs and anecdotal information from ornithologists that an investigation is warranted, the official said. An investigation was originally opened last November but halted last March after Mr. Small and his lawyer sent copies of import permits and written assurances that his contract with the seller of the collection required her to obtain the appropriate permits, the official said. 'Enough things have popped up for us to have to reopen the investigation,' the official said.

"He added that agents had examined and re-examined photographs of the collection, 'and every time you look at something you may see something you don't see the first time.' The wildlife service has asked to examine Mr. Small's collection, some of which is housed in a 2,500- square-foot private gallery in an apartment near his home in Washington, and he has agreed to the request.

"Mr. Small's personal lawyer, Daniel H. Squire, said, 'Not only is he willing, but he is anxious to have the collection inspected as soon as possible and I've so informed the Fish and Wildlife Service.' Mr. Squire, a partner at the firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, added that Mr. Small bought the collection of hundreds of artifacts, including arrows, capes, headdresses, masks and spears from a private dealer in 1998. That contradicts a story on the collection in last December's issue of Architectural Digest that said Mr. Small and his wife, Sandra, bought much of the collection on trips to remote villages in north-central Brazil in the 1980s, when Mr. Small was a senior executive with Citicorp. Other pieces were bought from collectors, the article said. Mr. Squire said he could not explain the contradiction.

"The collection was mounted by a husband-wife team of architects rather than curators for its aesthetic appeal rather than as a scholarly exhibition in the apartment, which Mr. Small sometimes uses for fund- raising dinners.

"The investigation, first reported today by the Hearst Newspapers, is not based on hard evidence that laws have been broken, the wildlife service official said. However, he added that there were several statutes that could have been violated, including the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Violation of either law could result in confiscation of the art or civil or criminal penalties...

"Mr. Squire said that he did not know for certain whether the collection contained any items taken from endangered species but that Mr. Small has no reason to believe that was the case. 'Why take my word for it, I'm not an ornithologist,' Mr. Squire said. 'All I can tell you is what Mr. Small told me - that he purchased the collection from a dealer who represented that she had the proper permits. She provided the permits to Mr. Small and Mr. Small has provided the permits to Fish and Wildlife and he has no reason to believe there is a problem.' "

"Maria Chabot, 87, Dies Began Indian Market," was the headline of Douglas Martin's New York Times obituary on July 15.

The story: "Maria Chabot, who in the 1930s began the popular Indian markets on the Plaza in Santa Fe, N. M., and later became a close associate of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, died on Monday in an Albuquerque hospital. She was 87. Her goal was to be a writer, but her varied life included long periods as a rancher, as well as acting as general contractor for the house O'Keeffe built on a hilltop in Abiquiu, N. M., which in 1998 was designated a national monument. She took the well-known picture of O'Keeffe on the back of a motorcycle titled 'Women Who Rode Away.' " The Saturday markets for Indian crafts eventually became a daily event, and today they draw more than two million people a year, spending millions on pottery, jewelry and other items made by Indians. But when the markets began in the Depression, the Indians were lucky to get a few dollars for pieces that now reside in museums.

"The Indians lacked cars and pickup trucks to get to the market, so one of Ms. Chabot's first initiatives was to rent school buses, she said in an interview with The Santa Fe New Mexican in 1996. After the first Indian market, eight of the vendors told her they were using their earnings to install running water in their homes. Ms. Chabot began the markets in her capacity as executive secretary of the New Mexico Association of Indian Affairs, an advocacy group, with the goal of bringing broader awareness of the artfulness of Indian crafts. At first, the endeavor faced intense opposition from local businesses.

"Later, she helped Indians market their works more broadly by working for the Federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board, setting up cooperative marketing enterprises on reservations throughout the West. She noticed that many people felt good about paying higher prices for Indian arts. 'Maybe it's guilt for what we did to them,' she said in an interview with CNN in 1994.

"Ms. Chabot's paternal grandfather was the English ambassador to Mexico in the Mexican Revolution in 1910. His family, including Ms. Chabot's father, fled Mexico City, traveling by horse-drawn wagon. The family settled in San Antonio, where she was born in September 1913. After graduating from high school at 15, she took a job as a copywriter. She then visited Mexico City to study Spanish and archaeology, making friends there with some New Mexicans. She moved to Santa Fe in 1931 at 18, according to John S. Hart, a neighbor and friend. In her 20s, she made her way to the East Coast, took a freighter to Europe and spent two years traveling and working in France. She studied art and picked grapes in the vineyards of Provence. "After returning to Santa Fe, she took a job with the federal Works Progress Administration, the Depression-era project to find work for artists and writers. The agency provided her with a Model T Ford and a Brownie camera. Her assignment was to photograph and document Native American and Spanish Colonial arts and crafts. She met Mary Cabot Wheelwright, the well-known collector of Indian artifacts, when she photographed Ms. Wheelwright's extensive collection. Ms. Wheelwright's collection of Navajo art is now housed in the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe.

"For 20 years, Ms. Chabot managed Ms. Wheelwright's ranch at Alcalde, N. M. She hired the labor, supervised the cattle herd and oversaw the care of 1,500 fruit trees. She was president of the local irrigation association, an unheard-of post for a woman at the time, and adjudicated heated disputes over irrigation ditches. Ms. Wheelwright eventually deeded the ranch to Ms. Chabot, who sold it in the 1960s to move to Albuquerque to care for her elderly mother. "In 1936, Ms. Chabot was named head of the Indian advocacy group. Her idea for the weekly fairs stemmed from visits to Mexico, where she saw that the Indians seemed better off than those north of the border. "The difference was New Mexico's American Indians did not have a market for their goods and the Indians in Mexico did," she said in an interview with The New Mexican in 1996.

"Part of her job was visiting pueblos, Indian villages, to encourage women, especially potters, to participate. One was Maria Martinez, the legendary potter of the San Ildefonso pueblo. After her work with the Indians, Ms. Chabot was introduced to Georgia O'Keeffe by Ms. Wheelwright, beginning a friendship that endured until O'Keeffe's death in 1986. She spent summers from 1941 through 1944 at O'Keeffe's house on the Ghost Ranch, 125 miles north of Albuquerque. Though her goal was to write, she spent most of her time managing activities at the ranch. She often accompanied O'Keeffe on the camping trips throughout northern New Mexico on which the artist created many of her paintings. Among them is one called 'Maria Goes to a Party.' In 1946, Ms. Chabot agreed to manage the rebuilding of an adobe hacienda on a hilltop in Abiquiu, 48 miles northwest of Santa Fe. She supervised the building crew and participated in design decisions for what became O'Keeffe's winter home. 'I had never found anything as romantic as this beat-up building, a ruin really,' Ms. Chabot said in an interview with The Albuquerque Journal in 1999 when the house was dedicated as a national landmark. 'It took six months just to get the pigs out of the house...'

"...She has no immediate survivors. A book of the hundreds of letters exchanged between her and O'Keeffe, with commentary, will be published posthumously, Mr. Hart [Ms. Chabot's neighbor] said. He said that Ms. Chabot was often astounded about the mistaken judgments of outsiders. One author said about how much the two women enjoyed riding horses. Ms. Chabot told her friend that she had never seen O'Keeffe on a horse. "In 1996, when she was named a 'Living Treasure' of Santa Fe, Ms. Chabot was asked about her wide experiences. 'You just live your life,' she said, 'you don't try to do anything.' "

"Live by the Pen, Die by the Sword" was the headline on John Noble Wilford's July 17 story on Pre-Columbian public relations in The New York Times.

"At the height of the Maya civilization," Wilford's story began, "the only literate society in pre-Columbian America, kings fervently, perhaps desperately, believed in the power of the pen. Whether they thought it mightier than the sword is doubtful, but a growing body of evidence from Maya writing and art shows that scribes played a central role in magnifying their king's reputation and solidifying his political hold on the realm.

"No royal court in the classic Maya period, especially from about A.D. 600 to 900, seems to have been without scribes of high rank. In paintings and sculptures, they are seen seated cross-legged and wearing a sarong and headcloth, with a bundle of pens and brushes at the ready. Some of the painted or carved figures are accompanied by inscriptions identifying the person as keeper of the royal library, the chief scribe. The court scribes archaeologists have concluded, came from the noble class, sometimes from the royal family itself - younger sons of rulers or sons by secondary wives and concubines, and even some daughters. Their duty was to prepare art and text for elaborate public displays glorifying the king's triumphs. They were, in modern parlance, propagandists and spinmeisters.

"When times were good, scribes lived well, sometimes too well. One painting of drunken revelry reveals that even then, writers on occasion had an unbounded thirst. When their king met defeat in battle, though, the scribes were among the first to suffer a cruel fate. And that, as much as anything, an archaeologist has now pointed out, affirms the paramount place of scribes and writing in Maya politics.

"In a close study of texts and three imposing pieces of art, Dr. Kevin J. Johnston, a Maya archaeologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, determined that those who lived by the pen for a defeated ruler could expect to die by the conqueror's sword. These scribes were captured, humiliated in a public ceremony, mutilated and finally executed. A favorite form of mutilation was breaking their fingers and tearing out their fingernails. Writing in the June issue of the journal Antiquity, Dr. Johnston concluded, 'Texts were a medium through which kings asserted and displayed power, and thus they and the scribes who produced them were targeted during warfare for destruction.' The fact that many of the captured scribes were kinsmen of the conquered king and suspected of continued loyalty might have contributed to their fate. But the methods of public torture suggest that the conquerors also intended to send an unambiguous message.

"'What captors chose to emphasize in public documents was not the physical elimination of the scribes through sacrifice but the destruction through finger mutilation of their capacity to produce for rivals politically persuasive texts,' Dr. Johnston wrote. 'Finger breaking was a significant political act because it produced and revealed the vulnerability of enemies and competitors.' Dr. Johnston said in an interview that these previously unrecognized practices underscored the importance of the written word and monumental art in reinforcing the power and authority of Maya kings. They were forms of what he called 'competitive display,' meant to intimidate people into a state of loyalty.

"Because most Maya city-states were small and inherently weak, Mayanists say, kings typically had to resort to such ceremonial strategies to help justify and maintain their power. In the late classic period, there were at least 40 city-states across the heart of the Maya domain, which included what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and part of Honduras. No single king apparently ever managed to control a wide section of the land. Dr. David Webster, a Mayanist at Penn State, said he agreed with much of Dr. Johnston's thesis, particularly the role of scribes in proclaiming royal authority through competitive displays.

"'A king who is not very confident brags a lot,' Dr. Webster said. ' "I am the king," he brags all over the lowlands. The next king is only 30 kilometers away and he's saying, "No, I am the king." There's a lot of status rivalry, and so they build lavish palaces and have a lot of feasting and other ceremonial displays.'

"A more risky alternative course for enhancing a king's reputation was warfare, which among the Maya often stemmed from 'status rivalry' between neighboring rulers, not necessarily from an appetite for more territory. After a war, a monument prepared by a loyal scribe- painter soon went up in the victor's city. The triumphant king is shown standing heroically on the backs of prostrate captives - the Maya version of a photo-op. Several other specialists in Mayan archaeology said they found Dr. Johnston's research convincing.

"'It's a new perspective based on what had been stray pieces of evidence that we haven't been putting together before,' said Dr. Stephen D. Houston of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Dr. David Freidel of Southern Methodist University in Dallas said the research provided important insights into 'a war of words' the Maya seemed to have waged through much of their classical period, before the civilization went into sharp decline around 900. In his judgment, Dr. Freidel said, the Maya were a history-minded people and their scribes were not just mechanical transcribers but were the historians, intent on defining their culture and imposing their own interpretation of history. The destruction of monuments and inscriptions was one city's way of erasing the history of an enemy. But he questioned the premise that the Maya civilization was more politically fragile than most others.

"Modern scholars think that the Maya glyphs are one of only three writing systems - the other two being Sumerian cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia and Chinese - to be invented independently. All others were probably modeled after or influenced by existing scripts. Maya was the last of the three scripts to be deciphered, beginning in the 1950s it has given scholars a clearer picture of Maya history..."

George Terasaki is featured in Rita Reif's August 5 New York Times story, "A Family and Tribe From British Columbia Regain a Piece of History."

The story began: "On that Friday in May, Helen Rush Robinson, an elder of the Nuu- chah-nulth people, packed the black and red cape she had emblazoned with images of her family story - a moon, a canoe and a thunderbird - and joined relatives and other members of the tribe for the trip by car and ferry to Vancouver. It was the first step on their journey from Port Alberni, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, to New York to retrieve an artifact important to the Nuu-chah-nulth and even more dear to Mrs. Robinson: a painted curtain that her father, a chief of the Uchucklesaht band, had commissioned for her coming-of-age ceremony nearly 60 years ago.

"That night in a motel at the Vancouver airport, while the others slept, Mrs. Robinson stitched together headbands of cedar bark, rabbit's fur and abalone shell, working in the dim light from an open bathroom door. The headbands were for all to wear in New York when they conducted a ritual of return practiced by the Nuu-chah-nulth, an ancient Northwest Coast tribe. "While working on the headbands, Mrs. Robinson, who turns 70 today, thought about the curtain that she had not seen for decades, since her coming-of-age ceremony in the early 1940s. Her father had orchestrated the event, defying Canadian laws at the time that banned such rituals as well as the potlatch feast that followed. She recalled being anxious and shy during the celebration, and her memories of it were ambivalent. But she had not forgotten the huge painted curtain, a 12-by-14-foot depiction of crestlike images attributed to the artist Tomiish and rendered in a nontraditional style reminiscent of 1940s magazine illustration: an awesome thunderbird filling the sky, serpents flanking it breathing lightning, a whale roaring thunder and a man demonstrating his strength by lifting a hefty column.

"By the 1960s, when she became more curious about the tribal stories depicted on the curtain, it was gone, she said, probably stolen from a closet in the attic shortly after her father's death in 1963. She feared she would never see it again. 'For the Nuu-chah-nulth people, painted curtains are the most important art works,' said Alan L. Hoover, who was manager of the anthropology department at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria before retiring last month. Mr. Hoover helped organize 'Out of the Mists: Treasures of the Nuu-chah-nulth Chiefs,' a two-year traveling exhibition of painted curtains - including a boldly graphic one from the estate of Andy Warhol - and other artifacts. The show, which ended last month in Los Angeles, presented the evolution of Nuu-chah- nulth art, from painted wooden screens in the 18th century to cotton and muslin curtains from the 1860s on, when artifacts related to tribal ceremonies became illegal and fabric paintings proved easier to conceal.

"It was that exhibition that brought about the discovery of Helen Rush Robinson's curtain. George Terasaki, a retired New York dealer of American Indian art, had lent three curtains to the exhibition and told Mr. Hoover about three others that he owned. Mr. Hoover passed the information along to the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council, and one of the curtains was identified as Mrs. Robinson's. Mr. Terasaki said that when he bought the curtain 30 years ago from Norman Feder, a curator at the Denver Art Museum, it came without any historical documentation. Mrs. Robinson became excited when she learned in March that her curtain had been found in New York. 'That curtain is like a book of family history,' she said. 'It holds the proof of who I am. There are songs that go with the curtain that tell all the family stories.'

"Mrs. Robinson appeared in April with other members of the Uchucklesaht band at a meeting of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council, a body that represents 7,500 people in 14 nations, to ask for help in acquiring the curtain at the price Mr. Terasaki asked: $17,000, or 28,000 Canadian dollars. 'She stood up and told her story,' said Susan Lauder, one of Mrs. Robinson's nine surviving children. 'She told the council that white people and everybody had taken away much of the Indian culture, but if the curtain came back to her, it would mean she had it all.'

"Mrs. Robinson ended the band's plea to the council by saying, 'This is all I have left please don't take it away from me again.' She was in tears, as were many who heard her. Immediately, several young women rose to pledge support from different bands among the 14 nations. George Watts, the chairman, asked that each nation contribute $2,000 in Canadian currency to pay for the curtain, and all agreed.

"Five weeks later, Mrs. Robinson was at the Vancouver airport for her first airplane trip. That night she experienced another first: a ride in a stretch limousine, provided by Mr. Terasaki, from Newark International Airport to a Manhattan hotel, where the group of 13 stayed as his guests. Everyone rose early on Sunday morning. By 8, Mrs. Robinson was in her cape and her new headband, taking taxis with her family and the others to Mr. Terasaki's East Side apartment. They gathered outside his door so that the men could apply paint to their faces and don their robes and headbands, and they watched Ron Hamilton, a consultant who studied the curtain's history for the family, shake his rattle to spread bird down on the floor in the hallway. 'We spread down as a way to bless that place,' Mr. Hamilton said. Thomas Rush, a nephew of Mrs. Robinson's who will soon become a chief of the Uchucklesaht band, was to enter the apartment first. 'I peeked from the hallway at the curtain,' he said. 'I could barely contain myself. I wanted so badly to go in before the chant. They had to hold me back.'

"Mrs. Robinson followed him into the room. 'When I first saw the curtain again, I said hello to my father and mother," she said. "I'm here now to take you home, you're coming home with me." I said it in my own language. And I thanked the Lord for the day.' "

"Cowboys and Indians Vie, Politely, for a Museum" - the headline on James Sterngold's August 29 story in The New York Times.

Written in Los Angeles, the story began: "It is hard to avoid and almost electrical surge of emotion when browsing in the storerooms of the Southwest Museum here, which has one of the country's leading collections of American Indian artifacts. The floors are concrete and the shelves cold steel, but everywhere there are signs of a vivid, hand-crafted world humming with an inner life, lost but for many of these objects. "Hanging above one passageway, for instance, rolled neatly in plastic, is one of the last remaining complete buffalo hide tepees from the Great Plains. It is just a few feet away from an exceptionally rare, mint condition birch bark canoe a century old. Tiny sacks of hide filled with secret ingredients dolls with unblinking, dark eyes and everyday objects enlivened with spiritual symbols are spread across the thousands of shelves and drawers. "But if awe is the first emotion one feels here, melancholy is the second, because most of these artifacts have not been out of storage for decades and probably will not be exhibited anytime soon unless this important if little known museum embraces some deep changes. That day may have arrived, but with a curious twist: the Southwest Museum may have to choose whether its future lies with the Indians or with the cowboys.

"After a scandal a number of years ago in which a former director illegally sold off some valuable pieces, and then more than a decade of exploratory talks and efforts to attract a larger audience, the Southwest Museum is considering an alliance with one of two wealthier California institutions, both of which would provide new, larger quarters and far greater access to its collection.

"One of the contenders is the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, a quirky, relatively young but well-endowed institution in central Los Angeles founded by the cowboy singer and actor Gene Autry and his wife, Jackie. The other is the Pechanga Band of the Luiseño Indians, a small tribe that operates a casino midway between here and San Diego. Both have held out the possibility of a new, expanded home for the Southwest Museum.

"But a partnership with either the Autry or the Pechanga Band raises new questions. Some Indian groups have criticized the Autry proposal as a none- too-subtle attempt by the cowboys to take over the Indians, culturally speaking, while some in the art world have expressed concern about whether a casino would really be an appropriate overseer for a major collection of Indian artifacts.

"The Southwest, founded in 1907 in the out-of-the- way Mount Washington neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, is the city's oldest museum and it is proud of its independence. But it has acknowledged that its minuscule endowment of less than $5 million and its modest exhibition space - it is able to show only about 1 percent of its 350,000 objects - have forced it to consider a partnership to bring its collection out of obscurity. 'What we have is a world-class collection,' said Duane H. King, the museum's well-regarded executive director. 'What we don't have is a world-class museum.' He added, 'The most important need we have is making the collection more accessible to the public.'

But having come to that crossroads, the museum faces choices that present perils. The Southwest, with an invaluable collection and the respectability that goes with it, is being pursued by two relatively young institutions that are trying to use their wealth to obtain a share of that credibility. The Southwest must, in short, find a partner without appearing to be selling out its autonomy or its status.

"'There are numerous objects in that collection - ceramics, baskets, things like that - that are the best you will find anywhere,' said W. Richard West, a Southern Cheyenne and the director of the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institution. 'I just hope it can finally get its due. We are all watching this with great interest and concern. It's important to the whole community.'

"The Southwest Museum's collection was put together in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely by its founder, Charles Fletcher Lummis. That was a time when an enormous range of objects were available that today cannot be found. Its collection is focused on artifacts from the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Plains and the Northwest coast.

"In contrast to the Southwest Museum, the Autry boasts an endowment of $100 million. Officials at the Autry, in Griffith Park adjacent to the zoo, have proposed creating an umbrella entity that would handle administration and fund-raising for both museums but then allow the two to occupy adjacent buildings and to operate autonomously. The only remotely similar arrangement exists in the National Museum of the American Indian. Several years ago it absorbed the George Gustav Heye Foundation, which, much like the Southwest, once occupied a little-visited, undersize museum in upper Manhattan. The Heye collection - consisting of some 800,00 Indian artifacts - has retained its name at its museum on Bowling Green in lower Manhattan, but the old foundation no longer exists.

"The casino operated by the Pechanga Band is near Temecula, an area rapidly filling up with housing subdivisions. The band is planning to expand its operation to include a hotel and a cultural center, where, it has suggested, it might include a new home for the Southwest Museum. 'This is still very, very preliminary,' said Butch Murphy, the communications director of the Pechanga Band. 'We didn't have a revenue stream before we had the casino, so we never made any plans like this. We look at this idea as a means of diversifying.'

Duane Champagne, director of the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California at Los Angeles and himself a member of the Ojibway tribe, said the Southwest could gain from either choice. 'Their dilemma has always been that they want more visitors, but their endowment is not huge, and not that many people go to that location,' Mr. Champagne said. 'In some ways the Autry has done a better job of reaching out to both the general community and the native community. Traditionally, the Southwest focused on collectors. It's not the cowboys taking over the Indians in my view.' But he added: 'Turning to a gaming tribe would be a breath of fresh air, too. They have lots of money, so to me it makes sense. You want that native input.'

Others are not so sure. 'An institution like the Southwest Museum, which has such enormous potential and could have such a large educational impact on the city, can never sacrifice its integrity,' said Richard Koshalek, the president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and for 20 years before that the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art here. 'They should not be enticed by the world of entertainment, and they should not be enticed just by money. In my humble opinion, they need to explore other options.' He added, 'There is no room for error.'

"Mr. West of the Smithsonian said the Southwest's collection was so important that he had pursued discussions with the museum about joining forces. But with the National Museum of the American Indian caught up in the construction of a huge new building in Washington, it has not been able to continue talks with the Southwest, he said. 'We would have loved nothing better than to have had some closer relationship with the Southwest Museum, and we have had those discussions in the past,' Mr. West said. 'It's just that the timing was a little bit wrong. But we still are concerned that they find the best arrangement.'

"The discussions with the Autry have now moved the furthest. But there are some substantial hurdles. For one, the Autry has had to struggle to be taken seriously, in spite of huge efforts in recent years to increase its big endowment and pursue more scholarly exhibitions. 'We got pretty far and talked for a long time, but some of their board members resisted,' said John Gray, a former banker and now the executive director of the Autry, acknowledging that his museum had yet to establish itself as a serious contender among the leading Indian museums. 'They thought the Autry was superficial. So we're just working harder to explain who we are and what we are trying to do.'

"The Autry is in some ways like a strange old ghost town attic of Western collectibles. It has for instance the actor Vincent Price's collection of Western motif paintings. There is an Indian brand motorcycle. The museum also has a cash register from a frontier era shop, custom-made wagons from Gene Autry's Melody Ranch and a huge collection of ranch implements. But in recent years it has made some ambitious acquisitions, received some important donations and has worked hard on a diverse array of shows. The shows have ranged from those on Woody Guthrie and Northwest coast Indian masks to the role of Chinese immigrants and blacks in the development of the frontier. It even put together a show of Polish political posters and other public art that used images from the American West.

"The Autry has also tried to present a balanced view. For instance in an exhibition on George Armstrong Custer it offered visitors two separate paths, one showing how he was viewed by Indians and another on how he was viewed by white society. One major hurdle to a combination with the Autry is resistance to the construction of any new buildings on parkland. There was opposition when the Autry itself was built, and some neighborhood groups have already said they would fight any further loss of open space. Anticipating the problem, Mr. Gray said he had suggested that the new building go up in what is now a parking and delivery area behind the Autry.

"Whether that is the best location for showing off the items in the Southwest's now dark and quiet storehouses remains to be seen. 'All these things,' Mr. King said, standing before an open shelf of buffalo hide moccasins, 'tell stories that people ought to be able to hear.' "

"Museums Return Indian Treasures," reads the headline in The Wall Street Journal's August 31 View/Artifacts column written by Jason Edward Kaufman.

The story begins: "In 1899, Union Pacific Railroad chairman Edward H. Harriman led a remarkable survey expedition to the Alaska coast. Among the 126 passengers accompanying him on the luxury steamer were his family, most notably the eight-year-old future governor of New York and big league diplomat W. Averill Harriman, and two dozen of the country's greatest scientists, naturalists and artists, including nature writer John Burroughs, photographer Edward S. Curtis and conservationist John Muir, who had recently founded the Sierra Club.

"In the final days of the two-month, 9,000-mile journey, after 50 stops from Seattle to Siberia," the story continues, "the ship anchored off a native village on Cape Fox, south of Ketchikan near Alaska's southern border with British Columbia. The Tlingit Indian settlement appeared abandoned, so Harriman's band went ashore and helped themselves to totem poles, an entire decorated house, ceremonial blankets and other items later distributed to some of the party members' affiliated museums.

"More than a century later, five prominent U. S. museums recently returned a large part of the plunder. The Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Chicago, the Peabody Museum at Harvard, the Johnson Museum at Cornell and the Burke Museum at the University of Washington sent back four monumental carved-and-painted-cedar totem poles dating from the early to mid-19th century and five large architectural fragments from a clan chief's decorated house. It was one of the most significant restitutions to date under the controversial 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

"The repatriation festivities at Ketchikan became a highlight of 'Harriman Retraced,' a recent expedition following the 1899 route. Tom Litwin, director of the Clark Science Center at Smith College, brought together 30 scientists - half of them Alaskans - and some 70 Smith patrons and alumnae (who paid up to $6,900 for cabins) as well as filmmakers working on a two-hour documentary that will air on PBS next year. Their four-week voyage, which ended in Nome on August 19, sought to gauge the ecological and social changes since Harriman's day.

The return of the Harriman hoard is symptomatic of the guilt-ridden spirit of our time. But it didn't come easily. Irene Dundas, repatriation manager for Cape Fox Corporation, whose 290 shareholders include most of the descendants of the three clans that lived at the village, spent seven years locating the objects and filing claims. But evidence alone might not have persuaded the museums to relinquish their very valuable objects if it hadn't been for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

"NAGPRA requires federally funded institutions to inventory their Native American materials and offer to repatriate certain categories of objects to the appropriate tribes. The main target of the statutes was human remains - bones and hair and teeth from an estimated 200,000 individuals reside in U. S. museums and agencies. Tribes want them back because Native spiritual beliefs demand that these ancestors be laid to rest on tribal lands along with their associated funerary paraphernalia. The legislation applies also to items deemed crucial to community identity or ongoing religious practices of Indian groups."

The story continues: "Opponents justifiably contend that the law ignores the interests of Western science, vacates legitimate transactions by which museums obtained artworks, results in reburial or destruction of important pieces by Natives, and relies at times on tenuous, even specious, claims of tribal affiliation that purportedly span hundreds of generations. A federal district judge ion Portland, Ore., is about to rule on the fate of 'Kennewick Man,' a 9,200-year-old skeleton that has become the rope in a tug-of-war between scientists eager to study the ancient American and tribes as far away as Samoa that claim him as a distant relative. But as outrageous and politically correct as all this may appear, keep in mind that the Nagpra cases often are the equivalent of folks asking museums to return their grandma's gravestone - or in some cases grandma herself.

"'People have the impression that trucks are going to pull up to museums and deplete the collections,' says James Pepper Henry, repatriation manager for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, which is subject to a separate Nagpra-like law. 'But in reality, less than 1/10 of 1% of the 800,000 objects in our collection will be subject to repatriation,' and not all of those were displayable in the first place.

"Call it affirmative action or simple restitution of property, but the process can help Natives connect with vanishing ways of life and rekindle their cultures. Cape Fox is a vivid case in point..."

The story concludes: "Ms. Dundas says the tribal treasures will become part of a new cultural center to open next spring. The area already boasts 'the largest totem park in the world,' but with half a million visitors descending each summer, one more attraction couldn't hurt. 'We're trying to find the rest of the things that were taken,' she says, citing boxes, drums, masks, helmets, blankets and marble-bear posts stripped from a grave. Most likely they're in private collections and not subject to federal repatriation claims. But Cape Fox Corporation recently purchased some 1,000 Tlingit antiquities from local collectors and Ms. Dundas hopes these smaller items will one day be put on view in a tribal museum."

"In Santa Fe, Indian Art Goes Up and Down With the Market," read the headline for Ken Shulman's September 2 story in The New York Times.

Shulman's story, with a Santa Fe dateline, begins: "At a time when the world's cultural borders are becoming increasingly fluid, artists are finding they no longer have to depend on a single market for reputations and livelihoods. Filmmakers can seek distribution at festivals in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Contemporary artists can waltz through the global biennial circuit. But for American Indian art, there is only Indian Market. Organized by the Southwest Association of Indian Artists, a Santa Fe nonprofit arts organization, this year's Indian Market brought together 1,000 American Indian artists and an estimated 100,000 visitors last month for a weekend of networking, critiques and commerce. For size, quality and cachet, there is no other American Indian art fair that comes close to it.

"'I cannot say enough good things about Indian Market,' said Raymond Nordwall, 36, a Pawnee-Chippewa from Muskogee, Okla. Mr. Nordwall estimates that almost half his income over the last 10 years has come from sales made either during Indian Market or as a result of it, to clients he met there. Based in Santa Fe, Mr. Nordwall does colorful monotypes and oil paintings of traditional American Indian scenes. Last year, his print 'Reflection of Horsemen' was selected for the Indian Market poster. " "'That definitely changed my career,' said Mr. Nordwall, who brings his works on paper to Indian Market and sells oil paintings out of the gallery he recently opened on Santa Fe's pricey Canyon Road. 'I'd always sold out at Indian Market, but this time people were fighting over my work.'

"Established in 1922, Indian Market was originally an arts-and-crafts adjunct to the Santa Fe Fiesta, a celebration of the Spanish reconquest of northern New Mexico in 1692. Paradoxically, Indians were not invited to attend the inaugural Indian Market - until the 1950s, Indians were not even allowed to use bathrooms in downtown Santa Fe. Instead, artists from the Pueblos surrounding the city were asked to send their works, mostly ceramics, to the market, where the wares would compete for $5 best-in-category prizes. Single pots sold for $3.50 apiece. The current version of Indian Market features a broad array of art and objects, ranging from pottery to painting to jewelry and ceremonial attire. There collectors discover new artists, gallery owners leave business cards at the booths of dozens of potential clients, and artists, many of whom live in remote communities, catch up with their friends and colleagues.

"The show is still juried. Three-member volunteer teams of artists, gallery owners, collectors and curators assign prizes in nearly 400 categories, making the Friday evening Indian Market preview at the Sweeney Convention Center look like a farewell banquet at summer camp. The ribbons carry a nominal cash prize, along with a commercial kick.

