And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
--John 1:46
Buffalo hides dressed and painted by the Quapaw Indians were the first Arkansas artworks to draw the attention of European observers, or at least the first to inspire written remarks. Henri Joutel, a member of La Salle's 1687 expedition (fatal to La Salle) from the coast of Texas to St. Louis, noted the "buffalo hides that the [Quapaws] have the industry to dress and paint with a kind of red coloring that is quite pretty."
Joutel is quoted by Morris S. Arnold in "The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673-1804," which contains the definitive treatment of the Quapaws' most famous painted work, the Three Villages Robe. That robe, along with its sister, the Buffalo Dancers Robe, resides in a museum in Paris. The two robes returned to Arkansas in 1995 for an exhibition at what was then the Territorial Restoration.
The two robes were contemporary artifacts when acquired by the French. Ages later--after Arkansas had been acquired by the United States, entered the Union, withdrawn, and entered again--much older artifacts made by indigenous Americans began to attract the attention of archeologists, who dug up hunting implements, food vessels, and ceremonial objects and sent them to Eastern institutions at a rate that struck some Arkansas observers as plunder. (Amateur "pot hunters" also play a role in the story.)
Sam Dellinger is the most famous early objector to the eastward flow of prehistoric and protohistoric objects from Arkansas. (Objections to the removal of Indigenous burial objects from the ground are a separate though related matter.)
During the 1920s and 1930s, when Dellinger was beginning his long career at the University of Arkansas, other thoughtful Arkansas people were turning their attention to the state's surviving, though threatened, folkways, including its oral traditions and its material culture.
I'm looking at a black-and-white photograph of the original Arkansas Made team: Bill Worthen, Kathy Worthen, Rita Anderson, Parker Westbrook, Swannee Bennett, and Anne Guthrie. I trust the surviving members will forgive me for pointing out that this photo was taken halfway (1976) between the present and 1928, the year that Sam Dellinger, Sam Leath, and Vance Randolph first got together for a folklore meeting in Eureka Springs.
The intrepid scouts of Arkansas Made took an existing tradition of collection, documentation, preservation, and interpretation and made it their own; in fact, their host institution, the Territorial Restoration (now Historic Arkansas Museum, HAM) was itself the product of the awareness that blossomed in the 1920s and 1930s that Arkansas has much to appreciate, much to preserve.
HAM's new exhibit "Collecting Arkansas Made" consists of art and artifacts that the museum has acquired over the last decade for its Arkansas Made collection. The selection of objects--most of them beautiful, a few grotesque--surprises and delights; our material past (and present) is made fresh. The objects are presented in a way that asks only for our consideration, not for any ideological buy-in.
The interpretive panels, likewise, offer just enough information about an object and do just enough to place it in historical context to get the observer started on her own journey. They are an invitation to further exploration, and to thought.
An invitation to thought, to consideration, is on the face of Charles T. Davis in the portrait painted by his friend Adrian Brewer around 1925. Brewer was a prolific painter of landscapes and portraits, and Davis was the first Poet Laureate of Arkansas. The colors and cut of Davis' comfortable-looking suit could inspire next spring's menswear; while his pose is not informal, Davis looks comfortable and tranquil. It is clear that his friend appreciated his fine thin hands and the lines in his intelligent face.
In the windows, roof lines, woodwork, and retaining walls of "Hatchet Hall--Eureka Springs," Elsie Freund exhibits a command of line that I associate with Japanese painting and ink work; she relinquishes that command to yield a sky, ground, and autumn tree canopy that anticipate the color-field technique of Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko.
A beautiful balance of command and relinquishment is found too in Sadayuki Uno's "View of Barracks," painted in 1945 while Uno was imprisoned in the Japanese internment camp at Rohwer, where he also directed the art school.
Nazareth, like Arkansas, had a reputation as a place of little learning or aesthetic achievement. Can anything good come out of Arkansas? Nathanaels are invited to come and see.