This section highlights a selection of objects from the exhibition that illustrates the ways artists were influenced by the geography of the region and the trade routes that emerged from the confluence of rivers and peoples.
Selected Works of Art
Looking Prompts
- Describe this object. Point out as many details as you can.
- This figure is made of flint clay. What do you notice about the color and surface of this object?
- Closely observe the posture and pose of this figure. What words would you use to describe the figure’s pose? What do you observe about the posture or pose that helps you to imagine what this figure might be doing?
- This work of art was created 800–900 years ago. What are some of the pros and cons of having it available in a museum today?
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About this Artwork
The influence of trade and travel networks supported by the converging rivers and overland routes is manifest in the artworks produced in the region. Cahokian sculptors prized shells from a species of marine snail known as lightning whelk and crafted them into a variety of objects. This figure holds a cup in her lap that would have been made from a shell imported from the Gulf of Mexico 100s of miles to the south.
This Kneeling Female Figure with a Shell, or Exchange Avenue Figurine, named after the street where it was excavated in East St. Louis, is carved from flint clay, a material found in present-day Missouri. Artists working at the ancient Mississippian metropolis of Cahokia, which is not far from St. Louis, specialized in sculptures carved from flint clay. Flint clay is related mineralogically to kaolin, or surface clay, but it is actually a stone and not at all malleable, causing it to break in a different manner than a fired ceramic. Only artists working at Cahokia are known to have used this material, though their sculptures have been found both close to their place of manufacture and 100s of miles away in the southern United States.
As part of a vibrant ancient society that developed in the Mississippi River valley and flourished across the Midwest and Southeast, the Mississippian city of Cahokia was estimated to have had around 20,000 people and occupied more than five square miles in and around what is now Collinsville, Ilinois. Objects made of flint clay such as this one have been found from Alabama to Wisconsin, indicating long-distance trade networks that connected Mississippian communities.
Just under four inches tall, the Kneeling Female Figure with a Shell, or Exchange Avenue Figurine escaped destruction at least twice in its long existence. Around the mid-1100s the structure that housed the figurine burned. Fortunately, the sculpture was safely nestled in a corner deposit and spared from fire damage. During the late 1800s the St. Louis National Stockyards developed the land, installing underground water and sewer lines within centimeters of this figurine, coming dangerously close to shattering it.
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Looking Prompts
These questions can be used when discussing either painting.
- If you could step inside this painting, what might you hear?
- What wildlife do you imagine you would see?
- What time of day does it appear to be? What time of year?
As a follow-up to the questions above, ask, What do you see that makes you say that?
Additional Looking Prompts
- What would you bring with you on an adventure in this place?
- What activities would you do if you were in this place?
- Where do you imagine the artist was positioned when creating this painting? What do you see that makes you say that?
- What are some reasons why Seth Eastman might have chosen to paint this place?
- Artists make choices about what to include or leave out. What might be left out of this scene?
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About these Artworks
In 1846 Seth Eastman painted a series of watercolors as he traveled down the Mississippi River. He departed from Fort Snelling in Minnesota at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, stopped in Missouri at Jefferson Barracks, and ended at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in Cairo, Illinois. During his journey Eastman, a military captain who had been trained as a topographic artist at West Point, captured specifics of the changing riverways, using delicate washes to illustrate reflections of trees, shrubbery, and waterfowl. For a time in the 1840s, Eastman’s illustrations of the river were on display at Fort Snelling, where visitors could view them on steamboat excursions up the Mississippi River from St. Louis. In total, Eastman painted more than 80 watercolors in the late 1840s, depicting the landscape and life of the Mississippi River valley, which was rapidly changing as colonial settlers moved West and forced Native peoples off their lands.
The two views depicted in View 100 Miles above St. Louis and 16 Miles above the Mouth of the Ohio mark the northern and southern points of the region covered in the exhibition and highlight the many geographic and social confluences that have influenced the art and culture of the region.
Looking Prompts
- What is going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find?
- At first glance, what stands out to you?
- Set a timer for 60 seconds. Look at the painting for the whole 60 seconds. Let your eyes wander over the entire picture. What do you discover as you look at the painting for a longer period of time?
- What are you curious about as you look at this painting? What questions would you like to ask the artist about it?
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About this Artwork
Some migration through this region was by choice, while some movements were forced. Osage artist Norman Akers addresses US legacies of removal. In the 1700s the Osage controlled the fur trade in Missouri, northern Arkansas, and the southeast plains as much as fur companies did. However, between 1808 and 1865 the Osage Nation ceded much of its land through treaties and moved to Indian Territory. Today their reservation is in northeastern Oklahoma.
In Dripping World pipes spew oil and industrial waste onto a toxic landscape while enlarged water molecules hang in a sky spanned by a map of Kansas and Oklahoma. Akers focused on the environmental and personal legacies of displacement through his use of maps and animals, such as the elk and turtle. These creatures are important to Wazhazhe cultural beliefs about creation and the land.
As Akers expressed: “Through layering of visual images that seem to coexist without any clear hierarchical order, I begin to convey a nonlinear sense of time. As these images freely mingle between the past and present, they become a metaphor for the experiences I encounter when I am at home in Oklahoma, traveling across ancestral lands in Kansas, participating in the i’n-lon-schka ceremonies, and just simply living.”
Through his work, Akers explores interconnections among place, identity, myth, and history. He writes:
“As a Native American artist, I explore issues of identity and culture, including Osage mythos, place, and the dynamics of personal and cultural transformation. Over the years I have used a visual vocabulary consisting of images and symbols drawn from my cultural heritage, personal life experiences, and contemporary culture. The underlying principles that inform my art include tribal oral histories, maps, art historical references, and nature. Through visual narrative, I explore how my point of view relates to a historical, political, and cultural sense of place in contemporary society. The use of narrative in my work acts as a continuation of the Native American storytelling tradition. Ancestral tribal stories and sayings have served to explain the world in which we lived. New and emerging stories serve as allegories of transformation in an ever-changing world.” (https://normanakers.com/home.html)
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Image Credits
Image Credits in Order of Appearance
Mississippian artist; Kneeling Female Figure with a Shell, or Exchange Avenue Figurine, c.1100–1200; Missouri flint clay; 3 7/16 x 1 3/4 x 1 15/16 inches; Courtesy of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey 2021.10
Seth Eastman, American, 1808–1875; View 100 Miles above St. Louis, c.1847–1849; watercolor; 4 5/16 x 7 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by Jane and Warren Shapleigh, Mr. and Mrs. G. Gordon Hertslet, Mr. William Pagenstecher, and the Garden Club of St. Louis 101:1970
Seth Eastman, American, 1808–1875; 16 Miles above the Mouth of the Ohio, 1847–1849; watercolor; 4 1/2 x 7 1/8 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by Western Electric Co. 114:1971
Norman Akers, citizen Osage Nation, born 1958; Dripping World, 2020; oil on canvas; 78 x 68 inches; Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas, Gift of the Jedel Family Foundation 2021.102; © Norman Akers, Courtesy Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, photo: EG Schempf