"'Collectors tend to buy ribbons,' said Diego Romero, a 37-year-old ceramicist from Cochiti Pueblo outside Santa Fe, who has participated in Indian Market since 1992. Mr. Romero transforms Mimbres bowls - a prehistoric pueblo ceramic style - into works of stinging social commentary. More innovative than most of the work at Indian Market, Mr. Romero's art has been both sought and snubbed at the show. 'I've had shows where I've won multiple prizes,' he said. 'And I've had shows where I've walked away with nothing. That tends to determine how I do here.' This year, Mr. Romero won a best-in- division award for 'Storyteller,' a Mimbres-style bowl decorated with a scene of an Indian family watching the Simpsons on their living room television set. The piece sold for $5,000 as soon as the artist opened his booth after arriving late at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday. Mr. Romero is known outside of Indian art circles he has pieces in collections at the Cartier Foundation in Paris and at the British Museum in London. Yet unlike the Indian art superstars Dan Namingha and Tony Abeyta, Mr. Romero continues to rent booth space at Indian Market, saying it's important that Indian artists do so. 'We're not just desert braves in moccasins and G- strings,' he said. 'That's why I do the work I do, and why I show it at Indian Market. I feel I have a duty here.' "

"Indian Market is not without detractors. Many of Santa Fe's 65,000 residents resent the annual invasion of flashily dressed people in high-priced cars looking for art that is well beyond the means of most locals. Some Santa Feans refer to the show as Indian Markup. Longtime collectors complain that newcomers now hire surrogates to wait in line overnight at up to a dozen booths, staking claims to the best pieces and spoiling the small-town spirit of the show.

"With no real rival, Indian Market enjoys a predominance in the field that some Indian artists complain tends to produce homogeneous, repetitive work geared for weekend art warriors and not for serious collectors or scholars. 'This market is entirely driven by the patron,' said Joanna Bigfeather, a Cherokee installation artist and the director of Santa Fe's Institute of American Indian Arts Museum. 'And the patron wants the art to look Indian.' "Ms. Bigfeather participated in Indian Market for more than a decade. At her last one, in 1997, she was shocked when several potential clients asked her to alter a series of provocative pieces so that they would appear less disturbing. 'Unfortunately, being admitted to Indian Market is a stamp of success,' she said. 'Artists tend to look at this show as if it's the Land of Oz.'

"Yet the most frequent complaint from artists is that they cannot get into Indian Market. For years, the Southwest Association of Indian Artists has operated a two-tier system that admits Indian Market veterans almost by default but puts new artists through a rigorous application process. Barbara Walzer, who took over as executive director of the association last year, said she would like to adopt a more equitable system in which each applicant is judged on merit, not prestige or tenure.

"'The question is, what should Market be?' she said. 'We have to come up with a policy that would let younger artists in and that would let older artists exit through attrition, without shame or embarrassment. And this is tricky - just like assigning booths on the plaza is tricky, with 100 tribes, many of whom have historical rivalries. If you think that doing a seating plan for a White House dinner is tricky, you ought to spend some time in our office two weeks before Market.' "

"Don't Jeer at the Souvenirs They May Be the Real Deal" read the headline on Joshua Brockman's story in the September 2 New York Times on a current exhibit at a Santa Fe museum. Datelined Santa Fe, the story began: "Get your kitsch on Route 66. As New Mexico looks back on the 75th anniversary of Route 66, American Indian mementos still figure prominently in the trading posts and roadside stands across the Southwest. "'Tourist Icons: Native American Kitsch, Camp and Fine Art Along Route 66,' an exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture of the Museum of New Mexico through Feb. 3, explores the connection between fine art and souvenirs, a thread that endures in many of the crafts that were sold last month at Indian Market here.

"'This novelty tradition has really fused with the fine-art tradition in a lot of the work that is being done today,' said Duane Anderson, director of the museum. 'At Indian Market, the full spectrum is represented.'

"American Indian souvenirs first became popular here in the 1880s with the rise of railroad tourism. The flow of visitors increased dramatically, however, with the advent of automobile tourism in the late 1920s. Indian artists responded by creating new art forms and variations on traditional crafts. A necklace from Santo Domingo Pueblo, for example, contains bits of black battery casings and red phonograph records in lieu of jet and coral, precious materials that would have made the jewelry too costly for the automobile tourist, who was typically less affluent than the railroad traveler.

"Many of the 850 handmade and commercially manufactured objects on display in 'Tourist Icons,' including some 300 pairs of salt-and-pepper shakers, are anonymous works created in miniature specifically for the automobile sightseer, who had limited space in the car to store purchases. Small ceramic models of pueblos and kivas (ceremonial chambers) or female figures grinding corn or weaving helped explain native life to outsiders. Generic objects like candlesticks, ashtrays and animal figures were also transformed into Southwestern art using hand-dug clay and traditional firing processes.

"'This particular exhibit challenges a very popular notion that all of this tourist material is unimportant, trivial, artistically inferior and that anyone who would buy some of this "stuff" clearly had poor taste,' said Joseph Traugott, curator of the show. Even celebrated artists produced souvenirs to make a living. Fannie Nampeyo's bird ashtray and Maria Martinez's three- inch black-on-black plate in the exhibit are displayed alongside larger and more intricate examples of pottery that would have been sold at Indian Market or to trading posts.

"What's more, members of the Tesuque Pueblo pioneered the 'rain god' figurative tradition in the late 1800s specifically for the tourist trade. Still practiced today, this 120-year-old ceramic form represents the longest continuously practiced figurative-art tradition in the Southwest, said Mr. Anderson, author of the forthcoming book 'When Rain Gods Reigned.' 'They've been rejected as "tourist junk," and yet to the Tesuque people who make them, they've become a means of individual self-expression for the artist and also a symbol of village identity,' he said.

"The growth in automobile tourism also accelerated the secularization of sacred icons. Hopi Kachina earrings, Kachina candles and a Mud Head whiskey decanter from the Ezra Brooks Distilling Company reveal the way in which Indian religious imagery was appropriated by both native artists and outside companies for commercial uses.

"Still, the revival of ancient design elements and the use of new materials remains a hallmark of contemporary Indian artists. Kathleen Nez, a potter who received a 2001 Southwestern Association for Indian Arts fellowship, modeled the design of her doughnut-shaped water canteen on a triangular vessel of the ancient Mimbres people. 'It's a melding of both a contemporary ceramic tradition and a prehistoric design tradition,' Ms. Nez said."

The obituary of tribal art expert Terrence Barrow appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on September 10.

The obituary by Diana Leone began, "Noted Maori and Polynesian art expert Terence Tui A Tane Barrow, 78, died Aug. 31 at his Honolulu home, leaving to his son Leonard the job of finishing his 21st book. The New Zealand native had a Cambridge University doctorate in Pacific anthropology and worked 20 years as a curator for the New Zealand National Museum before coming to Honolulu in 1964, said his wife, Hisako. He was the Bishop Museum's Polynesian Collection curator from 1964-68 and an author and representative for Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Co. from 1965-85, Hisako Barrow said. "'All along, he did tribal art appraising," she said. 'He was very famous -- anyone who wanted to authenticate Polynesian art would call. He got calls from Paris, London, Christie's in New York.' She described her husband, who was Caucasian but had a Maori middle name, as 'very creative, very knowledgeable. We traveled all over the world together. He has friends all over the world. I had a most unusual life through him.' "Among Barrow's 20 hardback book titles: 'Maori Wood Sculpture,' 'Maori Art of New Zealand,' 'Women of Polynesia,' 'The Art of the South Sea Islands,' 'The Decorative Arts of New Zealand Maori,' 'The Art of Tahiti,' 'Music of the Maori,' 'Incredible Hawaii' and 'More Incredible Hawaii.' "'His book "Art and Life in Polynesia" put him on the map,' said Barrow's son Leonard, who is studying toward a doctorate in Polynesian anthropology and hopes to finish the book his father was working on the last few years. "As a father, no one could have had such a helpful, kind and compassionate teacher,' Leonard Barrow said. 'During the four years he was ill, it forced me to hurry and learn his ideas on Polynesian art and culture. "'He was open-minded," Leonard Barrow said. "He fought the Japanese in World War II and then married one,' referring to his mother, a Japanese native. "'We lived in three worlds: Japan, New Zealand and Hawaii,' said Hisako Barrow, who will return her husband's ashes to his homeland this fall..."

Roy Sieber, Research Scholar Emeritus at the National Museum Of African Art, died in September. This obituary was taken from U. S. Newswire, September 19, and was supplied by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.

