Art professor to curate Smithsonian collection

Lowe

Truman Lowe, internationally acclaimed sculptor and university faculty member for 24 years, is serving as contemporary arts curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

Lowe’s assignment, which began in January, is made possible through an employee interchange agreement between UW–Madison and the Smithsonian.

Lowe enthusiastically accepted the invitation to provide advice and guidance to the NMAI in the design of a curatorial program and establishment of a permanent collection of North, Central and South American Indian contemporary art. As part of his duties, Lowe will develop exhibitions for the changing display gallery of the museum and author exhibition catalogs.

“Other than the Institute for American Indian Art in Santa Fe and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the National Museum of the American Indian is the only national museum dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary fine art of American Indians,” Lowe observes.

“Art is a language,” he says. “It reflects thoughts, ideas, philosophies and even projections into the future. Art captures the way we are thinking about who we are at a given moment. It’s an intriguing concept for a major institution like the Smithsonian to introduce Native America to the rest of the world.”

The NMAI approached Lowe with its proposed assignment based on his international reputation as a practicing artist, extensive knowledge as an academician and previous experience as a curator. To provide effective leadership, the NMAI recognized the importance of administrative capabilities as demonstrated by Lowe in his former roles as coordinator of UW–Madison’s Native American Studies Program for 13 years and chair of UW–Madison’s Art Department for three years. Lowe also held the position of assistant dean for one year in UW–Madison Dean of Students Office.

Lowe’s work has appeared in 34 solo and nearly 90 group exhibitions, including “Head, Heart, Hands: Native American Craft Traditions in a Contemporary World,” a traveling exhibition organized by the Kentucky Art and Craft Gallery that opened in New York City last summer. The exhibition travels to Birmingham in March for the 50th Anniversary Birmingham International Festival, then to Orlando and will continue its tour to numerous cities nationwide.

Outside the United States, Lowe’s art has been displayed in Canada, South America, Europe, Africa and New Zealand. Currently, three of Lowe’s mixed-media wall reliefs, inspired by Woodland Indian artifacts, are featured at the United States Embassy in Germany.

In recognition of his artistic and scholarly accomplishments, Lowe won a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship in 1994 and a $60,000 Kellett Mid-Career Award from UW–Madison in 1997. Lowe was the first artist commissioned to create public artwork for Wisconsin’s “Percent for Art” program. Last year, Lowe and four other American Indians, selected from more than 100 competing artists, received $20,000 fellowships from the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art in Indianapolis.

Creating contemporary, minimalist forms to capture his own Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) culture and ancestry distinguishes Lowe as a sculptor. “Effigy: Bird Mound,” on exhibit in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden at the White House during 1998, recalls animal-shaped effigy mounds built from earth, often burial sites, once common throughout the Great Lakes Region. Created from solid aluminum rods, “Effigy: Bird Mound” suggests both a soaring bird and an airplane in flight.

“It was really a unique way this culture had of showing respect and living with the earth,” Lowe says of the effigies. “This is an attempt on my part to represent the many pieces that have disappeared – to pay my respects to that culture.”

Lowe is known best, however, for his wood sculptures, particularly those of water in motion. Stripping willow branches as his father taught him as a boy, Lowe begins the process of turning wood into art. “If I have a signature,” Lowe posits, “it is the willows on the water’s edge.” Lowe curves slender wooden slats, like his father expertly curved basket handles, to form gushing waterfalls and cascading streams, some more than 30 feet long.

“Moving water fascinates me more than lakes or ponds,” Lowe reflects upon the inspiration for some of his most dramatic works. “It’s the idea of where rivers come from and where they’re going. Humanity has continued for generations and we’re alive for a brief part of it. It’s similar to standing along a river’s edge: you know the river comes from someplace. You look upstream: you see and hear it, and then you watch as it moves past you. Eventually it moves out of your sight. That’s how much you contribute to life: spending as much time as you can enjoying the stream, as much as is visible to you,” Lowe says.

According to NMAI Executive Director W. Richard West Jr., “the addition of Truman, an important artist and scholar in his own right, to our staff is a significant step in the development of the museum’s contemporary and fine arts programs, essential components to the mission of the museum.” West, of the Southern Cheyenne, says Lowe is perfect for the daunting assignment of NMAI curator of contemporary art.

The NMAI, dedicated to the preservation, study and exhibition of the languages, art and histories of the Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere and Hawaii, was established by Congress in 1989, to be housed at three locations.

The George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, located in New York City, opened its doors to the public in 1994. One of the inaugural exhibitions featured a selection from the NMAI’s recently acquired permanent collection of 800,000 objects from North, Central and South America. Accumulated by wealthy industrialist George Gustav Heye during more than 50 years of travel, the collection is considered among the finest of its kind in the world.

The Cultural Resources Center, the second NMAI facility recently constructed in Suitland, Md., provides space for research, conservation, community service programs and storage for the museum’s collection.

In addition to contemporary art, the NMAI, currently under construction on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., will showcase the works of noncontemporary and ancient artists and artisans of the diverse American Indian nations and offer theater, dance and music performances and other cultural activities. At an estimated cost of $110 million, the museum will contain approximately 250,000 square feet. The National Mall museum is scheduled to open 2002.