Robin Wright: Zacherias and the Chicago Settee: Connecting the Masterpiece to the Master
Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Henry Auditorium
Free
Seventeen Haida artists’ names were recorded by James Deans in the records of a set of 29 model houses from the village of Skidegate that he commissioned for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Some of these names, like John Cross and John Robson, have been well known to those interested in Northwest Coast art history. Bill Holm’s important 1981 article, “Will the Real Charles Edenshaw Please Stand Up?” described and differentiated the carving styles of six Haida artists whose works had been mistaken for those of Charles Edenshaw, among them, John Cross, John Robson, and the “Master of the Chicago Settee,” whose real name has remained unknown, until now. This lecture will reveal how the Chicago Settee has been connected to the name Zacherias, and who Zacherias, probably the Master of the Chicago Settee, really was.
Robin K. Wright is Professor of Art History, Curator of Native American Art, and Director of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum.