[BCMA] For immediate release: Basketry exhibit at Langley Museum

Tue May 18 09:21:21 PDT 2010

Interwoven: N’laka’pamux Basketry and Basket Makers

May 15 – August 22

The Langley Centennial Museum is happy to present its newest exhibit, Interwoven: N’laka’pamux Basketry and Basket Makers, on display from May 15 to August 22.  The N'laka'pamux (pronounced n-lah-KAP-muh) people are formerly known as the Thompson (River tribes), and their territory includes the region from Spuzzum to Spences Bridge, and east to Merritt/Nicola.

The journey to exhibiting these pieces began in 2004 when the museum hired Irene Bjerky to research the origins of the baskets known as the Pearson Collection.  In 1993, Mrs. Aida Freeman (nee Southwell) had donated half of her mother’s basket collection to the museum, and the other half to the Historic Yale Museum.  Her mother, Mrs. Kathleen Southwell (nee Pearson) had lived in North Bend, BC, and collected most of the baskets during her time there.

This collection presented many questions to staff and researchers at the Langley Centennial Museum, which now had a very respectable and quite sizeable collection of First Nations basketry.  How had Mrs. Southwell come to have such a collection?  Who had made these baskets?  And after so many years, what information could be found about these basket makers?

Little is known about the makers of most First Nations baskets in collections around the world.  However, the baskets in the collection of the Historic Yale Museum had already been researched and documented by Ms. Bjerky, and she had researched and collected information about the basket makers as well.  Subsequently, the Langley Centennial Museum brought in Ms. Bjerky to use this Yale research to inform the study of the Langley collection.  Through her examination of styles, techniques, and basket makers, she was able to provide information on several baskets in the Langley collection.

When former museum curator Lisa Codd discovered a basket from the Pearson Collection in a 1938 photograph of a basket maker and her baskets, it sparked a new research direction that led to the identifying of other baskets in the photo.  It also attracted the participation of researchers in Lytton and Victoria, augmented by research begun by Jennifer Iredale, a curator for the Heritage Branch of the province of British Columbia.

Interwoven will feature these identified baskets, their makers, and their stories, and also some interesting baskets from outside the Pearson collection, including a mysterious one that was reportedly used as evidence in a murder trial over eighty years ago.  The conservation work completed on the basket collection over the last five years by Fraser Spafford Ricci Art & Archival Conservation Inc., with the help of two federal Museum Assistance Program grants, will also be highlighted.

An exciting addition to this new exhibit is the inclusion of twelve newly commissioned baskets, made possible through a partnership between the Langley Centennial Museum, the Yale & District Historical Society, the Kwantlen First Nation, and the Lytton First Nation, and a grant from the provincial government’s Arts Partners in Creative Development program.  These baskets will remain in the partners’ collections, allowing an opportunity for the basket makers’ stories to be collected, and their names recorded.

The opening reception for the exhibit will be held on Saturday, May 22 from 2–4pm, and all are welcome.  For more details about the opening or exhibit, please contact curator Kobi Howard at 604.888.3922 or at khoward at tol.ca<mailto:khoward at tol.ca>.

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Miss Kobi Howard
Arts & Heritage Curator
Langley Centennial Museum
604.888.3922

Langley was named after Thomas Langley, a prominent stockholder in the management of the Hudson’s Bay Company who never actually came to the area.

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