iAutry Museum of the American WestGriffith Park
Creative Continuities: Family, Pride, and Community in Native Art
Works from the Autry's Native American collections explore Knowing, Creating and Transference, curated in part by three contemporary Plains Indian artists reflecting on their traditions.
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In the gallery you'll find a small tipi facing the wrong way. Blackfeet tipis always face east, to the rising sun, but this one was turned so you can read the drawings: in the early 1900s a Blackfeet woman, Kills-Close-To-The-Lake, painted her husband Big Eyes' exploits around it, and John Pepion tells those stories on the museum's audio guide.
Pepion (Blackfeet), Brocade Stops Black Eagle (Crow) and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder (Dakota/Nakoda) each curated one section from the Autry's collection, under the themes Knowing, Create and Transference. Their words make up much of the wall text, and every object is named in its own language first. Critic Liz Goldner counted more than 100 objects, mostly late 19th and early 20th century, around a life-size horse dressed in beads and feathers.
Come ready to read: the artists' commentary is the show. It's included in $20 admission, free on the first Wednesday of the month if you reserve a spot, and parking is free.
Look for
Big Eyes' tipi
Look for the small early-1900s tipi painted by Kills-Close-To-The-Lake with her husband's exploits: an encounter with bears, horse raids, and fights with Lakota and with traders.
John Pepion, Our Land (2022)
A warrior in a split-horn headdress with white ermine tails rides beside a galloping blue horse, drawn in ink straight over an antique map of Montana.
The Lakota pipe bag (c. 1890)
Beaded on buckskin, a woman in a striped courting hide faces a man holding a sword with a long feather trailer, German silver discs running down his back.
Beaded high heels (1920s)
A pair of Lakota-beaded Hamilton-Brown heels, the glass beads lying flat over every curve, the heels themselves included.
The elk tooth dress (1880s)
An Apsáalooke dress covered in individually sewn elk teeth from waist to neckline and down the sleeves; each elk has only two, so every pair is a successful hunt.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
With kids
Children 3 to 12 pay $9 and those 2 and under are free. Strollers can be borrowed at the museum.
Also at Autry Museum of the American West
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- Creative Continuities: Family, Pride, and Community in Native ArtCourtesy of Autry Museum of the American West
- Sculpted Portraits from Ancient Egypt© The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved
- Charles Ross: Spectrum 14Courtesy of Getty Center
- Stories from the Library: The Mirror of the MoonCourtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
- Autry Museum of the American WestJllm06 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0