First American Art Magazine No. 15, Summer 2017 | Page 10

EDITOR’S GREETING I N THE EARLY 15TH CENTURY, approximately a hundred years after the collapse and abandonment of Cahokia and less than a century before the arrival of Cristóbal Colón on the shores of Hispaniola, a group of Caddoan-speaking people sealed a tomb within Craig Mound; an abandoned Spiro Mounds site in what would someday become Oklahoma. They buried innumerable remains from their dead along with exquisitely crafted, ceremonial artworks. This is one of the largest assemblages of precontact artwork found in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Cedar poles collapsed inward on them- selves, creating a protective pocket of air, and copper helped preserve fragments of twined textiles, rivercane baskets, carved wooden sculptures and masks, shelling engravings, copper plaques, stone effigy pipes, and other items of paramount complexity. Of course, the people of Spiro never intended for their artworks and departed relatives to be disinterred. The fact that these works have reached us through the centuries is fraught with dilemmas—on one hand is how profoundly troubling it is that this site was desecrated, and on the other, these preserved works and fragments now provide us with an unparalleled glimpse into the techniques, materials, and iconography of master artists of the Mississippian era, including perishable items that made up the majority of precontact material culture and have not been as well preserved outside the region. In 1618, about 165 years after European and African contact, a Quechua man named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote and illustrated an epic volume of history and events of the time, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (The First New Chronicle and Good Government). He set Andean Melissa Melero-Moose (Fallon Paiute-Modoc) and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Milestones, 2010, acrylic, paper, willow, mixed media on wood panels, 40 × 16 in. oral history down in ink and relayed events he had observed firsthand, including bitter cruelties that Spanish explorers and clergy committed on the Indigenous population, to his intended recipient: King Philip III of Spain. His tome did not reach Spain and instead ended up in Denmark where it languished in obscurity until its rediscovery in 1908. The 1,189 pages of history is a boon to scholars as art historians take great delight in the 398 illustrations in the book. While not his anticipated audience, we are fortunate to witness this vision of Andean life during cataclysmic changes. Where will the art we create end up? The unpredictability of how art will ultimately find its audience is part of the excitement and challenge of the process. Native art history is still a burgeoning field in flux, since so many different media, regions, and cultures have not been adequately studied. One tribe is striving to chart the course of how its art will be seen in the future. Instead of letting outside experts or the markets dictate the future of its artistic expression, the Cherokee Nation has created a program in which it honors and collects work by 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM community-based, customary artists who give back to the tribe by desig- nating them as National Treasures. In doing so, the tribe hopes to keep their voices alive far into the future. Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long, life is short) goes the popular Latin saying. However, this rings true only for a small minority of art. Most visual artworks are destroyed over time— thrown away or ravaged by light, dust, or other elements. To help ensure your art collection can survive to impact future generations in unpredictable and exciting ways, you can take practical steps to safeguard it. Framing works on paper behind glass is one means of protecting them, and our final feature unpacks some of the considerations behind this time-tested practice. Who knows, through space and time, how our art will affect those in the future? And what does the historical art of ancestral Indigenous Americans have to tell us today? A benchmark of art, as opposed to propaganda or decor, is that art is fluid and polyvalent enough to keep reso- nating and keep evoking new insight, generation after generation. —America Meredith