Research & Publications by Laura J . Allen
Arts, 2024
In the mid-twentieth century, growing North American textile and ready-to-wear industries vigorou... more In the mid-twentieth century, growing North American textile and ready-to-wear industries vigorously appropriated Native American aesthetics to cultivate a commercial and design identity apart from Europe. Most studies of the circulation of Indigenous idioms in these industries focus on Southwestern or South Pacific regionalisms, and scholarship on studio and commercial fabric and fashion design from the Northwest Coast in the twentieth century is limited. This paper contributes by raising Indigenous and non-Indigenous use of Northwest Coast design forms during the politically turbulent 1940s–1960s and analyzing the impact of this aesthetic vocabulary within broader North American textiles and fashion. Throughout, I engage with the approaches of critical fashion theory and multiple modernisms, considering the frictions of property and power relations within settler- colonial states, then and now. Drawing from study of objects, periodicals, and archival materials as well as first-person perspectives, I contextualize these representations within entangled art, museum, and design worlds in the Northwest Coast, New York City, and the Southwest. My examination illustrates that Northwest Coast artists and art ideas asserted a peripheral but locatable role in mid-century textiles and fashion, facilitating the development of today’s robust Indigenous fashion network on the Northwest Coast and its cultural politics.
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Otsego Alumni Review, 2023
Research essay about a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century maple burl belt cup elaboratel... more Research essay about a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century maple burl belt cup elaborately carved with beaver and sturgeon in the collection of the Fenimore Art Museum.
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Fashioning Resurgence, special issue of Fashion Studies, 2022
Laura J. Allen, interdisciplinary scholar and Curator of Native American Art at the Montclair Art... more Laura J. Allen, interdisciplinary scholar and Curator of Native American Art at the Montclair Art Museum, discusses the Land-Based Fashion panel featuring Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Bobby Itta, Tania Larsson, and Amber Sandy. She dives into the land-based materials used in Indigenous fashion design, the risks of sharing Indigenous cultural knowledge, and how Indigenous designers and entrepreneurs can offer an alternative to fast fashion.
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Hidden Stories/Human Lives: Proceedings of the Textile Society of America 17th Biennial Symposium, 2020
Overlooked objects in museum collections can reveal complex social relationships behind well-know... more Overlooked objects in museum collections can reveal complex social relationships behind well-known textile forms. A tattered woven case for ammunition cartridges, collected in southern Alaska in the late nineteenth century, presents such an opportunity. Part of the vast Tlingit collection at the American Museum of Natural History, the ammunition bag has been little documented and displayed compared to other highly esteemed indigenous naaxein or “Chilkat” weavings of the region. The piece is unusual in that the maker combined two weaving styles—not only figural motifs characteristic of Chilkat weaving, but also geometric patterns reminiscent of its stylistic and technical precursor, called Raven’s Tail, of which few historic pieces remain. In this paper, I analyze the bag’s design, manufacture, and use, and contextualize its attributes using comparative objects, ethnohistorical sources, and contemporary dialogues with weavers and others from the Northwest Coast. I suggest that this case’s specific patterns, construction, and symbolism attest to major transitions (as well as continuities) occurring within Tlingit communities during the nineteenth century, a period of intense colonial pressure. These transitions include gender shifts in textile design, an increase in militaristic symbolism in ceremonial potlatch regalia, and adaptations in the look and socioeconomic roles of dress, textiles, and basketry. I interpret this special case as a connective object, linking shifting modes of expression and social relations during a time of transformation for indigenous groups of the Northwest Coast.
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Essay for the exhibition "The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt, and the Making of Anthropology"... more Essay for the exhibition "The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt, and the Making of Anthropology" at Bard Graduate Center and U'mista Cultural Centre, 2019
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Object essay for the exhibition "The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt, and the Making of Anthro... more Object essay for the exhibition "The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt, and the Making of Anthropology" at Bard Graduate Center and U'mista Cultural Centre, 2019.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Collection, 2018
Object essay
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Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Collection, 2018
Object essay
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Book Reviews by Laura J . Allen
Museum Anthropology, 2022
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Journal of Folklore Research Reviews, 2021
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Conference Participation by Laura J . Allen
University of Oklahoma - New Perspectives in Native American Art History Symposium, 2020
In the late nineteenth century, Haida artists worked together to create a navy and red wool tunic... more In the late nineteenth century, Haida artists worked together to create a navy and red wool tunic—a ceremonial garment now housed in the Burke Museum—that features bold crest images of the wearer’s lineage. Most striking is the crest design of the sea-bear, which confronts the onlooker with wide-set eyes, bared teeth, and flukes instead of feet. In this paper, I trace the circulation of the tunic’s motifs as graphic art, fabric, and fashion in the mid-twentieth century, a period when North America strove to demonstrate its artistic and economic independence from Europe.
