May 18, 1998 to August 18, 1998
Remember Your Relations: The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family, and Friends
Presented by the History Department

A remarkable exhibition of Pomo Indian "baskets and biography," Remember Your Relations: The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family and Friends, was on view May 18 to August 18, 1998 at the Oakland Museum of California. The unique collection, unlike other major collections of Native American baskets, was assembled wholly by Pomo women, their families, friends and neighbors.

Originally organized by the Grace Hudson Museum, City of Ukiah, the exhibition was expanded for presentation in Oakland by Oakland Museum Senior Curator Carey Caldwell and Research Assistant Valerie Verzuh with co-curators Susan Billy, Dot Brovarney and Suzanne Abel-Vidor.

Baskets have long been considered among the most distinctive products of Native California Indian cultures, and Pomo basket weavers from north central California are widely regarded as being among the world's most skilled weavers. While Pomo baskets have been treasured art objects for more than a century, the general public has known little about the people who made them, why they were made and what they mean in Pomo culture. The exhibition includes baskets used as cooking and eating utensils, examples of mortar hoppers and sifters, winnowing baskets, fish traps, cradles and burden baskets.

Until recently, aside from those baskets purchased by outsiders and taken away, relatively few of these baskets survived to the next generation. Either they wore out from use or were buried or destroyed after their owners died, as Pomo beliefs mandated. Then three Pomo women made the decision to break with this tradition in order to preserve a precious legacy and use it to educate others about Pomo culture.

The collection was started by Annie Burke (1876-1962), a weaver who spent much of her adult life educating others on the ways of the Pomo, and who asked her daughter, Elsie, not to destroy her baskets upon her death. Elsie Comanche Allen (1899-1990) had a native artisan eye for esthetics, and she added to her mother's collection during the next 30 years, devoting herself to education as her mother had. She, in turn, appointed her oldest daughter, Genevieve Allen Aguilar (b. 1920), as the next guardian of the collection, who placed it on long-term loan to the Mendocino County Museum.

There, the collaborative effort that began with these women grew to include anthropologists, curators and museum researchers. In most museum and private collections, baskets have lost the essential connection to their creators. By contrast, the Allen collection reflects the painstaking efforts by Elsie Allen, researchers and students to record individual weavers' identities, times of completion, and other important documentary data, and assemble oral histories of the weavers and their families. Of the 131 baskets in the Elsie Allen Collection, more than 90 are now documented to 26 Pomo weavers. Many baskets in Remember Your Relations are accompanied by the name and a biography of the maker, providing insights into the times, the people and cultures.

At the Oakland Museum of California, an ongoing, active cooperation with the Pomo community has led to a partnership that gives native weavers access to the museum's extensive basketry collection for research and in some cases, re-creation. In turn the museum benefits from the knowledge and expertise of the weavers, who help staff understand the significance and history of baskets and their makers.

Writing of her art in 1972, Elsie Allen said, "Basket weaving needs dedication and interest and increasing skill and knowledge; it needs feeling and love and honor for the great weavers of the past who showed us the way. If you can rouse in yourself this interest, feeling and dedication, you also can create matchless beauty and help me renew something that should never be lost."

Remember Your Relations: The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family and Friends was made possible with support from the Oakland Museum Women's Board, California Council for the Humanities, City of Ukiah, Friends of Remember Your Relations, Oakland Museum History Guild, LEF Foundation, and Sun House Guild.

A 128-page illustrated catalogue, published by Heyday Books in association with the Grace Hudson Museum and the Oakland Museum, accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition, catalog and public programs were a collaborative project of the Oakland Museum, the Grace Hudson Museum and Heyday Books, in cooperation with the Allen Family and the Mendocino County Museum.

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