Quincy Tahoma Blog » Tahoma

The Great Round-up of Tahoma’s Paintings

pen4hire — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:24:33 +0000

Quincy Tahoma painted hundreds and hundreds of paintings in his short life. Charnell has embarked on the huge task of rounding up photographs, or at least visual descriptions of all the paintings we can find that Tahoma painted.

We know we will never find them all. There will be somebody who has a Tahoma in the closet and does not use the Internet and has not found us.

There will be a museum somewhere that we did not realize might have a collection of American Indian art.

But in the meantime, Charnell is re-contacting all the private owners we talked to in the past ten years to be sure they have not sold their paintings or bought new ones, and to be sure that we have their permission to use a photograph of their paintings in our book.

And she is contacting all the museums that we know have Tahomas in their collections and trying to get their permission to reproduce their paintings. Museums have to get money to operate from somewhere, and one of the places that they get it is by charging a fee for the use of their photos. Sometimes that fee is beyond our ability to pay. Sometimes they will give us a break because this book will be THE book of record about Tahoma and his paintings, and it would be a shame if their particular collection, chosen with such great care, was not included.

You know how it is. Museums always have way more paintings than they can display. So some of these absolutely top notch Tahoma paintings have never (or rarely) been seen by the public. Our book will be an opportunity for thousands of interested people to finally see what good taste those museums have, and what a great painter Tahoma was.

All of this is to let you know that if you have a Tahoma painting, or if you know the whereabouts of one–it is not too late to be considered for our book. Please leave a comment below or let us know by e-mail and we will talk to you. We want to be sure that his very best is represented. Have you seen Tahoma’s paintings in museums outside of Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma that we should be aware of? Do you know someone with one in his or her private collection? Let us know.

Here is a list of the museums that we are in contact with:

Arizona

The Heard Museum

Amerind

Arizona State Musem

California

California Academy of Sciences (Ruth and Charles Elkus

Collection)

Connecticut

Yale Beinecke Library

New Mexico

Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico

New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

Wheelwright Museum

School of American Research

Milicent Rogers Museum

Oklahoma

Fred Rogers Jr. Museum

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Gilcrease Museum

Philbrook Museum

Washington D.C.

National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institute)

Coming Soon: Quincy Tahoma’s Book

pen4hire — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:38:02 +0000

Charnell and Vera have been away for several months, because we wanted something positive to tell you.

The good news.

Quincy Tahoma’s biography will be published by Schiffer Books. The book is due to appear in their Spring 2011 catalog.

A little history.

When Charnell Havens inherited some Tahoma paintings from a relative, she started looking for information about Tahoma’s life and art. After a few years, she asked Vera Marie Badertscher if she would like to join the effort to uncover Tahoma’s biography and perhaps write a jointly authored book about the painter.

That was in the year 2000. Since then, the two of us have covered a lot of territory and talked to a lot of people, both separately and together. Among the more than fifty people we interviewed, we have written about three of them here, Ramos and Gerdie Sanchez and Jean McSwain.

Next, we will share the road to publication so far. And we intend to take you along on this journey, so please come back often, and please tell us what you would like to know.

In order to be sure you do not miss anything, we encourage you to sign up for a subscription (see the box on the right) so that we can e-mail you each new post as it is written.

Who Were Tahoma’s Parents?

pen4hire — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:13 +0000

The mystery of Tahoma’s family ties haunted us for years. He told everyone during his lifetime that he had no family. Some people we talked to believed very strongly that he was raised by non-Indians. Partly they believed that because he had a damaged (or perhaps withered) arm. Since Tahoma never talked about his arm–in fact went out of his way to hide it–most people assumed it was a birth defect. We were told in no uncertain terms that Navajo families would not adopt a child with a birth defect like that. In fact, if a child had been born back early in the twentieth century with a birth defect he would be put out to die.

Some of our interviewees were adamant on this fact, and anthropological books from the time seemed to bolster that opinion. A woman who had overseen the government nurses who served reservation communities told us that a nurse had rescued a Navajo baby whose family had put him out to die. A part-Navajo woman told us that her mother (a full-blooded Navajo) and her mother’s friends believed that had been Tahoma’s fate until someone rescued him.

Other people, however, were not so sure, and some even had examples of children who had born with defects who were raised by their own families.

The one thing that kept nagging at us about the theory that Tahoma had non-Indian adoptive parents, was the fact that many told us how steeped in the Navajo Way–Navajo beliefs– Tahoma was throughout his life. He reportedly carried a pollen bag (popularly called medicine bag). We were told that he believed in witches and spirits and the power of evil forces to change from human to animal form.

How could he have such strong beliefs in Navajo ways if he was not raised by Navajos? Eventually we found two surprising answers to our questions.

Do you know someone who held on to his traditional beliefs, even when raised in a different culture?

First We Asked Questions about the Artist

pen4hire — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:54:18 +0000

Writing a biography of Quincy Tahoma took a lot of research verging on detective work. We started our research with questions.

Where was Quincy Tahoma born?
What was his clan?
Were any of his family members still living?
Was he, in fact, adopted, and if so, why?
What caused the injury to his arm that many people mentioned?
What did he do during World War II? (Many biographical sketches said he served in the armed forces, and some even said he was a Code Talker.)
Why did he die so young?
Where is he buried?
Where are his paintings today?
Why did he go from Arizona to Santa Fe for school?
Who were his friends? Did he ever marry?
Who influenced his painting?
Where did he live during his life? Where did he travel?
Did he ever return to the Navajo reservation?

Some questions were quickly answered, but we tried to verify from more than one source. Every time we found an answer to a question, we found more questions. And we found no answers at all for some questions.

But what we did find amazed and delighted us. We never dreamed that we would find so many people who knew Tahoma personally, or that children and nieces and nephews of people who knew him would be able to tell us stories passed down through their families.

If you continue to read these pages, you will see where we went to find answers and you will have an opportunity to help us answer more questions. And any time that YOU have a questions, please ask. We’ll be happy to try to answer.

In order to keep track of the entire journey, we encourage you to subscribe to the blog by RSS feed or by e-mail. And do tell your friends, won’t you?

The Police Photographer/Investigator, Bundy

charnell — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:04:31 +0000

Bundy's majestic stallion is quite possibly the last painting that Quincy Tahoma created.

In the 1950s, Abundio Armijo, Jr. was the Santa Fe Police Department’s photographer and investigator. Bundy had a little lab at the jail which he let Quincy Tahoma use as an art studio of sorts whenever the painter was drying out from public intoxication.

One day, the Navajo artist brought a beautiful painting of a majestic stallion to the jail to give to Bundy in appreciation for his kindness. Little did Bundy know that he would be called to Tahoma’s apartment just two weeks later to record the artist’s death.

To the best of our knowledge, this may be the last painting that Tahoma created. You can see Bundy and his 1956 painting, as well as some other owners and their paintings, in the slide show on the home page at our Tahoma web page.

Do you know of any other paintings Tahoma produced shortly before his death in October 1956?