Art of Discovery

Writing with you or for you

FROm the archives

From the Archives

Book Excerpts

Articles

Essays

CURATED museum exhibitions

"From the Archives" includes samples of didactic material written for museum exhibitions. I hope you find these selections informative and enjoyable reading.

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Preserving Tribal Memory

learn MORE ABOUT endangered SACRED PLACES

Native American Sacred Places

"MOments in time, a sense of place in the american southwest": a Museum of new mexico TRAVELING EXHIBITION

The Museum of New Mexico curated and for several years traveled Moments in Time, the solo exhibition of award-winning photographer and Indigenous rights activist Lorran Meares. Internationally recognized for his nighttime light-painting technique, which requires long time exposures and his presence in the landscape while the shutter is open, Meares interprets each location with twin cameras for stereo 3D as well as single-frame installations. These evocative images powerfully reveal not only the cultural breadth of Indigenous ancestors but also the deep symbolism of their beliefs and traditions. Over many decades, and in collaboration with tribal leaders, elders, and historical preservation officers, Meares created a portfolio of places threatened by extractive industries, over-visitation, erosion, air pollution, vandalism, and other human-generated hazards. From little-known ruins, springs, wells, and rock outcroppings to prehistoric monuments and shrines on private land or now subsumed by state or federal parks, these sites, imbued with spiritual power, are irreplaceable. The slide show below is from an exhibition at the Museum of the Red River. (For stories about sites such this one at McKee Springs, left, read more.)

Darien Rainforest Stories

discover more about the darien Rainforest

A PEOPLE on the rise: A Rainforest on the brink

"Native Design," how Nature inspires an income-generating art form

The world-premiere exhibition titled "Native Design: A Journey Through the Darién Rainforest,” showcasing Wounaan and Emberá basketry and historically important ethnographic material from the Darién Province, Panama, opened in January 2006 at the Craft and Folk Art Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Guest curators were Charlotte and Lorran Meares of Santa Fe, New Mexico. CAFAM had achieved a reputation for hosting “dynamic exhibitions of traditional folk art and contemporary craft with the aim of educating the public on the global connections shared across all cultures and nationalities.” In 2018, CAFAM was re-imagined as Craft Contemporary to reveal “the potential of craft to educate, captivate, provoke, and empower.” Here are selections from the didactic panels created for this Panama exploration.

"Not unlike many of the world’s remote and fragile places, the selva, or Darién rainforest, is changing. It is shrinking. What remains is sought after by more people for more reasons than can be easily understood. In the jungle—always a mysterious place, where the polarities of abundance and the potential for instant death coexist—danger doesn’t have to be found, it is everywhere. The rainforest threatens and is threatened. Creatures with zero to umpteen legs hide, live, hunt, kill, and are killed here."