Alan Michelson’s Answer to the “Vanishing Indian” Myth

Cyrus Edward Dallin, “Appeal to the Great Spirit” (1909) in front of Alan Michelson’s “The Knowledge Keepers” (2024) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (photo Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)

As a child, Alan Michelson often rode the T past sculptor Cyrus Edward Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit” (1908) outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  He was riveted by the statue’s grand horse and the powerful yet melancholy figure wearing a striking Plains Indian war bonnet.  It was only in his 20s that the artist learned that he had been separated through adoption from his own Native heritage and Mohawk birth family in the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, Canada.  He soon learned that the Dallin sculpture he marveled at in childhood symbolized the nefarious “Vanishing Indian” myth, which cast Indigenous peoples as doomed to extinction. 

PODCAST:  

TRANSCRIPT: https://hyperallergic.com/1017795/alan-michelson-knowledge-keepers-mfa-boston/ 

 

Let's call this another good example of #ArtBack! - Trace