The Norton Allen Basketry Collection

The Norton Allen Basketry Collection BRYN BARABAS POTTER AND BRENDA BULLER FOCHT Norton Allen lived in southern California and for many decades wintered in the deserts of the American Southwest. With few exceptions, the baskets he collected were made by native peoples of southern California, the Great Basin, and Arizona, especially the Tohono O’odham from the Gila Bend area. In 1998, his collection, which numbers eighty-seven items, was donated to the Riverside Municipal Museum (RMM) in Riverside, California. At the time of the donation, a six-page inventory of the collection was prepared (Moser 1997) that recorded information provided by Norton Allen, including the names of a few of the basket weavers or where the baskets were obtained, but the entries rarely exceed two sentences plus dimensions of the items. An early two-page document indicates that Allen purchased some of his baskets from another collector around 1950 (Huey n.d.). Other than these lists, Norton left behind no documentation of the baskets or their makers. According to Arizona State Museum Archivist Alan Ferg (2009), “there is essentially a total absence of pictures of Native Americans among Norton’s photos. . . . For all the time [the Allens] spent on the Tohono O’odham/Papago Reservation, I have not found a single picture of a Tohono O’odham. I don’t know if this was lack of interest, or some feeling that he shouldn’t photograph them.” We can only speculate on why no photos exist, but given Norton’s high regard for the Tohono O’odham, it is a reasonable inference that he may have felt it was intrusive to photograph his BRYN BARABAS POTTER holds an MA in anthropology from California State University, Northridge. Working independently as BBP Museum Consulting, she has exhibited and cataloged basketry collections throughout southern California. She was on staff at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum for more than four years, and was curator of basketry at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles for more than a decade. BRENDA BULLER FOCHT is curator of exhibitions and collections at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum in Riverside, California. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Riverside. During her professional career she has also taught at California Polytechnic University at Pomona and the University of California, Riverside. Journal of the Southwest 52, 2 and 3 (Summer-Autumn 2010) : 417–433 418 ✜ JOURNAL OF THE SOUTHWEST friends. Richard Schwartzlose (2008), a longtime friend of the Allens, affirmed the absence of any substantive information about the baskets in Norton’s papers or in Norton’s mother’s extensive diaries. NORTON ALLEN AND THE RIVERSIDE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM The Riverside Metropolitan Museum was founded in 1924. It began as the Cornelius Earle Rumsey Indian Museum with a donation by Elizabeth “Lillie” Rumsey, widow of C. E. Rumsey, of Indian artifacts that they had collected. In 1925, the Riverside City Council adopted an ordinance establishing a municipal museum, and the former Rumsey museum became the Riverside Municipal Museum. The museum’s name was again changed, to Riverside Metropolitan Museum, in 2005. Norton Allen had a well-established association with the Arizona State Museum and Dr. Emil Haury, a previous director who had nurtured Norton’s archaeological interests. That being the case, why was the RMM chosen as the repository for Norton’s basketry collection? There were nearby institutions with larger collections as well as tribal cultural centers that would have welcomed his gift. It seems that Norton had been impressed by the work of Dr. Christopher Moser, curator of anthropology at RMM from 1979 to 2003. During his long tenure, Moser mounted major basketry exhibitions and wrote catalogs that have become standard reference works (Moser 1986, 1989, 1993). Richard Schwartzlose (2008) noted that he and his wife, Phyllis, accompanied Norton and Ethel Allen to RMM to talk about the Allen Collection, “because this museum had an excellent collection of baskets.” They met with Moser, who always delighted in showing off the museum’s collection. Moser’s enthusiasm about RMM’s baskets, coupled with the interest he undoubtedly showed in Allen’s collection, “was the reason that Norton gave them the collection” (Schwartzlose 2008). Moser accepted the Allen baskets into RMM...