GLENN LONEY'S MUSEUM NOTES

THE HEARD MUSEUM—Native Cultures & Arts

But even as you scramble down a narrow zigzagging trail to reach the valley floor and look at the White House cliff-dwelling in Canyon de Chelly, there is much about its vanished inhabitants you cannot learn from a brochure or a National Park Service signboard. You also cannot clamber up into the actual ruin.

At Mesa Verde, you can in fact explore stabilized remains of ancient cliff-dwellings. Both of these pilgrimages into a distant Native American Past are rewarding: informative and inspiring.

But they hardly tell the whole story of centuries of Indian Life in the Southwest. Even excavated objects don't explain themselves. Nor are they very interesting, gathering dust in typical ethnological-museum displays.

There's no dust on the artifacts and artworks in Arizona's unique Heard Museum, however. There is such a constant swirl of schoolchildren, scholars, tourists, and native artists and performers, that the dust hardly has a chance to settle.

TRADITIONAL FORMS & MATERIALS--Prized 1939 Squash-Blossom Necklace in silver & turquoise, crafted by Leekya, a Zuni Native American artist-silversmith. Photo: Heard Museum.

Located in the heart of Phoenix—on Central Avenue, near the impressive Phoenix Art Gallery—the Heard Museum today is a handsome multi-gallery complex. With a $7 million annual operating budget.

But it began, back in 1929, as a display of the personal collections of Dwight and Maie Bartlett Heard. They were transplanted Chicagoans, who soon became fascinated with the many distinctive tribal cultures they found in the Southwest.

They collected both art and artifacts, saving many special treasures from neglect or destruction. Then and now, it's sometimes difficult to tell which is artwork and which is mere artifact, as objects in daily use were and are often wonderfully constructed and decorated.

The Heards built a small gallery behind their home, Casa Blanca—another White House! It was designed in Spanish Colonial style, and if you rang the doorbell at the main house, Maie would take you on a personal tour of the collections.

Initially—because the Heards were eager and informed travelers—their trophies from journeys to Hawaii, the Middle East, Egypt, and Africa were also on view.

Today, the museum is eight times its original size. And Casa Blanca is only a memory. Nor will you find any Middle Eastern basketry on display now. Those non-Native artifacts must be somewhere in storage.

Over the years, the museum's focus has also gradually changed—from simple display and labeling—to smartly designed and colorful changing exhibitions which seek to interpret the Lifeways and Arts of the indigenous peoples of the Southwestern areas. Often this is done in their own words: from historical records, oral histories, and modern testimony.

The words of a man from Taos Pueblo, in New Mexico, set the tone for the Heard's impressive show: Native Peoples of the Southwest. His utterance is poetic: "We have lived upon this land from days beyond history's records, far past any living memory, deep into the time of legend. The story of my people and the story of this place are one single story…"

But the Heard Museum is not only trying to recapture the past and the way people lived—even with a reconstruction of a Navajo Hogan or a splendid display of richly patterned rugs. Or Indian talks about folkways then and now.

It is also very much involved with live performances of Indian dances and songs. And striking shows of new Native American artworks, including jewelry, weaving, carving, and ceramics, as well as painting and sculpture.

The historical collections established by the Heards are being continually enriched with artifacts, artworks, documents, letters, drawings, and photos from Native American tribes and individuals, as well as from non-Indian scholars and collectors.

KATSINA OR KACHINA?--Whatever the spelling, these Hopi dolls are distinctive, created by White Bear Fredericks and Jimmie Kewanwytewa. Photo: Heard Museum.

When the late Arizona Senator, Barry Goldwater, was a young man, he used the old Heard Auditorium to show his photos and films. When he was old, he donated a thousand color-slides and his collection of 437 Katsina Dolls to the Heard.

Today, that auditorium is the Sandra Day O'Connor Gallery, named in honor of the Supreme Court Justice who was once a Heard Trustee.

And, when Senator Goldwater was collecting the distinctive Hopi ritual dolls, they were called Katchinas. The Heard now makes quite a point of the variant spelling—Katsina—as being closer to the actual sound of the word in the Hopi language.

Oddly enough, the curators haven't yet gotten round to changing the spelling on their exhibition cases and labels! But everyone at the museum has been deeply involved in the almost completed $18 million-plus expansion & endowment program.

The new and considerably enlarged Heard opened early this year. And in May, the New York Times gave it a colorful two-page spread in the Arts Section. That coverage inspired me to pay a visit as well.

