Scales of Vision

Item

Format
journalArticle
Creator
Marr, Alexander Brier
Title
Scales of Vision
Is Part Of
Winterthur Portfolio
issn
00840416, 15456927
doi
10.1086/683244
Abstract
Beginning in the 1890s Smithsonian anthropologist James Mooney intervened in ethnographic studies of Native American architecture by commissioning fifty model painted tipis from Kiowa heirs to these proprietary designs. The models’ production and display indicate deep bonds between art and architecture in nineteenth-century Kiowa society. Based on aesthetic systems treating each miniature as a renewal of the tipi, rather than a replication of historic architecture, Kiowa artists used the model project to extend and amend historic forms of visual culture. At the same time Mooney’s exhibition of the miniatures at world’s fairs displayed them as both architectural models and paintings.
Date
pages
93-125
issue
2/3
volume
49
View related resources
Kiowa Tribe
Identifier
SPS5MNRY