Native American Chic: The Marketing Of Native Americans In New York Between The World Wars

Focusing on four key figures - Morris de Camp Crawford, John Sloan, Amelia Elizabeth White, and René d\u27Harnoncourt - this dissertation analyzes museum and gallery exhibitions of Native American art mounted in the United States, particularly New York City, during the interwar period, and documents the immediate and lasting impact these shows and their promotion had on the emergence of Indian Chic in women\u27s fashion and interior design. In the late 1910s, Crawford, a research editor for Women\u27s Wear and honorary research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, mounted a campaign encouraging Euro-American designers to seek inspiration in museum collections, particularly Native American production. Crawford\u27s efforts led to the AMNH\u27s 1919 Exhibition of Industrial Art in Textiles and Costumes; a series of exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum in the 1920s; and Mallinson Fabrics\u27 1928 American Indian Series. Meantime, Sloan bolstered awareness of Native American art through exhibitions of Pueblo watercolors at the Society of Independent Artists exhibitions in the 1920s, and the groundbreaking Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts in 1931. White, a New York socialite living in Santa Fe, joined Sloan in his efforts, financing the EITA and promoting the incorporation of Native American art into modern Euro-American décor through her New York City gallery and exhibitions of her personal collection. In the mid-1930s, Indian Chic received government backing with the creation of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board. As its general manager, D\u27Harnoncourt promoted Indian art\u27s suitability as inspiration for modern Euro-American design in two landmark exhibitions: the Indian Court at San Francisco\u27s Golden Gate Exposition in 1939 and Indian Art of the United States at New York\u27s Museum of Modern Art in 1941. These exhibitions created a sensation that was widely reported in the popular press, and U.S. consumers responded enthusiastically to Indian-inflected and -inspired clothing, accessories, footwear, cosmetics, and household goods and accent pieces. The notion of Native American Chic, created in the 1910s by Crawford and promoted by Sloan, White, and d\u27Harnoncourt throughout the interwar period, endures today