The dust has yet to settle on the new units. Workers were still putting finishing touches inside and out in early June. Perhaps the Katsinas will soon get their new labels?

The Heards had the good fortune to find valuable Indian artifacts in an ancient Hohokum ruin discovered on a property they owned in a part of Phoenix then undeveloped.

They also seized the opportunity to acquire splendid Indian pottery, rugs, jewelry, and other new and historic crafts and artworks from the Fred Harvey Company.

Fred Harvey was an astute Indian trading-post operator. When the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad snaked its way west, he set up Harvey Houses at many a station, stimulating tourism and sales of Indian arts.

Today, he's remembered—if at all—for giving Judy Garland a job as one of his Harvey Girls in that charming old movie.

"INTERTRIBAL GREETING"--Native American sculptor Doug Hyde's Indian group stands in the Phelps Dodge Plaza of the Heard Museum. Photo: Heard Museum.

But Harvey had an eye of fine design and workmanship, and he encouraged distinctive Native American talent. Like the Heards, William Randolph Hearst's mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was an enthusiastic Fred Harvey customer.

That the University of California at Berkeley's fine Kroeber Anthropological Museum has such excellent historic Native Collections is thanks to both Fred Harvey's and Mrs. Hearst's eye for the singular and the splendid.

Currently, the Heard is featuring the new jewelry designs of a number of outstanding Native American men and women artists. Some of the pieces echo traditional symbols & styles, using traditional materials such as turquoise and silver.

Others are astonishingly original, in materials, shapes, colors, and designs. And it's good to learn more about these artists. Some will be at the Heard on occasion to talk to both adults and kids, both to collectors and the merely curious.

"THE TREK"--Two Indians on the move, in Cheyenne artist Archie Blackowl's watercolor, shown in the Heard Museum's exhibition, HORSE. Photo: Heard Museum.

In an adjacent gallery, the Horse is celebrated, complete with saddle-blankets, native bridles and saddles, lariats, and other gear. The importance of the horse—imported by the Spanish Conquistadors—to Native Americans in war and peace can hardly be emphasized enough.

On the lower level of one area of the museum a fascinating hands-on exhibit for schoolchildren has just closed. On a number of workbenches—below charts relating to the various Indian Tribes of the Southwest—kids could make their own papoose-carriers.

Or fish-necklaces, Ketoh wrist-guards, Apache burden-baskets, Zuni bracelets, saddlebags, and split-twig animals. When I finish writing this, I'm going to try to make a split-twig animal from the worksheet they gave me at the Heard!

I could also color my outline-drawing of an Indian War Pony. Or add yellow and green to my outline-prints of ears of corn.

It was a surprise to discover how many tribes were honored in this hands-on exhibition. Outside newspaper reports of land-disputes in the Southwest usually focus on arguments between Navajos and Hopi. But I did know there were still Apaches and Zunis around.

There are now some 21 federally-recognized Native American Tribes in the Southwest. These include Yaquis who emigrated from Mexico, descendants of the ancient Toltecs.

Here are some other tribal names which may be new to you: the Ak-Chin, the Cocopah, the Mohaves, the Quechans, the Havasupai, the Gila River Indians, the Hualapai, the Kaibab Paiutes, the Salt River Pima-Maricopas, the Yavapai Apaches, and the Tohono O'Odham Nation.

You can get more information about the 21 tribes from the Intertribal Council. Its Headquarters are just across Central Avenue from the Heard Museum.

"EMERGENCE OF THE CLOWNS"--Sculptural group of Koshare, ritual pranksters, formed in clay in 1988, by Roxanne Swentzell, of Santa Clara Pueblo. Photo: Heard Museum.

The Heard should definitely be seen—as well as heard—if you are planning a trip Phoenix or the Grand Canyon.

The Heard's precise address is 2301 North Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85004. There is plenty of parking. As well as a large indoor auditorium, an outdoor amphitheatre, a Southwestern cafe, and a bookshop & souvenir center.

It isn't really "Downtown," for both Phoenix and adjoining Scottsdale have huge blocks and multi-lane streets which seem to go on and on forever, until you get where you want to be.

The Heard Museum is open daily—excepting major holidays—from 9:30 am to 5 pm. Admission is free to members and valid Native Americans!

If you phone 602-252-8848, you will get recorded information. To reach an actual museum-person, you might try 602-252-8840. Additional information can be obtained from the Heard's website: www.heard.org [Loney]