Overview of the Collection
The Ancient American Art gallery features the Robert and Nancy Nooter Collection of Native American Art, which includes 150 North American Indian ceramics, baskets and rugs ranging from the Pacific Northwest coast to the U.S. Southwest tribes. In lending their stellar collection to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Robert and Nancy Nooter have enabled visitors to see and explore the artistic masterpieces of the indigenous peoples of North America. The Nooter collection is further complemented with several pieces of Tlingit and Haida art from the museum’s permanent collection. The works in the gallery are from roughly 50 different cultures and feature pieces from each major geographic region in North America: the North, Pacific Northwest Coast, Southwest, West and East. The American Southwest and Pacific Northwest Coast are particularly emphasized.
The objects are displayed as artworks, rather than artifacts, which encourages viewers to consider the artists and the creative process. Although the artists are anonymous, human hands created each piece, working in artistic traditions that span centuries before their time.
Highlights of the Collection
Coiled Gift Basket
Pomo (California), Coiled Gift Basket, 1900. Willow, sedge root, bulrush, feathers, white clamshell disk beads. Robert and Nancy Nooter Collection.
Pomoan baskets were the prized possessions among collectors from 1890 to 1920, when the basket trade among European-Americans reached its height. To create their wares, Pomoan weavers used a wide variety of native grasses, roots, and brush that they separated into thin splints. Each splint was moistened and coiled over willow rods that were the basket’s foundation.
Baskets adorned with feathers originally held a societal role of honor among the Pomoans and other central California peoples. Coiled gift baskets such as this one were traditionally given to special persons within clans, but were later mass-produced in response to the high demand for Pomoan basketry by collectors. The plumes shown here most likely came from the acorn woodpecker or California quail. The basket is further trimmed with white clamshell disk beads, which were also used as currency in several parts of aboriginal California.
Heartline Olla
Zuni (New Mexico), Heartline Olla, early 20th century. Terracotta with pigment. Robert and Nancy Nooter Collection.
Ceramic wares created today are products of a pottery tradition more than a thousand years old. While contemporary artists from Southwestern pueblos such as Acoma and Zuni use kilns to meet the high demand for their wares, the production processes utilized are those inherited from their ancestors. Pots were hand coiled—as opposed to wheel-thrown—and then usually painted with natural pigments. The earliest examples seem to be strictly utilitarian and lack painted decoration, but as early as AD 700 potters began painting their wares. The influence of those artists and other ancient cultures can still be seen today in the work of famous potters such as Lucy Lewis and Maria Martinez.
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