Bill Holm Center Endowed Research Fund

FAIN: CH-50078-04

University of Washington (Seattle, WA 98195-1016)
Robin K. Wright (Project Director: June 2003 to November 2007)

Endowment for faculty, graduate, and visiting researchers in the humanities at the Bill Holm Center for Northwest Coast Art, part of the Burke Museum.

This NEH grant will help build a Research Endowment for the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum. The mission of the Bill Holm Center is to 1) promote scholarly research on Northwest Coast Native art; 2) increase Native and public access to research resources; and 3) foster appreciation and understanding of Native art of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The Bill Holm Center will fund faculty research, graduate student research assistantships, visiting scholars and artists to do research on the collections and teach humanities courses, student internships, publications and exhibits. Inspired by the life's work of Bill Holm, Curator Emeritus of Northwest Coast Indian Art and Professor Emeritus of Art History, this center will be founded on the research and teaching principles that he established at the Burke Museum. Holm used Burke collections to do groundbreaking research analyzing stylistic characteristics of northern Northwest Coast art. This resulted in the pivotal book, Northwest Coast Indian Art: an Analysis of Form (1965). The indigenous arts of the Pacific Norhwest have been recognized by scholars as one of the world's most sophisticated and complex art traditions. Holm founded the discipline of Northwest Coast art history and provided a methodology for analyzing sytlistic differences and changes through time in tribal and individual artists' styles of art. Several of Holm's former students and colleagues continue to work collaboratively with the Burke Museum, and a new generation of scholars is carrying on this research. This intellectual foundation shows great promise for fostering future research that can reveal previously unrecognized artists' work and inspire ongoing Northwest Coast Native art traditions. We have raised over $353,000 in gifts and pledges, $287,010 of this given since Dec. 1st, 2002, and eligible for the NEH 1:4 match. The NEH grant will be vital in leveraging an additional $1,200,000 within five years.