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Medici Mondays: Sarah Greenwell-Scott By Charlie Snyder, Arizona Arts

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Sunday, September 29, 2024
College of Fine Arts, School of Art

Sarah Greenwell-Scott performed dissertation research at the National Anthropological Archives in Washington D.C., thanks to support from the College of Fine Arts Medici Circle.

Greenwell-Scott is in her third year of the Ph.D. program in art history with a minor in American Indian Studies. In the fall of 2023, she found an excerpt of a letter written by President Theodore Roosevelt to photographer Edward S. Curtis. This summer she looked deeper into the letter where Roosevelt showed presidential support for the Curtis project, “The North American Indian.”

Students: Become a Medici Scholar. | Supporters: Join the Medici Circle.

“The research performed at the National Anthropological Archives was fruitful,” she said. “I found the specific letter of interest and gathered material that I plan to use to expand my argument concerning the reception of “The North American Indian”toward an analysis of the project’s reification of sociopolitical constructs at the time of its production.”

Her opening chapter begins that analysis. Curtis spent the next three decades documenting the stories and rituals of more than 80 North American tribes. But the book is infamous due to numerous staged photos. Manipulating the scenes and his subjects, he captured a romanticized vision of Native American life, stuck in time.

Greenwell-Scott found that while Roosevelt promoted Curtis’ work as historical documentation, he connected the project to assimilation. “The Indian is at the point of perishing, and when he has become a United States citizen … he will completely lose his value as a living historical document,” he wrote. Indigenous assimilation, indeed, became federal policy.

“I found the archival research gratifying,” she said. “The primary source documents will deepen the complexity of the analysis and strengthen my argument as well as its historical and theoretical framework.”

Greenwell-Scott spent a week in our nation’s capital. When she wasn’t doing research at the Smithsonian, she visited as many museums as possible, including National Museum of the American Indian, Hirschhorn, Phillips Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery of Art, as well as the Library of Congress and U.S. Capitol.

Students: Become a Medici Scholar. | Supporters: Join the Medici Circle.

Medici Circle Appreciation

“I was honored to receive the kind and generous support of Pamela Becker and Vincent Immordino, both of whom have my heartfelt gratitude.”

Previously on “Medici Mondays”