Our Collection Travels!

Turtle Bay Exploration Park holds a collection of over 35,000 objects, but our art and artifacts are not kept exclusively for our museum. Just as we often borrow objects for our own exhibitions, we are a resource for other researchers and other institutions. Not only do we rent out our Ansel Adams Masterworks collection as a way to support the Collections and Exhibits Department, but we also lend objects to museums all over the country. These objects act as ambassadors for Turtle Bay and our mission. It is yet another way for people to discover the Park, for us to form relationships with other places that embody our values, and to share the wealth of our collection. 

One of the most prized baskets in our nearly 1,000-piece collection is by Tina Charlie (1869-1962), a renowned Mono Lake Paiute weaver. This basket is now on display at The Heard Museum in their exhibition, David Hockney’s Yosemite and Masters of California Basketry through April 5, 2020. The Heard, located in Phoenix, Arizona, has a core mission to advance American Indian Art. This exhibition features a selection of works from basket makers associated with the Yosemite Valley. We also found out that one of Ms. Charlie’s relatives was able to see her baskets on display in this exhibition.

Pictured above: Turtle Bay’s Tina Charlie basket on exhibition at The Heard Museum. Photo by Craig Smith.

In the words of The Heard: “The Yosemite Valley landscape has long inspired artistic production. During the early decades of the 20th century, production of baskets in the Yosemite Valley was at its zenith, fueled by a newly established tourism-based economy. Miwok and Mono Lake Paiute women began expanding their practice of making baskets as traditional functional objects, evolving them into objects designed for artistic consumption. The work of these artists is considered to this day a benchmark for excellence in the field.” 

How did we get involved in an exhibition 915 miles away? The exhibition’s curator knew that Turtle Bay owns this basket because it had been featured in an exhibition at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento in 1996/1997. Word of mouth and in-depth research into past exhibitions are important curatorial resources.

Pictured above: Senior exhibit technician Charles Burdett and volunteer Jill Cruz build a custom enclosure to ship the basket.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if curators could find everything they needed on our website? We are working diligently behind the scenes to create a user-friendly web version of our collections database. It is a slow and painstaking process, but ultimately it will be worth the effort and enable us to share Turtle Bay’s collection more widely than ever before!