The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 23, 2024

Cañon de Chelly - Navaho

Cañon de Chelly - Navaho

1904
(American, 1868–1952)
Image: 31.5 x 41.8 cm (12 3/8 x 16 7/16 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)
© E.S. Curtis
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

This ancestral stronghold of the Navajo Nation, from which they were exiled from 1864 to 1868, is still owned by the tribe today.

Description

The soaring cliffs of Cañon de Chelly, one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in America, dwarf the Navajos riding in the midday Arizona sun in 1904. Edward S. Curtis’s images, though rooted in the documentary impulse, present a romanticized view of the past, one that he often staged to suggest an even earlier period. He had two sometimes-conflicting aims: to capture America’s vanishing Indigenous cultures but also to create photographic art.
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996. Reproduced: P. 135
    Curtis, Edward S., Frederick Webb Hodge, Theodore Roosevelt, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Christopher Cardozo. The North American Indian: Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska. 2017.
  • Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
    Shadows and Dreams: Pictorialist Photography in America. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (September 5, 2015-January 17, 2016).
    The American Indian Image: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis and Zig Jackson . The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 30, 2010).
    Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010).
    American Space: Landscape Photography 1900-1950. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 6-May 23, 2001).
    The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988).
    CMA, February 7, 2010 - May 30, 2010: "The American Indian Image: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis and Zig Jackson," exhibited in the East Wing Photography Exhibition gallery.
    CMA, February 24 - April 17, 1988: "Year in Review 1987," CMA Bulletin, 75 (February 1988), p. 66, no. 49.
    CMA, July 10 - August 19, 1990: "The Camera," Classroom Level, no exhibition catalogue.
    Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; January 3-May 23, 2001. "American Space: Landscape Photography, 1900-1950."
    The Cleveland Museum of Art (6/24/07 - 9/16/07) and Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittburgh, PA (10/3/2009 - 1/3/2010); "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art", no exhibition catalogue.
    The Cleveland Museum of Art (9/5/2015 - 1/17/2016); "Pictorialist Photography"
  • {{cite web|title=Cañon de Chelly - Navaho|url=false|author=Edward S. Curtis|year=1904|access-date=23 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1987.182