ROCK TAVERN, N.Y. — On a spotless blue sky afternoon in upstate New York last Friday, a chromium-sheen effigy of Julia Marden, a registered member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe, wobbled on a wooden palette as a forklift hoisted it from the shadow of an industrial bay at the UAP Foundry and into the bright sunshine. “Wow,” said Alan Michelson, abundantly pleased at the glint, the shimmer, the fractures of sky bouncing off its shoulders and back. “Whatever I was expecting, this is definitely better.”
The figure’s right arm held aloft a fan of long feathers, still dun gray like its head and neck, awaiting the platinum gilding that would lend its mirror glow — a work in progress, with a deadline drawing near.
“The Knowledge Keepers,” Michelson’s finished sculptures of Marden and of Nipmuc descendant Andre StrongBearHeart Gaines Jr.,, both real-life cultural leaders in their Massachusetts communities, were installed Thursday morning to flank the main entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts. Earlier this year, the MFA announced an annual commission for an artist to make new work for its facade. Michelson, 71, who is a Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, has both the distinction, and the burden, of going first.
As a crane swung the sculptures high above the museum’s broad granite staircase, the full weight of the moment came clear. For more than 100 years, the museum’s sole adornment at its Huntington Avenue front door has been “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” a sculpture of an Indigenous man on horseback in a feathered headdress, arms stretched wide in an apparent plea for mercy. Boston-based sculptor Cyrus Dallin made it in 1909 as a gesture of sympathy for a Native American population that, after centuries of colonialism, had been radically diminished in number, in land, and in cultural presence. He intended the piece as a warning: That a continuation of the country’s vicious policies of assimilation and marginalization would be their literal end.
It hasn’t, of course, quite worked out that way, due more than anything to the resilience and determination of Indigenous people themselves. Only recently has the museum tried to address the disconnect: In 2019, by hosting a symposium on its fractious symbolism; and in 2021, when it invited Aquinnah Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James Perry to respond to its presence — she planted a native corn garden growing around its feet. Michelson’s work is about that story, not the one Dallin embraced. Just a few dozen feet away from “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” Michelson’s figures turn Dallin’s outdated declaration into a conversation.
Photo by Steven G. Smith
The sculptures of Marden and Gaines are everything “Appeal to the Great Spirit” is not. While Dallin’s piece served almost as an obituary, Marden and Gaines are emblems of their thriving cultures, which they preserve and uphold in their communities.
Michelson’s figure of Marden wears traditional clothing she made herself; she’s a specialist in an age-old process of twining, an Indigenous weaving technique that she safeguards and teaches to the community; within that practice is the making of ceremonial garb using feathers. Posing for his sculpture, Gaines chose to wear a necklace of bear bones; a long wampum belt is slung over his shoulder, a symbol of his tribe’s long presence in New England, from pre-contact to now.
Dallin’s piece portrays no one in particular; it’s a vague pastiche of mostly Western Plains Cree aesthetics, and an avatar of generalized Indigenous suffering. Michelson chose Gaines and Marden because they have specific roles in a specific place. He depicts them as they chose to appear: in their own clothes and regalia, posed as they liked. The feathers in Marden’s hand acknowledge her specialized practice; Gaines holds forth, paper in hand, as he often does when teaching Nipmuc culture.
“No one would ever take them for Native American stereotype,” Michelson said. Leafed in platinum, “The Knowledge Keepers” are also a material response to the drab, oxidized bronze of “Appeal to the Great Spirit.” With their relentless reflective brilliance, they radiate quicksilver vitality, shifting with light and perspective.
Just as important is their stance: The Dallin is weary, distressed, the Michelsons dynamic, self-possessed, and pushing forward. The contrast — desperate versus confident; symbolic versus actual — is stark. “I wanted to oppose the extinction narrative with something authentic,” Michelson said.
Ian Alteveer, chair of the museum’s Department of Contemporary Art, considers it much more than a simple response. “For Alan, it’s not just about the Dallin,” he said. “It’s about land that’s been taken, it’s about local communities representing themselves, and reflecting their agency and power.”
“The Knowledge Keepers” elides simple confrontation with the simple grace of clear-eyed contemporary reality. Alteveer was confident in choosing Michelson as the first artist for the facade program. Michelson’s canny, research-based work has put him at the fore of Indigenous contemporary culture, unpacking history in thoughtfully provocative ways. “What I love is his subtlety,” Alteveer said. “I knew he would make work that would really reinflect that site with something that changes the way we look at it permanently.”
Michelson’s piece isn’t designed to be permanent — notably, it’s part of the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial, launching next spring, a grand public experiment in temporary transformations of the urban landscape. It’s worth noting that, despite its century-plus run, “Appeal to the Great Spirit” was never intended to be permanent, either. The MFA acquired it in 1912 after it won a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1909; back then, it was considered contemporary art. Michelson, who grew up in Boston, has been in its orbit most of his life. He went to Boston Latin School in the late 1960s, just a few blocks away; as a student a few years later at the School of the Musuem of Fine Arts across the street, he was even closer.
“Honestly, like a lot of people, I think I just accepted it,” he said. “It had always been there — it seemed so authoritative. And if you were sympathetic at all toward Native people, there were almost no images of them anywhere in Boston. So I guess I kind of liked it, in a way. But I also questioned it: ‘Why is a Plains Indian here?’ There was something trophy-like about it that unsettled me.”
What Michelson hopes, he said, is that “The Knowledge Keepers” helps to crack open not only a deeper understanding of the Dallin, but the chasm between it and the contemporary reality of Indigenous people in North America. “This a very localized piece that has broader implications,” he said. Material matters: Bronze, a favorite of European monument-makers for several centuries, carries the baggage of dour colonial permanence; Indigenous people across North America have been drawn to more dynamic materials, employing copper and silver and the glossy interior of seashells for a radiance that signifies spiritual force, he said.
Platinum has all of those properties, along with the sci-fi appeal of being a favored material for satellites and spacecraft. “What I’m hoping to do is project into the future,” he said. “When you bury a people’s past, you bury their future, too. What I’m saying is, Native Americans very much have a future.” For the next year, “The Knowledge Keepers,” a beacon of that radiant future, will be shimmering in the sun.
ALAN MICHELSON THE KNOWLEDGE KEEPERS
From Nov. 14. Facade, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 425 Huntington Ave. 617-267-9300, www.mfa.org
Murray Whyte can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @TheMurrayWhyte.