| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Here At the Academy Bowls, Baskets and Beads Russ Hartman is a master storyteller. As Senior Collections Manager for the Academy’s Anthropology Department, he watches over 17,000 pieces of history and culture collected from six of the seven continents. His topics are inspired by artifacts ranging from ancient Egyptian textiles to traditional Japanese toys to swords used by Masai warriors in Kenya. Despite this global collection of material, one of Hartman’s favorite tales is set much closer to home. In 1969, a single excavation of sorts yielded hundreds of artifacts that are among the most legendary in the Academy’s collection. Stained by smoke and wrapped in newspapers dating to 1906, the cache of pottery was packed into 15 unmarked boxes stashed in the Academy’s own basement. As in any archaeological investigation, the placement, condition and surroundings of the artifacts helped reconstruct their history. The dates on their newspaper padding linked the artifacts to the museum’s original Market Street location. An anonymous packer apparently rescued them from the doomed building during the earthquake and fire of 1906. In the aftermath of the disaster, the Academy’s Anthropology Department was disbanded, so the artifacts were never inventoried. Ten years later, when the new museum opened in its current location, the items were tucked away in the basement of what is now known as Wild California Hall. They remained there untouched for more than 50 years, until exhibit designer Herb Pruett decided to poke through the building’s basement. Within the boxes, Pruett found ceramics originally collected in the Mojave Desert by Alfred Kroeber during his tenure as Curator of Anthropology at the Academy in the early 1900s. The pieces turned out to be rare examples of pottery made by the Mojave people. Alongside these artifacts were even older ceramics and jewelry from two Maya sites in Guatemala. Dated to between 300 and 1500 ad, these items were collected by Colonel Manuel Garcia Elgueta in the late 1800s and brought to the Academy for storage after the San Francisco Midwinter Fair in 1894. As both Maya sites have been heavily looted, the Elgueta artifacts in the Academy’s collection are among the few documented examples of craftsmanship from those localities. Now referred to as “The Survivors,” the items formed some of the core holdings of the department when it was reestablished in 1975. This story, the first of many in Hartman’s anthology, is best told in the aisles of the Anthropology Department’s storeroom. Here, Hartman can pull vivid polychrome pots or jade ear spools out of sealed, protective cabinets to illustrate each new paragraph. However, thanks to countless hours of work by Hartman and former Curatorial Assistant Dinah Houghtaling, the story can now also be told online. In 1997, Hartman and his department began the massive task of creating an online, searchable database of all of the artifacts in the department’s collection. Along the way, some objects proved particularly difficult to describe. Although the Kroeber and Elgueta collections survived the 1906 fire, all of their original documentation was destroyed. It took hours of research—and a few serendipitous events —over the course of several years for Hartman to piece together their pasts and provenance. The database went online in 2001 and is constantly being updated and expanded. It provides anthropologists and aficionados around the world with easy access to images and information about the Academy’s unique collection. The Anthropology Department’s holdings include many objects from Oceania and East Africa. But the largest portion, which makes up about two-fifths of the collection, is comprised of Native American artifacts. More than 1,700 of these were donated by the Elkus family, and include baskets, pottery, paintings, jewelry, carvings, and weavings from the California coast, the Southwest, and the Plains regions of the United States. Many of these pieces have been traced to famous Native artists, including seventy ceramic tiles created by Nampeyo, the matriarch of Hopi potters. As the former director and curator of the Navajo Nation Museum in Arizona, Hartman holds a special place in his heart—and on his walls—for Navajo rugs. Besides those in his personal collection, Hartman cares for over 150 elaborately patterned rugs at the Academy. These weavings represent an art form developed after the Navajo Reservation was created in 1868. Once trading posts brought premade clothing to the Reservation, Navajo women no longer needed to weave shoulder blankets for their families. They began to weave thicker, sturdier floor and saddle rugs instead. Hartman and Houghtaling recently finished a project to make these rugs more accessible for care and research. Before the reorganization, each rug had to be unrolled to determine its pattern. Now color photographs have been attached to the exterior of each roll, allowing staff to verify the location and pattern of a particular rug without unfurling the entire collection. The improvement will conserve both time and the condition of the rugs’ fibers. Researchers who need only the images can access the rugs on the Academy’s online collection database. The database has drawn a growing number of scholars eager to study the Academy’s artifacts. Many researchers now come to San Francisco to examine Navajo rugs and the works of famous Native American artists as well as some of the lesser-known items in the collection. Erin Rentz, a master’s degree candidate from San Francisco State, recently examined baskets in the Academy’s collection made by Klamath River Indians in the early 1900s. She hopes to learn if, and how, plants used in basket weaving have been genetically modified over centuries of use. In return for aiding outside researchers, Hartman is often rewarded with new information about the items in the department’s collection. One researcher, an expert on the Han Athabaskans of Canada, worked with Hartman to establish more accurate dates for the Academy’s Han artifacts by comparing the pieces to those he had worked with in other institutions. A similar collaboration with researchers from New Mexico allowed Hartman to replace the “Anonymous” tag on the Academy’s collection of Hopi tiles with the famous name Nampeyo. The artifacts are in constant demand for exhibits here at the Academy and in other museums around the country. Currently, a wide variety of Native American pottery, basketry, jewelry, artwork and textiles is on display in the Academy’s Elkus Exhibit, which changes every few months. Around the corner, three small exhibits along the Wattis Gallery highlight the Academy’s Rietz collection of eating utensils, a sampling of Masai swords and shields, and ceremonial African beadwork. As the Academy prepares to move to a temporary home in downtown San Francisco, artifacts will continue to be loaned out to other museums. Hartman is already collaborating with the Anchorage Museum of History and Art on an upcoming exhibit about Native Alaskan artists. He has written a chapter about one of the artists for the exhibit’s companion book, and has already sent some pieces from the collection north. Hartman is also working to ensure that, during this next move, none of the department’s treasures will disappear for decades. Even with the help of the new database, the move won’t be easy. There are, after all, 17,000 delicate artifacts to transport. But the move will be done with all the precision and care you would expect from a man who knows all 17,000 stories by heart. Stephanie Greenman is a marketing and communications coordinator at the California Academy of Sciences. |