Discovering ‘Man Becomes an Artist’ by Tahoma

The Basket Makers

This is a continuation of the conversation from yesterday about finding lost paintings.

In June 1944,  Kenneth Chapman, a major mover and shaker in the Santa Fe art and archaeology world, was temporary director of the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe.

During the war years, museums and research facilities everywhere had trouble raising money, so the board decided that instead of emphasizing costly archaeological research, they would put together a traveling exhibit to share the knowledge they had accumulated. A former director suggested they contact young Quincy Tahoma to execute the paintings for an exhibit to be called Man Becomes an Artist.

Tahoma worked with an older successful graphic artist and, for the first time, he had to consult closely with scientists as he worked.  We were fortunate to locate a sketch book belonging to Tahoma (now owned by a private collector) in which he practiced some of the drawings that later appeared in Man Becomes an Artist, so we know that he took his work very seriously. (You will see pages from the sketch book in the Quincy Tahoma biography when it is published next spring.)

He completed his work and the 24 panels (3′ 10 1/2″ by 5′ 4 1/2″) of the exhibit included seven with Tahoma paintings.  The paintings occupied a relatively small space in the top third of each panel, with lettering below, explaining the principle being illustrated.

Today, the Laboratory of Anthropology has black and white photographs of four of Tahoma’s paintings for the exhibit, and Clara Lee Tanners’ book, Southwest Indian Painting, shows another. The other two are totally missing. The Tanner image was taken of a painting in private hands, but since the Laboratory of Anthropology has no record of the panels after they were created, we thought we would never see one of Tahoma’s Man Becomes an Artist paintings.

However, we were recently contacted by a private collector who, with his wife, owns the painting that you see reproduced at the top of this post.  It corresponds to the Lab’s photo of The Basket Makers panel. The owners, who agreed to let us share the painting with you, bought it in 1955 and the person from whom they bought it thinks it was displayed in El Paso.  That would be a new addition to our list of possible destinations for the Man Becomes an Artist Exhibit.

Why does the Laboratory of Anthropology, whose job is collecting information about American Indian art and archaeology, not have a record of their own exhibit and why do they not have the panels themselves? Well, as I mentioned above, funding became very difficult during and after World War II.  Soon after this show “hit the road” in 1945, the Lab had a succession of directors and staff cuts, until it was down to a staff of only three people plus a part-time secretary.  Clearly, there were more urgent matters than keeping records of the show.

To illustrate the situation, one letter in the Lab’s files is an appeal from a museum to reply as to where the exhibit should be returned. The writer complained that he had written before and not received an answer. These were chaotic times at the Lab of Anthropology, and Man Becomes an Artist simply disappeared.

We owe deep thanks to the owners of The Basket Makers for contacting us and allowing us to print an image of their painting.

Of course we are still looking for the other paintings that Tahoma did for this exhibit. They include Cave Painting (shown in the Tanner book); The Navajo (A Navajo woman on a hill top overlooking sheep); Prehistoric Pueblo (Pueblo women gathering corn from tall corn stalks with children playing nearby); The Hohokam (Men hoeing in a field–probably an irrigation ditch– one carrying a basket on his head, mountains in the background) and the ones with no photo: Earliest Man and Early Man in America.

Do you own one of these, or have you seen one somewhere? Do you have any knowledge of museums that showed the Man Becomes an Artist panels? We are eager to get more information.