NATIVE AMERICAN ART in the Denver Art Museum [SOLD]

NATIVE AMERICAN ART in the Denver Art Museum

Richard Conn

University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1979

Hardcover with slip over, ist edition, 1979.  351 pages, beautifully illustrated with 500 plates, 100 in full color

All the mystery and kaleidoscopic beauty of Native American art is captured in this unusual book.  Its rich treasury of masterworks illustrates why the indigenous crafts of North America have recently begun to gain acclaim as more than social artifacts.  

Richard Conn explores the design concepts, techniques, and cultural imperatives that inspired this complex array of styles and forms—an abundant legacy of living arts to be appreciated as much for their beauty as for the meaning they hold.

Richard Conn’s interest in the culture of Native America was kindled by his father, whose early life in the Puget Sound region gave him a command of Chinook jargon, the lingua franca of Pacific Northwest Indians.  Conn himself grew up in western Montana and Seattle an earned an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Washington.  His experience as an assistant in the Washington State Museum while still a student led him to a career in museology.  Before coming to the Denver Art Museum as curator of native arts, he was chief of human history at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg and director of the Eastern Washington State Historical Society in Spokane.  His publications have centered on his particular interests within the field of Native American art—the traditional clothing of the entire continent, the arts of the Plains, Plateau, and Southwest, and the history of glass trade beads in North America.