Two giants in 20th-century Native American art, Allan Houser (1914­1994) and George Morrison (1919­2000), are being honored in a lead inaugural exhibition at the brand-new National Museum of the American Indian. "Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser" will open Sept. 21, 2004 in Washington, D.C. as one of five major shows at the new facility. The exhibition will display approximately 200 works of art in several media.

The two artists came from very different backgrounds, but artistically their lives converged. While Houser grew up on the southern Plains of Oklahoma and spent much of his life in the deserts of the Southwest, Morrison's studio overlooked a lake in Grand Portage, Minnesota. But the representational realism of their early careers gradually became abstracted in later life, and both artists drew profoundly on influences derived from nature.

Allan Houser
(Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache)
The art of Allan Houser often evokes strong spiritual associations, the roots of which, he confided, he found in nature. He once told his mother, "I can walk out here in the hills, among the rocks and birds and trees, and that, to me, is like being in a church."

Houser is best known as a sculptor, but he also achieved greatness as a painter and muralist. His early work often depicted scenes from his heritage as a Warm Springs Chiricahua, led at one time by the famous Geronimo. In later life, Houser explored major international art styles, including Abstract Expressionism. His talented sons, Philip and Bob Haozous, carry forward the family tradition.

Houser's oeuvre will be represented by 69 artworks on loan from the Houser family estate, museums and private collectors, including his first major sculpture, "Comrade in Mourning," leaving its home at the Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas for the first time since its creation in 1948. Additional institutional lenders include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Heard Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Denver Art Museum, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the Museum of Northern Arizona and the California Academy of Sciences. Recognizing the renaissance Houser stimulated in the medium of stone carving, the exhibition will present 16 unique works in marble, alabaster, steatite and limestone, from his first in 1948 to one of his last, carved in 1994.

In addition, the Allan Houser Foundation of Santa Fe is lending objects for the exhibition from the artist's studio, including sketches, drawings, working clay maquettes and personal notes which will illuminate his creative process.

Beyond his remarkable achievements as an artist, Houser devoted much of his life to teaching and produced many outstanding protégés. He once explained his teaching philosophy at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe: "This is where you can practice and be proud of yourself and your heritage. Be yourself, look back, see who you are, be proud of it. Stand tall." Houser further believed strongly in the "full circle of human dignity." He explained, "I feel that way toward all people, not just Indians. In my work, this is what I strive for, this dignity, this goodness in people."

In a 1984 lecture, Houser explained how his art became more abstract and found its place in the global modern art movement: "I've simplified to the point where I'm just reaching for the important things that put the ideas across and not putting in too many detailsI'm thinking of the masses and the simplicity that you can get with stone and bronze. That's why I admire people like Brancusi, Arp and Henry Moore. Noguchi is another; he hardly seems to touch a piece and it's pleasing to look at-it's like part of the earth, and almost seems to grow out of the ground."

George Morrison
(Grand Portage Band of Chippewa)
Contemporary artist George Morrison is recognized as one of the most significant 20th-century Native American painters. His role as a leader in modern painting is comparable to Houser's stature in modern sculpture. Thus, Morrison and Houser are appropriate counterparts.

Born in 1919 on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation near Grand Marais, Minnesota, Morrison went on to study with the New York Art Students League and in France with support from a Fulbright scholarship. He later returned to his homeland, where he rediscovered his Anishinaabe roots. Morrison found the north shore of Lake Superior especially inspiring. He once described this personal journey as a "search for my own reality; I seek the power of the rock, the magic of the water, the religion of the tree, the color of the wind and the enigma of the horizon."

He envisioned the horizon of Lake Superior to be "the edge of the world," and in 1967 began to focus artistically on the horizon line, which he described as "more of an obsession." He confided, "I have been using it ever since, as a focal point, to identify the landscape."

In 1970 Morrison began teaching art at the University of Minnesota, where he too produced numerous outstanding young Native and non-Native artists. He never stopped learning, exploring nature and venturing forward through his paintings. Most of his later life he spent painting back home in northern Minnesota. He walked a lot around the surrounding area and once revealed, "There is a spirituality in the landscape at my studio in Grand Portage: the water and the air and the atmosphere. All those elements are coming into me from what I see. I'm not looking at it like I'm painting it. But all of these things are in my mindIt is alive and it changes by the hour. Perhaps that very thing has been transplanted into my head, and then I'm transforming that onto the canvas."

Note: Exhibition Book
In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum is publishing a book of essays entitled Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser.