Nelson-Atkins adds Native American works

Courtesy Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Shoulder Bag, Seminole, Florida, ca. 1830. Wool cloth, glass beads, silk ribbon and wool yarn, 29 1⁄2 x 12 3⁄4 inches (74.9 x 32.4 cm). Gift of Joanne and Lee Lyon, 2012.27.5.

Courtesy Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Shoulder Bag, Seminole, Florida, ca. 1830. Wool cloth, glass beads, silk ribbon and wool yarn, 29 1⁄2 x 12 3⁄4 inches (74.9 x 32.4 cm). Gift of Joanne and Lee Lyon, 2012.27.5.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts says it has accepted an important gift of Native American works, donated by a Colorado couple with Kansas City roots. The collection of Joanne and Lee Lyon includes a group of Southeastern Woodlands and Delaware bandolier bags believed to be the largest such collection in the world.

“These extraordinary objects give greater depth to our Native American collection, and position the museum as the center of research for any scholar studying Southeastern Woodlands art,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, CEO & Director of the Nelson-Atkins, in a news release.

“We selected the Nelson-Atkins because the museum presents the art of Native Americans as great art, not as artifacts,” said Lyon. “That was the deciding factor. In our view, no other museum presents American Indian art as well or as sensitively as the Nelson-Atkins.”

The museum’s Senior Curator of American Indian Art, Gaylord Torrence, said the bags are considered some of the most beautiful beaded works made in North American.

The Lyons, formerly of Kansas City, lived for many years in Aspen, Colorado.

In 2012, the couple contributed eight items associated with Chief Moses, along with a number of other important American Indian works from the Plains and Woodlands and more than 20 pieces of Southwestern jewelry.

The museum also has given the Nelson the famous London Book of Gospels, a work the museum says is internationally recognized as one of the greatest late Armenian illuminated manuscripts by Mesrop of Xizan, the most important Armenian painter of the seventeenth century.

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