Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

San Francisco, California

(415) 750-3600

 

California Palace of the Legion of Honor

M. H. de Young Memorial Museum



 

 

Art of the Americas: Pride of Place, at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum

 

This is the second (ending July 6, 1997) in a series of exhibitions that explore some of the complex issues facing museums like the de Young as many of their traditional value systems are called into question by new interdisciplinary scholarship and by diverse communities lobbying for representation.

Frank LaPena (Wintu), Director of Native American Studies at Sacramento State University, is the artist/collaborator on Pride of Place. This exhibition will explore the ways in which cultural chauvinism and insecurities associated with regionalism and nationalism have influenced the popular and critical cultural landscape in the Americas. It attempts to reveal the contradiction between the assumption that American museums share a common cultural canon that transcends geographic boundaries, and the reality of selective regional biases that are perpetuated nationally and institutionalized locally.

Objects will include Thomas Cole's View Near the Village of Catskill, 1827; George Catlin's Fire in a Missouri Meadow and a Party of Sioux Indians Escaping From It, Upper Missouri, 1832, 1871; Thomas Hart Benton's Susanna and the Elders, 1938; Diego Rivera's Two Women and a Child, 1926; Georgia O'Keeffe's The City (New York Rooftops), ca. 1925-30, and Sandhill Alcalde, 1930; a ceramic plate by Maria Montoya Martinez; and Frank LaPena's Earth Mother: Red Cap (ca. 1990).

Read more about the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in Resource Library Magazine


Search for more articles and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists for biographical information on historic artists.

This page was originally published in 1997 in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information.

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