In Pursuit of Civilization #4
Bobby C. Martin, Muscogee / American, born 1957
Muscogee (Creek)
Southeast
2004
Digital collage on paper
Image: 58 1/8 × 29 5/8 in. (147.6 × 75.2 cm)
Sheet: 59 1/2 × 30 3/8 in. (151.1 × 77.2 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Hood Museum of Art Acquisitions Fund
© Bobby C. Martin
PR.2004.64
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
21st century
Object Name
Research Area
Native American
Native American: Southeast
Not on view
Inscriptions
Signed, lower right: BC Martin 2004; inscribed, lower left: Pursuit of Civilization #4
Label
Muscogee artist Bobby C. Martin uses this digital collage of photographs to reflect on his family’s history and assimilation via Native American boarding schools. His grandmother collected the source photographs while she was a student at the Presbyterian Dwight Mission Boarding School in Oklahoma from 1917 to 1919. They feature an unidentified man and a mission school tennis team, and Martin superimposes them upon a Creek census.
The man’s anonymity and positioning atop the census express the loss of Native identity through assimilationist practices. The Native athletes in the image below were forced to wear Western fashions and take part in an activity that, as reflected in Newport and Lawn Tennis, hanging nearby, had become a popular American pastime. Representative of the upper class, tennis, and athletics in general, became a vehicle through which the schools could impose state power and Euro-American culture on their residents.
From the 2024 exhibition, A Space for Dialogue 117, Sports Culture: Gender, Belonging, and Nationhood, Madyson Buchalski '24, Conroy Intern
Course History
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Fall 2012
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2012
SART 17, Collage, Esme Thompson, Fall 2012
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2013
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2013
SART 17, Collage: Bridging the Gap, Esme Thompson, Fall 2013
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Fall 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Fall 2014
Exhibition History
A Space for Dialogue 117, Sports Culture: Gender, Belonging, and Nationhood, Madyson Buchalski '24, Conroy Intern, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 9 - May 5, 2024
Contemporary Native American Ledger Art: Drawing on Tradition, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 14-December 19, 2010.
Perspectives: Native American Art from the Hood Museum of Art's Collection, Perspective in Native Studies, NAS 8, Spring 2014, Vera Palmer, Teaching Exhibition, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 24-June 16, 2014.
Picturing Change: The Impact of Ledger Drawing on Native American Art, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 11, 2004-May 15, 2005.
Provenance
Commissioned from the artist by the Hood Museum of Art, 2004.
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