December Issue 2000
Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC, Offers Exhibits on Basketry & Design
The Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC, is presenting the exhibitions, Fibers & Forms: Native American Basketry of the West, and Bicycle Design: Built for Speed. Both exhibitions will be on view through Jan. 7, 2001.
Drawn from the superb collection of the San Diego Museum of Man, this exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of Native American basketry from the North American West. Objects range in age from a pre-historic Pueblo basket from 1200 AD to a Hopi tray from the 1970's and includes many previously unseen objects from their extensive and largely unknown collection.
Fibers & Forms gives in-depth treatment to aesthetic as well as technical developments in Western basketry, paying particular attention to regional trends, tastes and traditions. The exhibition encompasses territories from Alaska to the Mexican border and from the Pacific Coast to the Rockies, and includes over 200 works by Aleut, Eskimo, Hopi, Apache, Hupa, Maidu and Yokuts weavers.
Plant fibers such as roots, reeds, grasses and stems are used in all of the basketry traditions represented, as weaving and sewing are the two dominant methods of building forms from these materials. Innumerable expressions of individual creativity can be seen in the imaginative use of fringes, feathers, beads and dyes, illustrating the vitality and richness of Native American basketry.
Assembled over a period of more than 80 years, the objects range in scale from a Kumeyaay bowl that measures three feet in diameter to one that is only an eighth of an inch tall. A large portion of the exhibition is dedicated to baskets made and collected between the 1880's and 1930's, the Golden Age of basket collecting. During this time, social and economic changes in Native American communities such as disease and loss of land, shifted the purpose of basket production from functional use to decorative and aesthetic concerns. In that era when such works first became popular commodities to collectors, vessels made for utilitarian purposes became increasingly rare, and their inclusion in the exhibition adds considerable dimension to the survey.
Fibers & Forms: Native American Basketry is one of three national traveling exhibitions in the series The Vision Persists: Native Folk Arts of the West, organized by the San Diego Museum of Man, sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and circulated by Curatorial Assistance, Inc., Los Angeles.
From sparely elegant European designs to skillfully
crafted and enthusiast-modified American bicycles, Bicycle
Design: Built for Speed showcases some of the world's most
refined racing machines of the past three decades. A product of
the Museum's recent efforts to explore innovative aspects of 20th
century design, this exhibition provides visitors with a unique
perspective on the development of modern, high-performance bicycles.
Drawn almost exclusively from local collections, the sixteen bicycles
in this groundbreaking exhibition date from a 1970 Schwinn track
racer to the recent model of a Trek road racer used by American
cyclist Lance Armstrong to win his second consecutive Tour de
France earlier this year. Also included will be one of the first
production mountain bikes and a recent descendant that features
several increasingly common technical advances in frame design,
shock absorption and braking. Other examples include the oddly
but efficiently shaped frame of the world's fastest production
recumbent bicycle - both a triumph of engineering and a work of
mechanical beauty.
Local sports historian and cyclist Richard D. Mandell is serving as guest curator for Bicycle Design: Built for Speed. The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a fully illustrated, 24-page catalogue. This exhibition is organized by the Columbia Museum of Art.
For more info check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or call the Museum at 803/799-2810 or on th eweb at (http://www.colmusart.com).
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
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