Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v.79, no. 1 (Summer, 2021)

Kornhauser, Elizabeth and Shannon Vittoria, with a preface by Robert Joseph Geary (2021)

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Description

Investigating the career of the French-born American artist Jules Tavernier (1844–1889), this issue of the Bulletin recounts the artist’s travels through the American West and examines his portrayals of some of the Indigenous communities he encountered. The story focuses on Tavernier’s masterwork, Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California  (1878), which depicts a ceremonial dance—known as mfom Xe, or “people dance”—performed by the Pomo community of Elem at Clear Lake, in Northern California.

Robert Joseph Geary, an Elem Pomo cultural leader, eloquently describes his first reactions upon seeing Tavernier’s depiction of his ancestors and the significance of the mfom Xe ceremony. Elizabeth Kornhauser and Shannon Vittoria provide additional historical context for the painting and show how it recognizes the rich vitality of Elem Pomo culture while also exposing the threat posed to the community by White settlers. 

This Bulletin juxtaposes paintings, prints, watercolors, and photographs by Tavernier and other artists with examples of historic and contemporary Pomo basketry and regalia to celebrate the resiliency of the Pomo peoples and highlight their continued cultural presence.

Table of contents

Director's Note

Preface
Robert Joseph Geary

Jules Tavernier: A French Bohemian in the American West
Elizabeth Kornhauser

Cultural Resiliency, Colonial Legacies: Pomo Makers, Settler Artists, and the Survival of Indigenous Culture in California
Shannon Vittoria

Notes
Acknowledgments

About the authors

Elizabeth Kornhauser is Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, The American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Shannon Vittoria is Senior Research Associate, The American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Robert Joseph Geary is president of the Clearlake Pomo Cultural Preservation Foundation.

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Exhibition

Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo

August 16–November 28, 2021

Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo explores the intercultural exchange between French-born and trained American artist Jules Tavernier (1844–1889) and the Indigenous Pomo community of Elem at Clear Lake in northern California.

Investigating Tavernier’s life and career, the exhibition is centered around his rediscovered masterwork Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), which depicts a ceremonial dance of the Elem Pomo known as mfom Xe, or “people dance,” in an underground roundhouse. Commissioned by San Francisco’s leading banker, Tiburcio Parrott, as a gift for his Parisian business partner, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the work celebrates the rich vitality of Elem Pomo culture, while also exposing the threat posed by White settlers, including Parrot, who was then operating a toxic mercury mine on the community’s ancestral homelands.

The exhibition will bring together approximately 50 works—including paintings, prints, watercolors, and photographs—to tell the story of Tavernier’s travels through Nebraska, Wyoming, California, and the Hawaiian Islands, incorporating a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, including those of Pomo cultural leaders and curators, who will offer new interpretations of his work. Major paintings by Tavernier will be shown alongside examples of 19th- to 21st-century Pomo baskets and regalia, including works by contemporary weaver Clint McKay (Dry Creek Pomo/Wappo/Wintun), to celebrate the resiliency of the Indigenous Pomo peoples and highlight their continued cultural presence today. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker Robert Geary and Dry Creek Pomo scholar Sherrie Smith-Ferri, Ph.D.

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