ART IN A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 101 



The Museum recognized this situation with regard to its anthropological 

 exhibits several years ago and decided that in large part the province of 

 telling the cultures and lives of the people represented in any hall must be 

 relegated to mural decorations on the large wall spaces. Such paintings 

 have after all, the full value of a group. In a bird group it is desirable to 

 have mounted specimens in the foreground because the structure of the bird 

 is one of the essential points in the exhibit. In the case of the American 

 Indian, on the other hand, the anatomical differences from the white man 

 are so small and have so little cultural significance that they are quite 

 secondary. What are essential and cannot be told except on canvas are the 

 natural environment in which the Indian lives, his village spread over a wide 

 area and his stately ceremonies and weird dances. It is only through the 

 aid of the artist that the mythology of the Indian can be interpreted, and 

 the artist's success is directly dependent on his knowledge and the degree in 

 which he enters into the spirit of Indian life. Decorations in the Indian 

 halls must possess archaeological and ethnological accuracy as the first 

 consideration; after that the artist is free to give a poetical and more or 

 less mystical interpretation. 



The plan of mural decorations in the Museum was first tried out in the 

 Eskimo section with F. W. Stokes as artist and is now being extended to 

 the Indians of Alaska and the North Pacific coast in a remarkable series 

 under the brush of Will S. Taylor. At present plans are being prepared 

 for a continuous series around two other Indian halls, the Plains and the 

 Southwest. E. W. Deming has made studies for the Plains hall. Louis 

 Akin for two years previous to his death had worked on studies for the 

 Southwest hall and that these studies had not been transferred to the 

 Museum's walls is a fact greatly to be regretted. 



As a subject for American art there could be none greater than our 

 American Indian of the past — if the artist but understand him. Few 

 people perhaps do this. Here and there a man with the heart of a poet, 

 musician or artist — one who himself feels what the Indian felt when, 

 wrought upon to energy by midday heat, subdued to reverence by night 

 mists and the light of stars, he named the sun his father and the earth his 

 mother. Centuries have dulled for civilization the keenness of that un- 

 conscious susceptibility to nature and instinct which combines religious 

 and poetic feeling with all the practical affairs of life and gives a simple 

 nobility, faith and faithfulness such as was possessed by this race rank- 

 ing many thousands of years behind the white race in cultural development. 



The Indian has often been superficially and unfairly represented. The 

 American Museum hopes to show in mural paintings the relationship of 

 this primeval man to the vast isolation on the continent before the coming 

 of the white man, and thus to provide a permanent historical record which 

 shall be as truthful as science to-day can make it and as sympathetic as 

 our American artists can reveal it. 



