Interwoven

Woven baskets have been central to Native American identity as a highly skilled artistic practice and as intricately constructed utilitarian objects. Across North America, basket weaving techniques have undergone changes that mirrored the upheaval within the weavers’ lives, through contact with European settlers to the loss of traditional territory and removal to reservations. Our class has curated a selection of baskets from FSU’s Museum of Fine Arts which were collected by Tallahassee native Mary Douglas Lewis between 1910 and 1950. These baskets are an embodiment of historical, social, and artistic changes as baskets shifted from cultural objects to tourist souvenirs to forms of contemporary art. In the midst of this dynamic change Native American women relied on basket weaving as a means of continuity and survival to maintain cultural ways of life, economic livelihoods, Indigenous identities, and individual artistic expression.