Artist Rick Bartow’s pair of sculptures, “We Were Always Here,” will sit at the Smithsonian entrance.
When the American Indian Museum talked to artist Rick Bartow about designing two monumental sculptures to greet visitors to the museum, Bartow had to be sure the museum knew what it was getting into. Though Bartow is from the northern California Wiyot tribe, he says his community has no totem pole tradition, which carries with it its own set of specific iconography and meaning. Museum officials reassured him, they wanted Bartow.
The sculptures, which will be dedicated to the museum Friday, Sept. 21, are columnar multi-figure pieces, but Bartow stresses that they are not totem poles. He told Oregon Live, “We didn’t want a totem pole. There is a predetermined idea of what that is going to look like, a built-in iconography. There are traditions. It reflects family stories, lineages. I have no lineage right to that.”