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Judith Finger, Research Associate at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, talks about her research work at the Hearst Museum
What is your current place of employment and your job title?
Describe what you do at your current job and describe how it relates to
the research you are doing at the Hearst Museum.
My current job as a Research Associate with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History allows for a great deal of flexibility and variety in my work. My area of expertise, and, therefore, my primary research focus is Native American basketry, especially from California and the Southwest. The research I have done at the Hearst Museum is directly related to the two projects that have occupied most of my time for the past five years. The study of Owens Valley Paiute baskets was an integral part of both these projects. One project was the development of our major exhibit "Of Myth and Memory: Paiute and Shoshone Baskets of Owens Valley, California." This exhibit was displayed at our museum from mid-October 2000 through the end of February 2001. It traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and is now at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, California where it will be on view through the end of the year.
Concurrently with planning the exhibit, we also worked on a manuscript that is being published by Yosemite Press. I wrote two chapters for the book. One is an overview of the history of basket collecting which highlights the ethnographic collecting for museums of the early twentieth century, early local collectors in the Owens Valley and some contemporary Owens Valley residents who are collectors. The second chapter is a detailed study of traditional Owens Valley Paiute basketry, which is what brought me to the Hearst Museum in October 1999. This chapter also includes biographies of some Panamint Shoshone and Mono Lake Paiute basket weavers as well as those of several Owens Valley Paiute weavers.
What is the current research you have been working on at the Hearst Museum?
My current research at the Hearst Museum was to look at basketry caps from the Great Basin area, both twined and coiled, for an article that I am writing. This research visit also gave me an opportunity to clarify some details to be included in our book. The article is an outgrowth of the basketry research I did for our book. It focuses on one type of basket, the twined caps made by the Owens Valley Paiute. However, it also offers a look at the twined caps of the Northern and Southern Paiute groups as well as the coiled caps of the Panamint, Tubatulabal, Kawaiisu and Chumash.
How did you first become involved with doing research at the Hearst Museum?
I became involved with doing research at the Hearst in 1999 when Craig Bates, Curator of the Yosemite Museum and a recognized expert on California Indian basketry, advised me on planning a research trip to study Owens Valley Paiute basketry in order to identify and describe their "typical" traditional basketry forms for the book we were writing. The Hearst was at the top of the list of California museums he recommended because it does have significant holdings of documented Owens Valley Paiute baskets. Many of these baskets were collected, around 1933, for the museum by Julian Steward when he was working on his Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute. Another important collection was assembled by Horatio Shumway Lee and Minnie Barrows Randolph prior to 1925 and subsequently donated to the Hearst. This collection, along with several smaller ones, was very helpful in my research. I spent two full days looking at Owens Valley Paiute baskets on that visit. The information I learned from studying the baskets and going through the accession files was extremely helpful to me in my writing as well as in the exhibit planning.
What other research projects have you worked on at the Hearst Museum?
Up to this time, all the research I have done at the Hearst has been related to my work on Owens Valley Paiute basketry. During this last visit I did expand what I was looking at to include examples of basketry caps from other Great Basin people including the Northern Paiute, Southern Paiute, Panamint Shoshone, Kawaiisu, Chumash, and Tubatulabal tribal groups. This additional research increased the scope of my study and allowed me to make comparisons and draw conclusions about the caps made by each particular tribal group.
Additional comments
Researching at the Hearst, overall, is a most energizing and positive
experience. If one is interested in Native American basketry, especially from California, in a historical sense, this is the place to be. The importance of the collecting and documenting efforts of the early ethnographers on behalf of this museum cannot be overstated. Professionally and personally, it is unbelievably fulfilling and rewarding to be able to have access to the material in the collections at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum.
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