The Exquisite Catalog of a Crow Fair


"When Dr. Denene De Quintal arrived at the Denver Art Museum as a curatorial fellow in 2016, one of her first assignments was to dig into the extensive, old-school card catalog that documents objects in the museum’s Native Arts department—a seemingly ordinary task. But De Quintal was greeted by something she describes as both unusual and fascinating. On the backs of the cards were small, exquisitely-detailed watercolor paintings of native objects—baskets, spears, shoes, clothes and more, all rendered in painstaking realism down to the pattern and texture. The volume of the card catalog is staggering: There are over 20,000 artworks in the Native Arts department; of those, 15,000 have illustrated cards. ..."
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