Edward Curtis & the North American Indian

The United States Embassy in Georgia, the Georgian National Museum, the State Silk Museum and Art Palace of Georgia are showcasing Edward Curtis & the North American Indian: Motherland, Tradition, Spirituality, an exhibition in three parts. GEORGIA TODAY went along to Art Palace where the focus was ‘spirituality’.

“Just as the world cannot exist without the sun, the Native American cannot live without a spiritual life…” These are Edward Curtis’s words, an American photographer and ethnographer who dedicated more than 30 years to the production of tens of thousands of photographs of the Native Americans’ spiritual life. The exhibition in the Art Palace of Georgia provides a window into Curtis’ extraordinary vision of the spiritual life of the First Americans, here, you can discover the beliefs and visions, ceremonial rituals and mystic customs of the first American inhabitants.

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Library of Congress, Georgian-American University (GAU), Rooms Hotels and Elit Electronics for making the exhibitions possible.

“I want to thank all three museums for giving the chance for GAU students to attend the expositions free of charge,” said Ekaterine Togonidze, Public Affairs Manager of GAU. “The students enjoyed the accompanying trainings. They were particularly delighted to learn that when a Native American woman gets married, she is given Edward Curtis’s photo album as a dowry. It was a sort of parallel to our ‘Knight in Panther’s Skin’,” she said.

“The main goal of the project is to teach business and marketing skills and to help Georgian museums become more sustainable and run more like businesses so that they do not need to rely on government funding,” Damian Wampler, Cultural Attaché of the US Embassy, told GEORGIA TODAY. “In America, museums are businesses: they make money from tickets, from bookshops, and from donations from the private sector. That’s not the way the Georgian museums work. [In the US], they have many sources of income and revenue. Our ambassador met with all the museums’ directors. After the lunch, he said: ‘we really need to give the museums some skills and trainings.’ We chose Edward Curtis because he is the greatest American photographer, but the exhibit that you see today is not curated by the American Embassy. The design, theory and concept were all created by the Georgian curators. So, it is American art through the eyes of Georgians using new skills that they learned in training”.

WHEN: Until October 22.

WHERE: Art Palace 6 Kargareteli Str. (11AM – 6PM, closed Mondays); History Museum 8 Sioni Street; Silk Museum 6 Tsabadze Str.

Maka Lomadze