Woodlands: Native American Art from St. Louis Collections

This exhibition occurred in the past. The archival exhibition summary below describes the exhibition as it was conceived while on view.

Woodlands: Native American Art from St. Louis Collections presents art from the Woodlands, a vast region that encompasses the Great Lakes, the Atlantic coast, and the southeastern United States. The exhibition assembles rarely seen works from local private collections, neighboring institutions, and the Museum’s own holdings. For the first time, the Museum surveys historic and modern textiles, sculpture, and graphic art by Indigenous artists from eastern North America.

Most works in the exhibition date to the 19th century, an era of territorial displacement when artists developed a robust souvenir industry and transformed earlier modes of self-adornment to incorporate alternative media. Visitors will be drawn to graceful carvings in wooden weapons and vessels, sculptural weaving of grass and wood splints, and delicate embroidery made from porcupine quills and moose hair. To harvest and process these materials, artists responded to radical changes in ecologies and landscapes linked to the long history of colonial settlement in the region.

Through the 19th century, artists converted wool cloth, calico, silk ribbons, and glass beads into trimmed garments and bags that became emblematic of Indigenous identities. A cloth bandolier bag features woven beadwork panels on the pouch and strap. Blue stars burst and repeat while a variety of geometric motifs punctuate the pattern. This style of shoulder bag developed in the western Great Lakes in the middle of the 19th century for men’s formal wear as the diplomatic, religious, and performative contexts for finery transformed.

This exhibition expands the geographic scope of Native North American art displayed in Museum galleries and debuts recent gifts of Woodlands art to the collection.

Woodlands: Native American Art from St. Louis Collections is curated by Alexander Brier Marr, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Native American Art.

#WoodlandsArt