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Why do Native American artists and craftspeople need an Art Marketing Program? “Native American artists are keepers of our past, recorders of our present, and explorers of our future. Our creative work both traditional and contemporary preserves, heals, energizes and renders our relationship with the sacred. The aesthetics that emerge from this process bring us closer to our spirit on a human level, which allows us to express our cultural place in the world, while nurturing a tool for our survival.” Roxanne Chinook American Indian Art From The Pacific Northwest is a recently-established nonprofit arts program serving Native American fine artists and craftspeople in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and SouthEastern Alaska. Originally based at Northwest Indian College’s Business Assistance Center, the program is designed for the purpose of helping to promote, educate and preserve Pacific Northwest Native American traditional and contemporary fine art, crafts and culture. We serve a broad range of artists, from those just beginning, the emerging artist, to the formally trained. One of the program’s highlights is our first-time collaboration with the Whatcom Museum of History and Art. This juried art exhibit is titled, “Transforming Traditions: The Art of Native America” which took place from June 23 to August 11, 2002. Background: Originally, the site was developed to help native artists achieve self-sufficiency by providing them with a venue to sell their work online and generate enough sales to sustain the Art Marketing Program. However, after very few sales and researching online art galleries, art marketing resources and forums we found that Art Directors, buyers and collectors are more interested in the old fashioned way of viewing and buying high-end art, but will visit Online Galleries to gain information about artists. Consequently, to complete our mission we need to concentrate on more profitable efforts for our artists, while utilizing our website as an electronic brochure -- a high-tech advertising medium that gives our artists both national and international exposure, with any sales generated being an added bonus. Instead of counting on artists' revenues to maintain the website we would seek Online Gallery Sponsorships, grants, corporate, private and charitable donations. We revised the program to add new services; one of them is an Art Advocate Program, which was created to meet each artist’s individual needs to increase their chances of success in this extremely competitive art world. For Native Americans to persevere in today’s economy it is imperative that we learn to compete twofold and become just as savvy as the western marketplace. Our authentic art forms have attained appreciation throughout the United States and the world, which has resulted in the misrepresentation and appropriation of our cultural symbols, art forms and motifs for reproduction and sale by non-native peoples. This appreciation has also brought in art and crafts that are represented as "Native American Inspired." Many non-native artists claim they were given permission to incorporate cultural symbols, motifs, imagery into their work, but forsake genuine cultural understanding and discernment. Yet, Northwest Coastal masks inspired Picasso, and Jackson Pollock was inspired by Navajo sand painting and neither of these artists chose to appropriate these cultural art forms into their work. Also, Native Americans have been so sharing, accepting, tolerant, and giving over the centuries that many of us do not understand the repercussions. Cultural Appropriation: The indifference which surroundsthe issue of cultural appropriation, as it relates to Native American artists, and artists inspired by native art, is heavily ingrained in the politics of colonization. Despite the dispossession of Native Americans and the Western/European philosophy of taking ownership and possessive individualism, we have learned that our cultural survival is dependent on holding on to what is sacred, our relationship with the land, spirituality, language and cultural history; ceremonies, symbols, imagery, art forms and crafts. It is important for others to know that when they purchase authentic Native American traditional or contemporary art forms and crafts they help to preserve the Native American culture. That each art form or craft created by non-natives as “Native American Inspired” and is reproduced, commissioned, promoted, bought, sold and marketed can only intensify the impoverishment levels found in Native America today--deprivation comparable to many poverty stricken nations of the Third World. Our hope is that through proper education, support and promotion, we can create a greater recognition of the continuity of Native American art, and a better understanding of how the appropriation of these art forms impacts the survival of our cultures.
American Indian Art From The Pacific Northwest |