Jackson Hole News&Guide, Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - 3F

This war shirt, made out of leather, porcupine quills, glass beads, wool and cotton cloth, human hair, horsehair and ermine, belonged to Sioux warrior Long Dog, who fought alongside Sitting Bull against Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Tome as tribute

Fighting Bear Antiques 375 S. Cache St. 733-2669 FightingBear.com

or more than 30 years, Alan and Berte Hirscheld have lived amid their collection of American Indian art. A war shirt worn by a seasoned Sioux warrior who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn hangs in the breakfast room. An exquisite beaded valise sits atop a table in the great room. The art lives in arrangements as carefully curated as a museums. Connections come to life between works. As they do in a new book, Living with American Indian Art: The Hirscheld Collection, which presents 160 works from the Jackson familys collection, most of which have never before been exhibited or published. Four years ago, A lan J. H irscheld, Ter r y W inchell owner of Fighting Bear Antiques and Hirschelds art advisor for more than a decade and publisher Gibbs Smith set out to record the collection. The original concept for the book changed in the intervening years, lengthened by the recession and the collaborators busy lives. It evolved into a personal portrait of a man and the art he loves. Living with American Indian Art is peppered with personal anecdotes, starting with the preface Hirscheld penned about his extraordinary career as an investment banker and entertainment executive at Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox, and continuing with the stories he shares about specic pieces. Photographer W . Garth Dowling not only honed in on the beauty and artistry of each piece within the collection but also captured the interior aesthetic of the Hirschelds home. For the book, every piece was vetted. Editor Marjorie Alexander cataloged the collection and edited the content. Gaylord Torrence, senior curator of American Indian art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, wrote the preface, lending gravitas to the project. Winchell introduces each chapter with historic and cultural context. Within weeks of its release, Living with American Indian Art will be feted with a talk and book signing from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 15, at Fighting Bear Antiques. Hirscheld will discuss his collection, and select pieces will be on display. The book costs $75, with proceeds benetting the Intertribal Education and Community Center at Central

By Katy Niner

Living with American Indian Art presents works from the collection of Jackson Holes Alan and Berte Hirscheld.

Wyoming College, adjacent to the Wind River Reservation. Growing up in Oklahoma, Hirscheld was acquainted with American Indians and their art, but it wasnt until he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma home to the University of Oklahoma Press, the leading publisher of books on American Indians that he dove into their history and culture. A lifelong collector, Hirscheld was a philatelist as a boy and an acionado of American contemporary paintings and Japanese baskets as an adult. His rst piece of American Indian art was a contemporary katsina doll, a gift from his parents to mark Alan and Bertes rst trip to Sante Fe, N.M., in the late 1960s. Years later, his collector instinct took hold when his friend Charles Diker encouraged him to buy an Apache basket. While baskets initially lured him, beadwork ultimately enthralled him. In the American Indian art market, Hirscheld has become an adjective describing the personal aesthetic Alan and Berte Hirscheld have used to build their collection, Torrence says in the preface. The Hirschelds collect from an intensely personal

vision, guided by their own inclinations and preferences and by a sustaining passion. The resulting collection is a superbly remarkable achievement that reects enormous commitment. It stands among the greatest private collections of Plains and Plateau Indian art in the world. For the cover image, the predictable pick would have been a war shirt. Instead, Hirscheld chose a dress from the Warm Springs Reservation in north central Oregon, a decision that speaks to his eye for beauty. This elaborate and exquisitely designed dress is one of our most beautiful objects and one of the most visually stunning American Indian works of art I have ever encountered in any form, Hirscheld writes in the book. The Hirscheld collection contains many remarkable works, including the valise by Nellie Gates, an artist famous for he beadwork. One of four valises documented in the Gates family papers, it was made for her daughter, Josephine Gates Kelly, an advocate for Indian rights and the rst female delegate to the Republican National Convention. Winchell purchased the piece from the family. Also notable is the war shirt worn by Long Dog, documented in a 1876 photograph found after Winchell sold the piece to Hirscheld. To buy a war shirt that is battleworn by a major Sioux chief is incredible, Winchell said. In 2014, several pieces from the Hirscheld collection will be featured in an exhibition of American Indian art, curated by Torrance and bound for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musee de Quai Branly in Paris. When the Hirschelds began building their Wyoming house, they discovered the site was once a Shoshone and Gros Ventre summer campsite, tting roots for a home already designed after a hogan to exhibit objects representing the original land dwellers way of life. American Indian art anchors the Hirschelds home in much the same way as it did for early ranchers. For them, decorating their homes with American Indian artifacts and artwork spoke to their connection with Indian people and the history of the region, to a profound and shared sense of place, Torrence writes. Long ago, Hirscheld recognized his collection as art, not just American Indian art, Winchell said. He considers it the true American art form, unfettered by European inuences, and hopes the book will so educate a wide audience. Its important that people beyond this small group of collectors recognize that this is the real American art, Hirscheld said. One of the purposes of this book and collection is to glorify the beauty and the artistic nature of these people as a counterpoint to all of the oppression.