Claremont, CA—The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College is thrilled to present Continuity: Cahuilla Basket Weavers and their Legacies. Curated by guest curator Dr. Meranda Roberts (Northern Paiute and Chicana), the exhibition features over 50 Cahuilla baskets currently housed at the museum. These baskets reflect the practices and traditions that continue to influence southern California Native communities and serve as a reminder of how such pieces influence contemporary Native art. An accompanying publication includes extended essays and contributions by collaborators and Native partners. Continuity is on view from February 14 to June 23, 2024, with an opening reception on Thursday, February 15 at 7 pm.
The exhibition recognizes the importance of not only presenting the aesthetic beauty of Cahuilla baskets but also their continued and unbroken relationship with tribal members. Thus, the baskets are complemented in the exhibition by commissioned contemporary art pieces from Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva), Gerald Clarke (Cahuilla Band of Indians), and Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), as well as a literary contribution by Emily Clarke (Cahuilla Band of Indians). This presentation provides a meaningful platform for discussions about how these ancestral Cahuilla baskets convey living knowledge about tribal and institutional histories, land, place, kinship, resilience, and love.
Guest curator Roberts is a citizen of the Yerington Paiute Tribe and Chicana. She has a PhD in Native American History and an MA in Public History from the University of California, Riverside, and she is currently a visiting professor in the art history department at Pomona College. In designing the exhibition, Roberts pays special tribute to the work of educator, author, and basket weaver Donna Largo (1944–2009) of the Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians. In 1994, Largo selected and exhibited a group of Cahuilla baskets for the exhibition Ways of Seeing/Exhibiting American Indian Art: The Pomona College Collection. This was the last full-scale exhibition of the Cahuilla baskets in the Benton’s care. In homage to Largo’s work in helping revitalize southern California basket weaving traditions and her work at the museum, Continuity includes a restaging of this 1994 installation.
"I have had the honor of learning and working alongside several Cahuilla basket weavers over the years on different projects. No matter the work, weavers remind me that it is my responsibility to teach non-Native audiences about the work Cahuilla women have done to keep traditional basket weaving practices alive and how their ancestral stories remain deeply intertwined with baskets housed in any museum. As such, I wanted this exhibition to honor the work of Donna Largo and challenge the way non-Native audiences view Native American collection pieces,” said Dr. Meranda Roberts. “I hope such visitors walk away from the exhibition, realizing that these pieces have a myriad of stories that deserve to be told by descendants and that viewing such pieces is a privilege. I also hope they walk away knowing more about the institutional history of Pomona College and its relationship to Native communities so that the college community can begin to make more room for Indigenous voices throughout the university-from students to faculty.”
Many of the Cahuilla baskets housed at the museum were collected in the Coachella Valley in the 1920s by a Pomona College graduate named Emil Steffa (class of 1899) and became the foundation of the college’s collection. Steffa was unusual among his contemporaries in that he recorded the names of and information about many of the basket makers he encountered while building this collection. With this information, the Benton has now been able to reconnect these makers and their work to their living descendants.
“This exhibition marks an important milestone for our museum’s recommitment to sustaining and promoting Native American art and culture. We are delighted that our beautiful new building affords expanded opportunities to make publicly accessible traditional items in our care and reunite Native communities with the collections that currently live here,” said Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton. “We are grateful for Meranda Roberts’s vision to acknowledge our institutional history, channel the important work that has come before us, and create active dialogue with the contemporary Native artistic practice that is so beautifully and impactfully intertwined in this exhibition and its related publication.”
The Benton is also hosting a related series of programs that features the contemporary artists in the exhibition in conversation with Roberts. The first such program, with artist Gerald Clarke Jr. and Emily Clarke, will take place at the opening celebration on Thursday, February 15. His presentation will be followed by those of Weshoyot Alvitre on Thursday, March 21, and Cara Romero on Thursday, April 18, all at the Benton.
Support for the exhibition is provided by the Terra Foundation.
About the Guest Curator
Dr. Meranda Roberts is a citizen of the Yerington Paiute Tribe and Chicana. She has a PhD in Native American History and an MA in Public History from the University of California, Riverside, and she is currently a visiting professor in the art history department at Pomona College. Roberts has worked as a co-curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where she developed new content for the museum’s Native American exhibition hall, “Native Truths: Our Stories. Our Voices.” She also curated Still We Smile: Humor as Correction and Joy, the 2023 Native American Invitational Exhibition at Idyllwild Arts.
About the Native American Collection at Pomona College
Pomona College has a collection of approximately 4,000 Native American items that represent more than 100 tribes and peoples in North America. The collection is particularly rich in Californian and Southwestern basketry, Southwestern ceramics, and beadwork of the Plains and Great Lakes. It includes clothing and household items, decorative works, weapons, and ritual items. The majority of these artifacts came to the College through a series of significant gifts from a small number of donors over the past 70 years. For more information about the collection please visit www.pomona.edu/museum/collection or the exhibition website https://www.pomona.edu/museum/exhibitions/2024/continuity.
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About the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
Housed in a purpose-built facility designed by Machado Silvetti and Gensler, the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College explores the role of museums in society through creative collaborations with students, faculty, and community partners. The museum serves as a steward for nearly 20,000 objects, with particularly deep representation in the history of photography, traditional Native American cultural items, early modern European art, and works in various media produced in Southern California in the twentieth century. In keeping with Pomona College’s reputation as a leading center of the visual arts, the collection also includes works by such esteemed alumni as Chris Burden ’69, Marcia Hafif ’51, Helen Pashgian ’56, Peter Shelton ’73, and James Turrell ’65. As a teaching museum, the Benton offers an average of ten exhibitions and more than 100 programs per year while encouraging active learning and intellectual exploration across all disciplines of study within the liberal arts context.