The Whitehawk Antique Indian and Ethnographic Art Show , dubbed “the grandaddy of them all” by Maine Antique Digest ‘s Alice Kaufman, just got bigger. The Whitehawk Show, which opens Friday, August 9, and runs through Monday, August 12, has been showcasing historic Native American art objects and collections in Santa Fe for more than 46 years. It is an event that is known to bring together expert exhibitors and art collectors from around the world, but this year, the show’s scope has expanded on multiple fronts.
The show includes more than 125 exhibitors and is shaping up to be 25% bigger than last year’s, filling every space of the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. And this year’s event will feature Native American art from across the U.S.
as it has in the past but this year will also feature contemporary tribal and folk art pieces from Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. “There’s no other moment like it anywhere in the world to really see this wide variety of material and this amount of material,” says show owner and producer Kim Martindale. “And then to augment the Native American aspect of it is that we have work from these other cultures as well, which I think just lends itself to the Indigenous reference.
” Martindale says this inclusion of tribal work outside of the Western world is important in avoiding a “myopic” view of art. “You’re really missing out on some amazing artists and artwork when you just look at that very myopic focus of Western and European art,” Martindale says. Martindale helped launch the Whitehawk Show when he was 16 years old, started managing it at age 18, and continued as manager through his 30s, when it was sold by the owner.
It went through three more owners before being sold to Martindale last year. “It came full circle,” he says. The show will feature textiles, baskets, paintings, sculpture, jewelry, furniture, fashion, beadwork, pottery, and woodcarving from Native American and Indigenous cultures from around the world, all handpicked by expert collectors and exhibitors who will come with a wealth of knowledge to share about the historical pieces that are available for purchase.
The only items that will not be available for purchase are items displayed in the show’s two special exhibits: Art of Timeless Beauty, the Navajo Child’s Blanket curated by Robert Parsons and Miniature Native American Baskets — A Lifetime Collection curated by Jan Duggan. The show will include child’s blankets available to view and purchase outside of the exhibit. The show is planning to donate the basket collection to a museum.
“These particular child’s blankets are really special because these have been chosen out of the thousands of child’s blankets to represent really the crème de la crème,” Martindale says. “It really showcases these Navajo or Diné weavers back in the 1860s doing this amazing work.” The baskets showcased by Duggan were made by the Pima weavers living around the Gila and Salt rivers.
“I have baskets that are as delicate as 16 stitches to the inch. It’s almost like a tapestry,” Dugan says in Whitehawk’s site preview of the exhibit. Martindale is not sure what pieces will be available for purchase but says show pieces could be valued anywhere from $10 to more than $100,000.
He says the timing of the show, the weekend before the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Indian Market, allows Santa Fe visitors to experience historical Indigenous art from the past and then see today’s best contemporary Indian artwork the next week. Martindale hopes people who attend both can see the connection between past and present. The Whitehawk Show is a unique gathering of preserved items, and the Indian Market is a gathering of new items that reflects a preservation of ideas, tradition, and culture.
His ultimate goal, Martindale says, is that people “take away an interest in Indigenous arts ...
and that it broadens their horizons and creates excitement that these Indigenous cultures need to be put on the same plane as any artist from any other time period in any other location in the world.”.
