Impressions from the North
From May 21, 2010 to April 2011
- Mogollón polychromous hemispheric bowl
The exhibition “Impressions from the North” offers an intense aesthetic and intercultural journey along a path comprising eighty pieces representative of the artistic production of peoples formerly living in the regions now delimited by Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Pieces from Canada and the United States belong to the Barbier-Mueller Museum collection in Geneva whereas works from Mexican cultures belong to the collection preserved at the Museu Barbier-Mueller d’Art Precolombí in Barcelona. Moreover, the exhibition displays a Yupik mask (1200-1500 A.D.) from Alaska lent by the Musée du quai Branly until November 20, 2010.
Pieces are displayed in groups according to their native cultural regions - the Arctic, the Northwest Coast, the Eastern Forests, the Great Plains, the Far West and Mesoamerica. Thus, Inuit, Tlinglit, Haida, Ojibwa, Iroquois, Cherokee, Apache, Hopi, Navajo, Zuñi, Sioux, Anasazi, Salado, Casas Grandes, Mixtec, Aztec and Maya artefacts are exhibited.
Each cultural region has its own specific settlements and living conditions acting upon its development, as shown by the common features shared by peoples inhabiting them.
In the Artic zone extending over Alaska, Greenland and Canada, Inuit people produced artefacts such as whale oil lamps, dog sleds and large boats called oumiak used for the whale hunting.
Northwest Coast cultures, well-known because of the potlatch ceremony they indulged in (the ceremony consists in offering articles of value to the community), made very delicate totemic posts, house pillars, boats, masks and daily use objects.
Peoples living in the Eastern Forests built burial mounds under which they dug graves. In the Mississippi region, settlements were the size of real cities with mound-temples of Mesoamerican influence like the city of Cahokia inhabited since 1300, including about 20.000 houses, before it was abandoned after a climate change. Even if the various native peoples of this region formed tribes with distinct social habits, they nevertheless shared common cultural features: they all cultivated corns, beans and squash, gathered wild rice, collected maple syrup, smoked tobacco pipes and went hunting and fishing.
In the Great Plains, houses were solid rectangular constructions built along the rivers. However, after horses were imported by Spaniards about 1500, this way of life changed radically. Farmer communities turned themselves into nomadic groups riding horses and living in teepees. Among their religious practices, Indians sought a personal supernatural power in dreams induced by fast, prayer and self sacrifice, and in which the tutelary spirit manifested itself as a moon, a star or an animal.
In the large desert stretches of the Far West, at a time when irrigation and canalization were not yet installed, life relied on hunting and gathering. In the Great Basin, material remains of cave-dwelling peoples as well as relics of a nomadic life in constant search of water have been excavated.
In the Mesoamerican area extending over Mexico and part of Central America, native peoples lived in cities with pyramids and temples and produced artefacts testifying of a high stage of civilization.
