Visualize the complexities of being Native through art

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Gorman Museum of Native American Art at University of California, Davis, came to life in its new 4,000-square foot space with a ribbon cutting and two days of celebrations Sept. 22 and 23, attracting more than 1,000 people.

The museum contains more than 2,000 works — many on display now as it opens to the public. Its outer walls are painted with a design giving homage to Tlaka, the Wintun word for California tule grasses, and a white pavilion of triangles honors Patwin language and cultural keeper Bertha Wright Mitchell (1936-2018). It is at once an extraordinary, beautiful, surprising reconstruction of an old campus space used both as a restaurant and an art gallery in its previous lives.

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie is the director of the Gorman Museum as well as professor of Native American studies and a multimedia artist. She guided a new visitor past the entrance she designed — to the art inside.

The grizzly and Native Americans

“Come see this,” she said, tilting her head toward a work located to the left of the first of three galleries.

It’s clear that she wants to illustrate to visitors what the museum represents, proud of the art she and Veronica Passalacqua, the curator and executive director, have acquired for the museum’s opening exhibition, “Contemporary California Native Art.”

A red and white California flag, with the characteristic growling grizzly bear, hangs to the left.

But upon a closer look, the bear depicted above the “California Republic” lettering has bars painted vertically over his body, as if in a cage or prison cell. The red star in the top left corner, normally shown alone in that space on the flag, has scrawled beneath it in handwriting, “You are Here on Grizzly Homeland.” In the mixed-media piece are old photos of a hunter, news items about the legendary bear, and among other things, a picture of a disturbing piece of furniture — a chair made of bear legs, claws and fur.