Numerous art-historical studies have investigated modernist painting and sculpture relating to the Pacific Northwest during this time. Other scholars document the vigorous appropriation of indigenous Southwestern and South Pacific idioms in midcentury textile and fashion industries. This paper fills geographic and analytical gaps by surfacing both Native and non-Native efforts in varied design media that drew upon North Pacific aesthetics, and contextualizing them within the entangled networks of art, commercial design, and museum practice in which they emerged.
I show how people such as Cherokee designer Lloyd Kiva New, Tlingit artist Nathan Jackson, and Euro-American architect Paul Thiry adapted the Haida tunic’s crest designs and similar motifs in their modernist experiments. Objects I will analyze include Robert Bruce Inverarity’s 1950 Art of the Northwest Coast Indians, a 1956 Seattle “Native fashion show” program, a Lloyd Kiva New dress, and studio and mass-produced textiles. In following these iterations, I investigate how non-Native adherents of “Northwest Coast art” promoted a local aesthetic while framing regional and national cultural identities. By comparing non-Native projects with the efforts of Indigenous artists to assert their own rights, regionalisms, and market potential through textiles, I plumb tensions between Native American modernisms and broader North American modernism’s use of “the Native” in interlinked art and design worlds.
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2019 Native American Art Studies Association Biennial Meeting, Minneapolis, MN. Coauthored with M... more 2019 Native American Art Studies Association Biennial Meeting, Minneapolis, MN. Coauthored with Meghann O'Brien, Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw weaver.
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2019 Council of Museum Anthropology Biennial Conference, Santa Fe, NM (Coauthored with Aaron Glass)
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Awards by Laura J . Allen
Bard Graduate Center M.A. Qualifying Project (Exhibition proposal and design). Winner of the Mr. ... more Bard Graduate Center M.A. Qualifying Project (Exhibition proposal and design). Winner of the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts Award for an outstanding M.A. qualifying paper on an American subject.
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Magazine Articles by Laura J . Allen
National Parks, 2020
Has the long-troubled relationship between Grand Canyon National Park and local indigenous people... more Has the long-troubled relationship between Grand Canyon National Park and local indigenous people entered a more harmonious era?
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Climate change reveals — and threatens — artifacts along Alaska’s famed Chilkoot Trail.
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Research & Publications by Laura J . Allen
Book Reviews by Laura J . Allen
Conference Participation by Laura J . Allen
Numerous art-historical studies have investigated modernist painting and sculpture relating to the Pacific Northwest during this time. Other scholars document the vigorous appropriation of indigenous Southwestern and South Pacific idioms in midcentury textile and fashion industries. This paper fills geographic and analytical gaps by surfacing both Native and non-Native efforts in varied design media that drew upon North Pacific aesthetics, and contextualizing them within the entangled networks of art, commercial design, and museum practice in which they emerged.
I show how people such as Cherokee designer Lloyd Kiva New, Tlingit artist Nathan Jackson, and Euro-American architect Paul Thiry adapted the Haida tunic’s crest designs and similar motifs in their modernist experiments. Objects I will analyze include Robert Bruce Inverarity’s 1950 Art of the Northwest Coast Indians, a 1956 Seattle “Native fashion show” program, a Lloyd Kiva New dress, and studio and mass-produced textiles. In following these iterations, I investigate how non-Native adherents of “Northwest Coast art” promoted a local aesthetic while framing regional and national cultural identities. By comparing non-Native projects with the efforts of Indigenous artists to assert their own rights, regionalisms, and market potential through textiles, I plumb tensions between Native American modernisms and broader North American modernism’s use of “the Native” in interlinked art and design worlds.
Awards by Laura J . Allen
Magazine Articles by Laura J . Allen
Numerous art-historical studies have investigated modernist painting and sculpture relating to the Pacific Northwest during this time. Other scholars document the vigorous appropriation of indigenous Southwestern and South Pacific idioms in midcentury textile and fashion industries. This paper fills geographic and analytical gaps by surfacing both Native and non-Native efforts in varied design media that drew upon North Pacific aesthetics, and contextualizing them within the entangled networks of art, commercial design, and museum practice in which they emerged.
I show how people such as Cherokee designer Lloyd Kiva New, Tlingit artist Nathan Jackson, and Euro-American architect Paul Thiry adapted the Haida tunic’s crest designs and similar motifs in their modernist experiments. Objects I will analyze include Robert Bruce Inverarity’s 1950 Art of the Northwest Coast Indians, a 1956 Seattle “Native fashion show” program, a Lloyd Kiva New dress, and studio and mass-produced textiles. In following these iterations, I investigate how non-Native adherents of “Northwest Coast art” promoted a local aesthetic while framing regional and national cultural identities. By comparing non-Native projects with the efforts of Indigenous artists to assert their own rights, regionalisms, and market potential through textiles, I plumb tensions between Native American modernisms and broader North American modernism’s use of “the Native” in interlinked art and design worlds.