Makers and Markets: The Wright Collection of Twentieth-Century Native American Art

by Penelope Ballard Drooker (Editor), Hillel S. Burger (Photographer), Patricia Capone (Text by)

Overview

The decades of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s were a time of growth and change in producing, marketing, and collecting Native American artwork and craftwork. During this time William R. Wright amassed a collection notable for its broad representation of twentieth-century Native American products. Focusing on the Southwest, he included contemporary Pueblo ceramics, Navajo and Hopi textiles, Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni jewelry, and baskets from some forty different Native American groups. The objects Wright gathered, which are now part of the collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, reflect developments in the intersecting worlds of makers, markets, and collectors, including the challenges faced by makers to successfully balance tradition and innovation in their work and their lives.

This volume examines selected objects from the Wright collection to explore the market-influenced environment of modern Native American makers and their work, from what some consider the low end of tourist art multiples to the high end of unique, signed fine art objects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873658256
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/18/1998
Series:	Peabody Museum Series
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Hillel S. Burger is a professional photographer.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Acknowledgments

Penelope Ballard Drooker and Patricia Capone

Chapter 1. William R. Wright and His Collection

Penelope Ballard Drooker

The Collecting Environment

The Collector

The Collection

Chapter 2. The Wright Collection of Southwestern Pottery: Perspectives on Pottery Making and Collecting

Patricia Capone

Pottery Production in the Southwest

Collecting the Wright Collection

Why "Pottery?"

Perspectives on Pottery and Pueblo Life

Pottery Practice in the Next Century

Sources and Makers of the Wright Collection of Pueblo Pottery

Color Plates

Chapter 3. Change and Continuity in Native American Textiles and Basketry: Examples from the Wright Collection

Penelope Ballard Drooker

Trade among Tribes: A Continuing Tradition

Negotiating Products for Cross-Cultural Markets

Weaving Lives

Color Plates

Chapter 4. A Quantitative Summary of Wright Collection Objects

Penelope Ballard Drooker

Notes

Text

Color Plates

Figures and Maps

References

Photographic Credits

Index