Picturing America for Public Libraries

Project Scholar
Heid E. Erdrich
Author and independent scholar.

Series Description
Images from the Picturing America collection present Native American art from pre-historic Anasazi pottery, through nineteenth-century ledger art, to the pottery and basketry of the early twentieth century. Art created by non-Natives depicting Indian imagery are also included and give rise to a tension often expressed by Native American writers: how do we become the artists rather than the object of the art?

The books chosen for Objects of Art dramatize, in fiction, poetry, and mixed-genre, the struggle of a diverse people to control their own images. Night Sky, Morning Star gives a Pueblo view of the Southwest Indian Art Market. In Evidence of Red the stereotypes Noble Savage and Sports Team Mascot converse. A tribal art historian narrates Mending Skins. A brilliant painter’s breakdown is described, in Shadow Tag, through the eyes of his muse/wife, an American Indian scholar of the painter George Caitlin. In each book American Indian artists confront art about American Indians in complex plays of image and anti-image that make our own views of Native art more rich and real.

Central Reading List
Night Sky, Morning Star by Evelina Zuni Lucero
Evidence of Red by LeAnne Howe (poetry & mixed genre)
Mending Skins by Eric Gansworth
Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Related Picturing America Images
1-A1—unknown, Anasazi Pottery, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, c. 1100
1A2—unknown, Sikyátki polychrome bowl, c. 1350-1700
1A3—María Montoya Martínez and Julian Martínez, Jar, c. 1939
1A4—Louisa Keyser, Beacon Lights, 1904–1905
1A5—Carl Toolak, Baleen basket, 1940
1-B—Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Acuña, San Antonio, Texas
5-B—N.C. Wyeth, The Last of the Mohicans, Cover Illustration, 1919
6-B—George Catlin, Catlin Painting the Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa—Mandan, 1861/1869
8-B—Black Hawk, “Sans Arc Lakota” Ledger Book, 1880–1881