Basket Dance

Inscriptions

Signed, lower right: Quah Ah / Tonita Pena

Label

The works on this wall consider the diversity of “American” relationships with corn as a food staple that has also played a role in shaping US cultural and even national identity. Lloyd Harrison’s WWI-era propaganda poster refers to corn as “The Food of the Nation,” extolling the abundance and diversity of corn products at a time when wheat, meat, and sugar were being rationed. Long before corn was an “American” food staple, however, it was a staple for many Native North American nations. Tonita Peña’s depiction of a basket dance—one of several annual dances practiced by Puebloan communities to ensure agricultural success—reminds us that crops are not always abundant.

Juxtaposed alongside these images, Nicholas Lampert’s print of a migrant family running beneath a weaponized cob of corn illustrates the connections between agribusiness and US foreign policy, as well as the impacts these policies have on migrant families. The artist notes: "Media attention on immigration issues rarely, if ever, discusses with any sort of depth the economic, political, and social factors that propel people to risk their lives to travel north across the border. Instead, individuals are blamed, and a complex issue is reduced to a few soundbites—national security, terrorism, illegal immigrants, etc."

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

Exhibition of American Indian Painting and Crafts of the Southwest, 1915-1940, Taylor Hall, Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York, February 1941.

Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Pena and Joe Herrera, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma, January 25-April 8, 2018.

Gifts of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Dartmouth College Museum & Galleries, Carpenter Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 11-July 11, 1976.

Native American Studio School Watercolors, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October--December, 2010.

The Arts of Native America: Studio Painting, Dartmouth College Museum & Galleries, Lower Jewett Corridor, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 8-June 3, 1979.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–April 11, 2022.

Publication History

Exhibition of American Indian Painting and Crafts of the Southwest, 1915-1940, Poughkeepsie: Vassar College Art Gallery, 1941, no. 13.

W. Jackson Rushing III, Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting, The Art of Tonita Pena and Joe Herrera, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018, ill. p. 54, plate 12.

Provenance

Eastern Association for Indian Affairs sale at Miss Wheelwright's [Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878-1958)], North East Harbor, Maine; sold to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874-1948), August, 1931; given to present collection, 1935.

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