{
"data": {
"id": 153659,
"accession_number": "1987.182",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Ca\u00f1on de Chelly - Navaho, 1904. Edward S. Curtis (American, 1868\u20131952). Platinum print, mercury-toned; image: 31.5 x 41.8 cm (12 3/8 x 16 7/16 in.); matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Kathryn Arns May in memory of Mary Moore Arns, 1987.182. \u00a9 E.S. Curtis",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Ca\u00f1on de Chelly - Navaho",
"creation_date": "1904",
"creation_date_earliest": 1904,
"creation_date_latest": 1904,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "platinum print, mercury-toned",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - American 1900-1950",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 31.5 x 41.8 cm (12 3/8 x 16 7/16 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.315,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.375,
"width": 0.418,
"width_inch": 16,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.61,
"height_inch": 24,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.762,
"width_inch": 30,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 E.S. Curtis",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in black ink on recto: \"Curtis [signed]\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 310231,
"title": "The Year in Review for 1987",
"description": "The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988).",
"opening_date": "1988-02-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 185373,
"title": "American Space: Landscape Photography 1900-1950",
"description": "American Space: Landscape Photography 1900-1950. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 6-May 23, 2001).",
"opening_date": "2001-01-06T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 194095,
"title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 198065,
"title": "The American Indian Image: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis and Zig Jackson ",
"description": "The American Indian Image: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis and Zig Jackson . The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 30, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2010-02-07T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 202729,
"title": "Shadows and Dreams: Pictorialist Photography in America",
"description": "Shadows and Dreams: Pictorialist Photography in America. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (September 5, 2015-January 17, 2016).",
"opening_date": "2015-09-05T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 383281,
"title": "Stories from Storage",
"description": "Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).",
"opening_date": "2021-02-06T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA, February 7, 2010 - May 30, 2010: \"The American Indian Image: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis and Zig Jackson,\" exhibited in the East Wing Photography Exhibition gallery.",
"opening_date": "2010-02-07T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, February 24 - April 17, 1988: \"Year in Review 1987,\" CMA Bulletin, 75 (February 1988), p. 66, no. 49.",
"opening_date": "1988-02-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, July 10 - August 19, 1990: \"The Camera,\" Classroom Level, no exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "1990-07-10T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; January 3-May 23, 2001. \"American Space: Landscape Photography, 1900-1950.\"",
"opening_date": "2001-01-03T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (6/24/07 - 9/16/07) and Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittburgh, PA (10/3/2009 - 1/3/2010); \"Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art\", no exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (9/5/2015 - 1/17/2016); \"Pictorialist Photography\"",
"opening_date": "2015-09-05T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "This ancestral stronghold of the Navajo Nation, from which they were exiled from 1864 to 1868, is still owned by the tribe today.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "The soaring cliffs of Ca\u00f1on de Chelly, one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in America, dwarf the Navajos riding in the midday Arizona sun in 1904. Edward S. Curtis\u2019s images, though rooted in the documentary impulse, present a romanticized view of the past, one that he often staged to suggest an even earlier period. He had two sometimes-conflicting aims: to capture America\u2019s vanishing Indigenous cultures but also to create photographic art.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60780900"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 135",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Curtis, Edward S., Frederick Webb Hodge, Theodore Roosevelt, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Christopher Cardozo. The North American Indian: Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska. 2017.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.182",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Kathryn Arns May in memory of Mary Moore Arns",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 153659,
"creators": [
{
"id": 95,
"description": "Edward S. Curtis (American, 1868\u20131952)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Edward S. Curtis American, 1868 - 1952\r\n\r\nEdward Sheriff Curtis, born near White Water, Wisconsin, was a well-established commercial photographer before he undertook his best known work shortly before the turn of the century. Working first as photographer for the Edward H. Harriman expedition in Alaska (1899), he later secured the endorsement of Theodore Roosevelt and the support of J. P. Morgan for an extensive anthropological and photographic study of Native Americans. Curtis's work from 1906 -- 20 resulted in The North American Indian and eventually generated 40,000 negatives, of which 1,200 were presented in gravure form in the 20 volumes and 20 accompanying portfolios of his study.\r\n\tAlthough his intentions were anthropological and scholarl -- to preserve the appearance and customs of a dying race -- Curtis nevertheless was affected by the artistic styles of his time. His portraits and tableaux were often strongly pictorialist, as their presentation on imported papers and in rarefied media such as orotone would suggest. His scientific aims were frequently undercut by a personal interpretation of his subjects, to whom he often supplied costumes and props. Time has proved Curtis, in this era of his career, equally an artist and an anthropologist. His later work in Los Angeles, which deserves further study, focused on Hollywood and the world of movies. T.W.F.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1868",
"death_year": "1952",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1987-12-16T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1904,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1904",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Ca\u00f1yon de Chelly-Navajo"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:51:23.876000"
}
}