A symposium sponsored by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies and Pollock Gallery, in conjunction with the Pollock Gallery’s exhibition CONFLUENT PASSIONS: EANGER IRVING COUSE’S COLLECTION OF HISTORIC PUEBLO POTTERY AND RELATED PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIES FOR PAINTINGS

Taos artist EANGER IRVING COUSE (1866-1936) contributed to the invention of the mythic Southwest through his idealized images of Native Americans, many of which appeared in the calendars of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. This symposium, together with Pollock Gallery’s exhibit of Couse’s photographs and pottery collection, will examine some of the elements of Southwestern life and culture in the beginning of this century that helped forge the region’s romantic identity--an identity that flourishes today.

The Program

Keynote speaker CHRIS WILSON, "Creating the Myth of Santa Fe." Reception afterward in Pollock Gallery.

CHRIS WILSON is the author of a major new book The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition (1997), which unravels the intriguing story of how Santa Fe became an icon for the Southwest through an elaborate process of image-building. He co-authored Community and Continuity: the History, Architecture, and Cultural Landscape of La Tierra Amarilla (1989), and lives in Albuquerque, where he writes on architecture and the politics of culture and is an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico.

RINA SWENTZELL, "Art and the Creation of Worlds in the Pueblo Southwest."

RINA SWENTZELL is the author of Children of Clay (1992), the prize-winning Ancient Land, Ancestral Places: Paul Logsden in the Pueblo Southwest (1993), and, with J. J. Brody, To Touch the Past: The Painted Pottery of the Mimbres People (1995). She acts as a consultant to a number of museums including Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts and the Smithsonian, and was a visiting lecturer at both Yale and Oxford in 1996.

J. J. BRODY, "Pueblo Painted Pottery, E. I. Couse and the ‘Mythic Southwest.’"

J. J. BRODY is one of the leading experts on Pueblo pottery, and the author of almost a dozen books on Native American art and pottery in the Southwest, including Pueblo Indian Painting: Traditions and Modernism in New Mexico, 1900-1930 (1997) and, with Rina Swentzell, To Touch the Past: The Painted Pottery of the Mimbres People (1995). He is Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico.

"The Myth of the Southwest"

"The Myth of the Southwest," a panel discussion led by David Farmer, director of DeGolyer Library at SMU, including J.J. Brody, Virginia Leavitt, Rina Swentzell, Chris Wilson, Meadows Museum Director John Lunsford, and Pollock Gallery Director Philip Van Keuren.

Conversation with VIRGINIA LEAVITT.

VIRGINIA COUSE LEAVITT is an art historian, who is the granddaughter of E. I. Couse and the author of Eanger Irving Couse: Image Maker for America (1991). She and her husband live in Couse’s house in Taos, among many mementos of his life, including the pottery on exhibit in Pollock Gallery.

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