Datelined Washington, DC, the obituary begins, "Roy Sieber, 78, Research Scholar Emeritus, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, died on Friday, Sept. 14, in Bloomington, Ind. Sieber, the first scholar in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in African art history, joined the Smithsonian in 1983 and was responsible for evaluating collection research and developing standards for acquisitions. He was co-curator and co-author of the exhibition and catalogue "African Art in the Cycle of Life" in 1987-88, the museum's inaugural exhibition on the National Mall, and worked tirelessly until his retirement in 1994. Highly respected around the world, Sieber's contributions to the field of African art and more broadly to the understanding of the African humanities were unsurpassed. As a museum professional, he channeled scholarly concerns through the medium of African art exhibitions and, as an Indiana University professor guided countless students through the learning process.

"'Dr. Sieber was a dedicated teacher who freely shared his vast knowledge,' said Roslyn Walker, director of the National Museum of African Art, and Sieber student. 'He generously gave of his time to his students and never failed to recognize the contributions they made to his exhibitions and programs. We have lost a great man and a very dear friend.'

"Sieber shaped much of what is today known and understood about African art in all its forms. He received the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association for his achievements and lifetime distinctions. After his retirement, Sieber remained extremely active in teaching, writing, consulting, collecting and curating exhibitions. He assisted with the development of exhibitions at the National Museum of African Art, the Dayton Art Institute and the Museum for African Art, New York. His publications included catalogues that accompanied seminal exhibitions on the art of northern Nigeria, on African textiles and furniture and household objects as well as numerous other articles on African art. Most recently he wrote the introduction to 'Selected Works from the Collection of The National Museum of African Art,' 'Hair in African Art and Culture' and an essay in 'Extreme Canvas: Hand-painted Movie Posters from Ghana.' He lectured on African art at numerous institutions in the United States and abroad including the Smithsonian Institution, Columbia University, the University of Florida, the University of Ghana, Ife University in Nigeria and Indiana University, where he was Rudy Professor Emeritus and former curator of African and ethnographic arts for the university's museum..."

"Douglas Newton, Curator Emeritus at the Metropolitan, Dead at 80" read the headline of Newton's September 22 obituary in the New York Times.

By Times art writer Holland Cotter, the obituary began, "Douglas Newton, curator emeritus of the department of the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and an innovator in designing museum displays of non-Western art, died on Wednesday at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was 80.

"Born Bryan Leslie Douglas Newton to English parents on a Malayasian rubber plantation in 1920, and educated in England, he worked as an editor, journalist and scriptwriter for the BBC before moving to New York in 1956. The following year he joined the Museum of Primitive Art, newly established by Nelson A. Rockefeller in a converted Manhattan brownstone on West 54th Street, as an assistant curator. In 1960 he became a full curator, and in 1974 the museum's director, succeeding Robert Goldwater.

"Mr. Newton organized 64 exhibitions for the Museum of Primitive Art, which is now defunct. His groundbreaking designs, with atmospheric lighting and striking installations, brought the museum both critical praise and public attention and had long-term influences on museum displays of so-called primitive art. 'He knows the fine line between showing sympathy for a tradition on its own terms and manipulating the tradition in terms of Western practices and expectations,' wrote Robert Farris Thompson, a Yale art historian, in 1978.

"Mr. Newton went on to become the principal designer for major exhibitions in other museums, including 'The Art of Oceania, Africa and the Americas' (1969) and 'Te Maori' (1984) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and 'The Art of the Pacific Islands' (1979) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

"A fluent writer, he produced many monographs, including 'Crocodile and Cassowary: Religious Art of the Upper Sepik River, New Guinea' (1971) and 'Arts of the South Seas' (1999). He was also the editor of more than two dozen books on the art of the Pacific Islands. He was recently given the Manu Daula Award by the Pacific Arts Association for a lifetime of work devoted to the arts of Oceania.

"Mr. Newton was appointed consultative chairman of the department of primitive art at the Metropolitan Museum in 1974, and department chairman in 1975. That year, he began to oversee the transfer of the art collections, library and photograph study collection of the Museum of Primitive Art to the Metropolitan, which was given the collections by Mr. Rockefeller in memory of his son Michael, an anthropologist who died in 1961 while on an expedition in New Guinea. The works were displayed in the museum's new Michael C. Rockefeller wing. Mr. Newton supervised the design team for the wing, which opened in 1982. Its debut was hailed as placing the art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas on a museological footing with ancient and modern art.

"From 1982 until his retirement in 1990, Mr. Newton was the museum's Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede chairman of the department of primitive art. He was also senior adviser to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and was recently an adviser to the Quai Branly in Paris..."

Media File

Excerpts from recent magazine and newspaper articles of interest to the membership. All opinions are those of the writers of the stories and of the people quoted, not of ATADA. Members are encouraged to submit press clippings for publication in future Newsletters.

On July 13, Cathy Horyn wrote on The New York Times fashion page that "All manner of beaded jewelry has taken off this summer, from prayer bead-inspired elastic bracelets to Indian beadwork chokers. "

"Colorful Huichol Indian bracelets," the story continues, "are $85 to $120 at Saks Fifth Avenue, and chokers are $198 at Henri Bendel. Necklaces of turquoise or coral by Erickson Beamon are $135 to $495 at Barneys."

Also in July, in the New York Magazine feature Gothamstyle, Maura Egan writes, "Despite sweltering temperatures, the city's fashionable crowd is stepping out in ankle-high suede Navajo boots."

"Handmade by an Arizona craftsman," the story continues, "they were originally designed for nearby tribes. When David Rees, one of the owners of the Chelsea jewelry store Ten Thousand Things, spotted the shoes during a visit to the Southwest, he commissioned the craftsmen to make them for his East Coast customers. The boots ($115 for suede, $130 for leather) have a rounded deer-hide sole that is satisfyingly Pradaesque, and come in designer colors like bright orange and purple. European customers can't get enough of them, Rees's co-owner Ron Anderson explains, because 'they think they are truly American.' "

"Navajo Lawsuits Contend U. S. Government Failed the Tribe in Mining Royalty Deals," is the headline of a July 18, 1999 New York Times story by Barry Meier.

On the eve of a 1985 ruling by John W. Fritz, an Interior department official who wanted to sharply increase the coal mining fees paid to the Navajo tribe, the Peabody Coal Company started what Meier calls "a high-stakes lobbying effort aimed at Donald P. Hodel, then Secretary of the Interior. Company lawyers even drafted a memo, issued by Mr. Hodel, that told Mr. Fritz to withhold his ruling. Mr. Fritz's stillborn decision is at the heart of two legal actions brought by the Navajos, including a civil lawsuit disclosed last month against Peabody Group, the parent of Peabody Coal, and others. The action claims that Peabody Coal and two utilities unfairly influenced Federal officials to derail Mr. Fritz's report, a decision the tribe says cost it $600 million in lost mining royalties. For his part, Mr. Hodel, now an energy consultant in Longmont, Colorado, says he did not recall the Navajo coal episode but that he always acted the best interest of the tribes.

"Choctaw Chief Leads His Mississippi Tribe Into the Global Market" reads the headline in a feature story by Joel Millman in The Wall Street Journal on July 23,1999.

Datelined Empalme, Mexico, the story begins, "Among chief executives, Phillip Martin is unique. That's not only because he runs a conglomerate that does everything from make auto parts to run casinos. And it's not just because he is a real chief, as in chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. He is noteworthy because over the past 30 years he has helped to bring a wealth of jobs within the border of the 25,000-acre Choctaw reservation scattered over patches of land in nine counties of central Mississippi. Now that so many local Choctaws are earning too much to compete for low-wage factory work, he is doing what many U. S. CEOs have done. He has taken his business to Mexico, making Chahta Enterprise the first Native American-owned company to leave the reservation and take a giant step into the global economy. 'We started in this business competing with the Japanese, but now all our competition is coming from Mexico,' says the 73-year-old chief, now in his seventh term as leader of the tribe. Mr. Martin says the North American Free Trade Agreement that went into effect in 1994 meant that Chahta had to join the migration south or lose its contracts." The factory is located 300 miles south of Tucson and makes electric-wire harnesses for car switches for Ford Motor Co.

"Chahta's Mexican operation," Millman writes, "expected to gross over $100 million this year, helps fund investments that have created a variety of jobs: in tribal schools and in the hotels, casinos and golf courses that now dot the reservation thanks to Chief Martin. He brought an American Greetings Co. printing operation to the area, and plans to have a plastic-molding factory up and running sometime next year. 'Business never stands still, and manufacturing is always changing.' Chief Martin says. 'The challenge now is to diversify. But believe me, we're in a better condition to compete than we ever were before.' "

"Navajos Welcome Recovered Artifacts," is the headline of Leslie Linthicum's September 17 story in the Albuquerque Journal.

"Sometime in the late 1980s," the story begins, "a grave robber rooted around in a cave and came away with a remarkably intact and rare leather mask that had been used in Navajo religious ceremonies for hundreds of years. The mask sat around the grave robber's house in Farmington, then was sold to one Santa Fe gallery and then to another. It found its way into a lighted display case in the office of a wealthy Tucson, Arizona prehistoric art collector and finally into the hands of the police. The mask and three other prehistoric artifacts will end their time as illegal plunder today when they are welcomed back to the Navajo Reservation with the blessings of a medicine man. The ceremony, held in the Navajo capital of Window Rock, will end nearly a decade of work to track down the mask and other artifacts, prosecute the man responsible for stealing them from public lands and identify the tribe that is their rightful owner. The case began when Noel Johns, a special agent with the Bureau of Land Management, posed as a college professor to get information about a suspected dealer of illegal fossils. The investigation led to Patrick Williams, a native of the Farmington area. Federal agents in a yearlong investigation now believe Williams was responsible for looting hundreds and maybe thousands of Indian artifacts from public lands over a 30-year career. Williams, now 44, said in a statement to police several years ago that he had been hunting for artifacts since he was 10 years old. He admitted to taking pots, fossils and wooden and leather artifacts along with Mimbres and Chacoan pottery. Williams likened his artifact hunting to an addiction and told police, 'I found it hard to do anything else.' He told the police he spent the thousands of dollars that galleries and collectors paid for the artifacts on drugs and prostitutes. Williams has pleaded guilty to selling archeological artifacts, a federal felony, and received four years probation and a $5,000 fine." Williams is also awaiting trial on a charge of possession of methamphetamine Officers were satisfied with Williams' probationary sentence in light of the drug charges that could keep him in jail. "'He was a rabid collector who had been digging for years,' said Johns, 'and we're just happy to get him off the street.' Neither the gallery owners nor the Tucson businessman who bought the mask for $25,000 were charged with any crimes."

"Eagle Feather Honor Seems Mixed Blessing," reads the headline for Dan Morain's story in the Arizona Republic on September 11 (reprinted from the Los Angeles Times).

"Among Native Americans, there is no honor higher than receiving an eagle feather," the story begins. "It's a symbol of high achievement and great spiritual power. Few Native Americans ever attain such status. So California Governor's Gray Davis' aides used reverential tones to announce that an eagle feather had been bestowed upon their boss at a meeting with Indians last week. The presentation was made as several dozen Native Americans and Davis negotiated the future of casinos on tribal land. In the non-Indian world, however, possession of an eagle feather is known by a different term: misdemeanor. It's punishable by six months in jail or a $1,000 fine or both - unless the person possessing it is a Native American or has a government permit. Davis has no permit from state or federal wildlife officials to possess the plumage. Whether Davis has earned the honor is another question. 'It has been given,' Clarence Atwell, chairman of the Santa Rosa Rancheria, said. 'We'll just let it sit there and work on him.'

"Show Unmasks Rare Find: Series of coincidences lead to expert appraisal," read the headline in David Whitnoy's story in the September 12 Arizona Republic.

The story begins, "When Marcelyn Carroll trudged of to a San Francisco taping of Antiques Roadshow two years ago, she had no idea the object her family kept stored in a black plastic bag for so many years would stir such a fuss. Now Carroll and her grown children are on the prowl for a museum to display what turned out to be an extremely rare hunting mask made by Alaska Eskimos in the early 1800s. The mask is worth at least $65,000, though in some ways, it's priceless." When it was suggested that the mask be displayed in a museum in Alaska, Carroll, who lives in Northern California, said she wanted to keep the mask closer to her family's home. Donald Ellis, who appraised the mask on the PBS program, told Ms. Carroll, "there are less than 25 of these known to exist in the world today."

It wasn't just the Anasazi! "Neanderthals were Cannibals, Study of French Cave Indicates," is the headline of an October 1 story in the Arizona Republic.

Lauren Neergaard's Associated Press story begins, "In a dark cave in southern France 100,000 years ago, a group of hunters bent over their meal, expertly slicing flesh from carcasses and sucking marrow from the bones. But a closer examination uncovers a grisly scene: These were Neanderthals, and they butchered six fellow people just like they did deer, the first real proof, say scientists, that Neanderthals practiced cannibalism.

Whether some Neanderthals ate their own kind has been a controversy since the turn of the century, when Neanderthal bones bearing suspicious scars were found in Croatia. How to determine cannibalism from ancient bones is tricky. Tim White [a paleontologist from the University of California, Berkeley] published a book in 1992 about cannibalism among Anasazi Indians of the U. S. Southwest that concluded that certain markings could differentiate bones cut for consumption from those otherwise damaged."

On October 4, in the Arizona Republic, a story by Kerry Fehr-Snyder was headlined, "Tucson Lab to Help Settle Kennewick Man Controversy: Furor is raging over source of skeleton."

"It's just a tiny pile of bone shavings inside a Tupperware bowl in a University of Arizona file drawer. But it's also a clue to one of the biggest controversies facing American anthropology. Were ancestors of American Indians alone as the first humans in North America? Or were there also Caucasoids - people with physical features generally associated with Europeans - living here about the same time? The scientific, political and legal furor raging over the skeletal remains called Kennewick Man goes to the heart of human's earliest history in North America.

The battle has reached the highest level. Last year, the Clinton administration opposed a bill to allow study of Kennewick man. Last week, however, a federal judge ordered that the study go forward. Ever since 1996, when two students found the skull to the 10,000-year-old skeleton on the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, the remains have been caught in a tug of war. On one side are Native Americans and federal officials who are blocking further study of the skeleton, claiming it should be reburied under the Native American Graves protection Act of 1990. One the other side is a group of eight scientists [who] filed suit in federal court asserting that the skeleton, found on federal land, should be studied to better understand human development and migration in North America."

In her Antiques column on October 22, Wendy Moonan wrote that "diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but beads are for everybody. Their appeal is ancient, universal and primal."

Moonan is reviewing A Beaded Universe: Strands of Culture, an exhibit at the American Craft Museum in New York. A photograph that accompanies the article shows a dance cape of woven beadwork and fabric from New Guinea. "The show begins with a time line illustrating that beads go back 40,000 years then it documents this history with displays of exceptional pieces on three floors," writes Moonan. The show includes an eight-foot-wide priest's robe from the Yoruba culture in Nigeria, a colorful Ndebele beaded wedding costume and a Zulu apron with rows of memory beads, Indonesian wooden baby carriers covered in cowrie shells and a Tibetan turquoise and coral neck collar. Pieces from Japan, Europe and America, including a Navajo deerskin dress with beaded tassels, are also on display. The beadwork is on loan from the Bead Museum of Glendale, Arizona, several private collectors and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, where the show originated.

Rita Reif writes about the exhibit "Talavera Poblana: Four Centuries of a Mexican Ceramic Tradition," on display at the Americas Society Art Gallery in New York, in her Art/Architecture column in The New York Times on October 24.

The show of 86 pieces comes mostly from American and Mexican museums. Reif discusses the history of "the innovative potters from Puebla" who "have taken dazzling designs of other cultures and reproduced them. Then, to mark them as Mexican, they have added images of a cactus here, a parrot there.

The first jars, basins and platters to be made [in Puebla] reflected the bold shapes and elaborate patterns of Spanish and Islamic cultures. Then, by the early 17th century, they added colorful Italian majolica, blue-and-white patterns from Ming porcelains and folk-based patterns based on Flemish and Dutch models. The aim was to match the impressive works being made back in Spain by the country's finest ceramists in Talavera de la Reina, a town near Toledo that became Spain's Delft. Just how brilliantly these Spanish potters succeeded in transforming the traditional terra cotta ceramics in Mexico is the little-known story that is revealed," Reif says, in this exhibit. The show runs through December 12.

Another fashion update, this time from the October 25 issue of People magazine.

