GEOFF BENNETT: Scrimshaw is a traditional 19th century art form that is now viewed in a much wider context and from a contemporary perspective.
This is the aim of an exhibition that challenges some old assumptions about the process and the product itself.
Jeffrey Brown visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts to research our arts and culture series “Canvas.”
It is a story of contacts, impacts, connections, great adventures and great losses, of people and animals across two oceans over a period of around 100 years.
In the exhibition “The Wider World and Scrimshaw” the story is told through objects.
Chief Curator Naomi Slipp.
NAOMI SLIPP, chief curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum: There are records of individual experiences and activities of these individuals. Whether they were in communities that whalers regularly visited or whether they were whalers themselves on board a ship, they all had these extraordinary experiences.
JEFFREY BROWN: The romance of adventure at sea, the fascination with the whales themselves, that’s part of the experience here.
Visitors are greeted by an 8,000-pound skeleton of a young blue whale.
But in a gallery next door, a special exhibition offers a different kind of insight.
Scrimshaw is the traditional art form of carving or engraving the bones, teeth and ivory of marine mammals, typically whales and walruses.
It is primarily associated with 19th century whaling, an industry that was long based here in New Bedford – think of Herman Melville and “Moby-Dick”.
The Whaling Museum, located in a port town with a functioning harbor, houses the world’s largest scrimshaw collection.
But for this exhibition, they wanted to place these objects in a larger context, or in context with a wide range of works by indigenous peoples with whom whalers regularly came into contact throughout the Pacific.
Slipp points to this little busk.
Corset cords were an integral part of women’s fashion in the 19th century. They were used to stiffen corsets and were typically made from whale bone.
This one, however, had an unusual pattern engraved on it.
NAOMI SLIPP: And we looked at it and thought, oh my goodness, that’s a navigation chart.
It is a navigational chart traditionally used in parts of the Pacific to learn the patterns of waves and currents and to move from island to island.
JEFFREY BROWN: So not from the Yankee whalers, but from the people they made contact with.
NAOMI SLIPP: Exactly, with Pacific Islanders.
And so the idea that someone who was on a whaling ship and made a busk – a typical New England corset shape – would also inscribe it with an inscription that must have had real cultural significance to the people of the Pacific Islands was quite appealing.
JEFFREY BROWN: Scientists have long studied this clash of cultures and its often negative political, environmental and other consequences.
This exhibition, says Slipp, attempts to build on research and establish artistic references to the present.
CORA-ALLAN LAFAIKI TWISS, artist: People talk about a lost art form, but I like to think of it as if it had been sleeping and I have brought it back to life through my work.
JEFFREY BROWN: New Zealand artist Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss is part Maori and part Niue, with Niue being a small island about 2,400 kilometers to the northeast.
Eight years ago, she learned the traditional art of making fabric paintings from tapa bark, called Hiapo, in Niue. However, she says the practice has almost died out there.
She says it was rare that she had seen older Hiapo, and then she received an email with a photo from the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which owned this well-preserved work brought back on a Yankee whaling ship.
CORA-ALLAN LAFAIKI TWISS: I was also confused because I wondered, what is this doing in New Bedford?
What makes it so far from home?
It is in good condition and the ink itself is absolutely bright and vibrant, as the day it was made.
And then of course there is a ship in one of the patterns. This also tells of Niue’s colonial history and places it in this time period.
JEFFREY BROWN: The museum commissioned her to create a new work, a kind of dialogue with the old, with her own images and patterns of the sea and its wildlife.
Cora-Allan believes she is the first person to practice it in over a hundred years and says it was her grandparents who first encouraged her to do it.
Why was it important for you to do this, to take on this role?
CORA-ALLAN LAFAIKI TWISS: It is important to me because I was asked.
JEFFREY BROWN: From them?
CORA-ALLAN LAFAIKI TWISS: You asked me.
They asked me and worked six days a week.
My nanny worked until she was about 70.
Why shouldn’t I take on the responsibility required?
Because it’s so important that my culture is passed on, but they weren’t able to continue those practices. That’s why it’s important, because they asked me. I’m a granddaughter of the Moana of the Pacific.
JEFFREY BROWN: Another contemporary artist updating and adding urgency to 19th-century history is Courtney M. Leonard of the Shinnecock Indian Tribe of eastern Long Island, New York.
Her work at the museum is part of an ongoing project called “Breach” and explores under-told stories from the past, including those of members of her tribe who served on whaling ships.
Her “scrimshaw studies,” as she calls them, are made of ceramic, and the ruptures she addresses are moral, legal, property rights and environmental, including sea level rise.
COURTNEY M. LEONARD, artist: You grow up with water and understand your relationship to the place and your responsibility towards it.
Whether you make this your life’s work is up to you, but for some – at least for me, who lives at home – the water level is rising.
So when you live in a place where the water is rising, you realize that time is valuable in many ways.
JEFFREY BROWN: As the exhibition today shows, marine mammals such as whales and walruses are protected by law and the trade in whale and walrus bone and ivory, including scrimshaw, is strictly regulated.
Still, the sight of these objects, made from the bones and teeth of some of the most magnificent creatures on Earth, can be disturbing.
I asked chief curator Naomi Slipp what she thinks.
NAOMI SLIPP: That’s a difficult one.
When you really think about what surrounds us here, you realize that there is so much death there that sometimes you just get overwhelmed when you really come to terms with it. The number of whales and walruses and other species of animals that are represented by these materials.
But I hope that people will ultimately take away some sense of survival and survival, of tradition, craftsmanship, community and of the whales themselves.
JEFFREY BROWN: The Wider World and Scrimshaw runs until November 11.
For the PBS News Hour, I’m Jeffrey Brown at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.
