Skidegate House Models: From Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World's Fair and Beyond by Robin K Wright, Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse (Editor), Nika Collison (Foreword)
SBN: 0295751045 EAN: 9780295751047
Publisher: University of Washington Press
US SRP: $49.95 US
Binding: Hardcover
Pub Date: March 05, 2024
Physical Info: 0.9" H x 10.2" L x 10.3" W (2.9 lbs) 224 pages
"Early in 1892, more than seventeen Haida artists were commissioned to carve a model of their village of Skidegate on Haida Gwaii. The model, displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, is the only North American example of an aboriginal village systematically documented by its own nineteenth-century residents. It originally featured twenty-nine house and forty-three totem pole models; after the exposition, the model was dispersed and many pieces were lost over time. However, ten house and twenty-two totem pole models remain in Chicago in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History, and two additional model houses with seven totem poles have been located in other collections. In this highly collaborative research project, Wright combines interviews with members of the Skidegate community today with close study of the extant parts of the model along with a review of the documentation collected in 1892 to bring both the model and the village and community it documents into full view. The community engaged research and resulting book offers valuable insights into Northwest Coast art history and will be a significant cultural resource for the Haida Nation"--
Robin K. Wright is professor emerita of art history at the University of Washington, Seattle, and curator emerita of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Her award-winning books include A Time of Gathering and Northern Haida Master Carvers. Recent books include In the Spirit of the Ancestors (coedited with Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse) and Charles Edenshaw (coedited with Diana Augaitis).
Review Quotes:
"This publication is an exceptional example of Wright's knowledge of Haida art and scholarly skills. Incorporating what it means to be Haida today, this is the finest example I know of a cultural biography: meticulous historical scholarship, detailed analytic art history, and productive collaboration with inheritors of this heritage that brings this fascinating story into the present-and the future." --Aldona Jonaiti
"This meticulous work of dedicated art historical research and community collaboration beautifully illustrates how careful re-documentation of museum collections can open out into wide worlds of historiography, colonial entanglement, and the endurance of Indigenous artistry, kinship, and language." --Aaron Glass
"[A] tour de force . . . Wright's meticulous, moving account [is] the closest thing possible to a reconstruction." -- Literary Review of Canada
"A masterpiece . . . This book revolves around models, but is so much more. It is of great value to Haida people for their own history. It should be read by everyone interested not only in Haida culture, but in cultures of the Northwest Coast." -- British Columbia Review