"Am I Blue?" asks the headline of the magazine's Style Watch feature. "Suddenly stars are blue and you can be too," reads the text. "Turquoise - the semi-precious, sky-colored stone long identified with the Southwest - is popping up on bracelets and necklaces. 'It has a certain mystique,' says jeweler Don Lucas, who outfitted Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar with a turquoise bracelet for the Emmys. 'It's such a bright, attractive color,' agrees Ally McBeal's Portia de Rossi, who recently bought a ring and bracelet decorated with the gemstone." The story also touts turquoise's alleged ability to ward off illness, and is illustrated with photos of the likes of Sharon Stone and Sophia Loren decked out in blue jewelry. Unfortunately, none of the turquoise jewelry shown appears to be Native American in origin.

"An Ancient Skull Challenges Long-Held Theories," is the headline for a story datelined Rio de Janeiro in the October 26 Science Times section of The New York Times.

"A human skull that is prominently displayed at the National Museum here has been attracting crowds and controversy in equal measure since it was first unveiled early this month," Larry Rother's story begins. "After two decades in storage, the fossilized cranium has now been identified by Brazilian scientists as the oldest human remains ever recovered in the Western hemisphere. The skull is believed to be that of a young woman, nicknamed Luzia, who is believed to have roamed the savannah of south-central Brazil some 11,500 years ago. Even more startling, a reconstruction of her cranium undertaken in Britain this year indicates that her features appear to be Negroid rather than Mongoloid, suggesting that the Western Hemisphere may have initially been settled not only earlier than thought, but by a people distinct from the ancestors of today's North and South American Indians. 'We can no longer say that the first colonizers of the Americas came from the north of Asia, as previous models have proposed,' said Dr. Walter Neves, an anthropologist at the University of Sao Paulo, who made the initial discovery... 'The skeleton is nearly 2,000 years older than any skeleton ever found in the Americas, and it does not look like those of Amerindians or North Asians.' ...If the date is confirmed, the find could transform thinking about the peopling of the Americas. It may be some time before that work is completed, but meanwhile, archeologists here and abroad say the find is potentially very important."

On the same day, a story datelined Salmon, Idaho headlined "Seeking Land for Tribe of Girl Who Helped Lewis and Clark" by Timothy Egan was on the front page of The New York Times.

"Here in the valley where the Shoshone Sacagawea led Lewis and Clark to one of the most serendipitous encounters in the annals of discovery," the story begins, "the stores are full of Indian art, the pastures are grazed by Indian-bred horses, and the land itself is imprinted with Indian names. But there are no American Indians here. The Lemhi Shoshone, living links to the teen-age girl who was instrumental in leading the Corps of Discovery over the Continental Divide in 1805, have been all but erased from the place they called home for hundreds of years. The 400 or so Lemhi live on a reservation 200 miles south of here, on desert land set aside for two much bigger tribes. Orphans in an arid land, the Lemhi say they have been down so long that they use an ironic phrase to describe their current status. 'Basically, we are the Indians to the other Indians,' said Rod Ariwite, a leader of the Lemhi Shoshone. But he tribe's luck may be about to change. The Lemhi have asked President Clinton to carve out a small piece of Federal land in the Salmon River country on the Idaho-Montana border as a place where the tribe can tell its story to the hordes of Lewis and Clark history buffs, honor their dead and try to stitch some of the past to the present. As it is, the only visible Indian in this valley is the Salmon High School mascot, a chieftain who represents 'the home of the savages' as the school sign says. 'What we're asking for is not very big,' Mr. Ariwite said. 'Let us build a center here-in this valley where we have always lived - for our first lady. The Lewis and Clark bicentennial is our last fight. Let us come home.' "

On August 4, 1999, in her Antiques column in The New York Times, Wendy Moonan asked the reader to "Try to imagine Ellsworth Kelly, Josef Albers and Mark Rothko working 2,500 years ago in Peru. They would be using the same lexicon of abstract art - concentric circles, stripes, squares and triangles - but working entirely with exotic feathers instead of paint.

"Now imagine," Moonan continues, "that their finest creations had been placed in burial tombs, only to be discovered in the 20th century. You now understand the impact that ancient Peruvian feather art has had on today's sensibilities." Moonan is writing about an exhibit in Bonn, Germany called "Orinoco-Parima, Indian Societies in Venezuela: The Cisneros Collection." The show runs through February 27, 2000 and includes weapons, baskets, musical instruments, ceremonial artifacts and feather art collected by Gustavo and Patricia Cisneros of New York.

Moonan quotes James Reid, author of "Magic Feathers," to be published in 2000, saying, "The textile museums have missed the boat on feather art because all they focus on is warp and weft. The modern art museums shy away because they call it artisan craftwork. I want to do a show displaying feather works next to paintings by Morris Louis, Brice Marden and Kenneth Noland." Moonan lists three New York galleries that carry feather art: Merrin, Throckmorton Fine Art and Gail Martin. Prices range from a few thousand dollars to occasionally more than $100,000 for a single feather work.

On August 27 in The New York Times, a story headlined "Tensions Grow After 2 Indians Are Killed," was written by Keith Bradsher and was datelined Whiteclay, Nebraska.

The story refers to the murders of two Sioux men on June 8 (see previous Newsletter), and to the shrine that Sioux have created at the place where Wilson Black Elk Jr. and Ronald Hard Heart were found. At the shrine, offerings of chocolate bars, cigarettes, plastic flowers and eagle feathers are surrounded by a wood fence.

"People come to this shrine not in mourning but in anger," writes Bradsher. "For the two men had been beaten to death and the still-unsolved slayings have ignited simmering Sioux anger here in the low, grassy hills along Nebraska's border with South Dakota. Many Indians are convinced that the men were killed by whites and that white sheriff's deputies in northwestern Nebraska are covering up the crime and might even have been involved. The sheriff's office denies this and has vowed to help find the killers. Indians have marched in protests every Saturday for two months. The first march, in late June, turned violent, with demonstrators looting and burning a store here that sold beer and groceries. About 20 Indians have set up an encampment next to the shrine and have vowed to stay until the killings are solved.

Some of the up to 1,500 Indians who participated in the first march assert that two eagles, a rare sight here, had flown overhead after the demonstration to show that the dead men approved of the efforts on their behalf."

"Little Tribe, It's Modest Casino Threatened, Takes on U. S." reads the headline in a story by Pam Belluck in The New York Times on August 28, 1999 about a fight over the Santee Sioux's tribal casino.

"A tiny Indian tribe in a sparse slice of northeastern Nebraska found itself today at the forefront of an increasingly heated national debate over the matter of where tribal sovereignty ends and state control begins," the story begins. "The issue was the tribe's operation of a shoe-box casino on its reservation. Today that little casino nearly lead a Federal district judge in Omaha to take an unprecedented step: the jailing of tribal leaders in a clash over reservation gambling. Although the judge ultimately decided against jailing the leaders now, the tribe hardly won a conclusive victory. [The judge] suggested that Federal prosecutors might want to pursue a criminal rather than civil case against them, and declared once more, as he had repeatedly, that the casino was illegal because it lacked state approval ever since opening three and a half years ago. The lack of such approval violates a Federal law, the Indian Gaming Act of 1988, which requires an Indian tribe to strike an accord or compact with the state in which its reservation lies if it want to open a casino. There are about 145 compacts between states and various tribes. But Nebraska, opposing any casinos within its borders, has refused to negotiate with the Santee Sioux."

That same week, the California Supreme Court "overturned a ballot measure that would have allowed expansion of legalized gambling on Indian reservations. The decision dealt a severe blow to tribes' ambitions to build a gambling mecca to compete with Las Vegas. In addition, Florida, Kansas and Alabama, trying to block the opening of Indian casinos within their borders, have sued the United States Interior Department with the aim of overturning new rules that allow the Federal government to license tribal casinos in cases where states are reluctant to negotiate compacts.

The Santee Sioux is hoping that the new Interior Department rules "will allow us to work out a legitimate means of running the casino, but that process, even if successful, could take years. 'We're not trying to break anyone's laws.' Said Thelma Thomas, the casino's manager. 'We're just trying to make life better for our people.'"

In the September 1 issue of Art & Auction, Steven