September 16, 2000 - January 7, 2001
The Reading Public Museum will present an extraordinary exhibition of Native American artist Dan Namingha. The exhibition entitled, Dan Namingha: Reflections on the Natural Way, will open September 16, 2000 and run through January 7, 2001. An opening celebration will be held on Saturday, September 16. The celebration will begin at 5 p.m. with opening remarks from the artist himself as well as other dignitaries including Stuart Ashman, Director of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico. A reception, sponsored in part by the Friends of the Reading Museum will follow from 6-8 p.m. An exhibition catalog and poster will be available for sale throughout the run of the exhibit while supplies last.
The highly compelling art of Dan Namingha celebrates the enduring landscape of the American Southwest with an intensely personal vocabulary of form and color, paying homage to his proud Tewa-Hopi heritage. Deeply imbedded in his background and evident in his life and work, is a profound reverence for the cosmic forces of the earth's spirit.
Namingha's work reflects his quest to find meaning in existence through nature by drawing on his Native American tradition and revealing the earth as a reservoir of spiritual power. Instead of persistently attempting to take from nature, Namingha strives to achieve a harmony with her.
Critics and friends the world over share the view of Richard West, director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, who called Namingha "one of the most significant contemporary Native American Indian artists."
Namingha was born to a Hopi family in 1950 and was raised in the village of Polacca, AZ. Namingha comes from a family of potters and woodcarvers. His Great Great Grandmother, Nampeyo, is credited with reviving Hopi pottery making and design. He studied art at the Institute of American Indian Arts, the University of Kansas, and the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Namingha has studied the work of such artists as Gaugin, Picasso, Rothko and de Kooning.
Forever a student of life and art, Namingha's work translates the relations between the architecture, landscape and spiritual imagery of his people. "All three of those themes," says Namingha, "go hand in hand in that they are taken from nature…. These are the things that I'm familiar with, grew up with, that surround my childhood and my adulthood."
Namingha's work is a medium by which all can gain an insightful look into Native American culture. "He gives those of us who look at art access to a world we would not normally see, in a language we already understand," says Stuart Ashman director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.
Dan Namingha: Reflections on the Natural Way, is the next installment in the Reading Public Museum's series on the under-appreciated artist. While Namingha has national and international acclaim, the Museum hopes to educate the region in his art and his culture. The artist will make appearances at the Museum prior to and throughout the exhibition run and events are being planned around his stays.
"I am in agreement with my contemporaries in the art community," says Dr. Robert Metzger, "Dan Namingha's importance to art, Native American or otherwise, is irrefutable. The Museum has pulled all the stops to make the Namingha experience one this area will not soon forget. Having an artist of this caliber at the Reading Public Museum speaks volumes of its commitment to the arts and the education and enrichment of its patrons."
Robert Metzger, Ph.D
Director, CEO, Chief Curator Reading Public Museum
