01 - Maud Oakes, Where the Two Came to Their Father: Navajo War Ceremonial

Maud Oakes
American, 1903 - 1990

Where the Two Came to Their Father: Navajo War Ceremonial
1941
Screenprints
Museum Permanent Collection
1984.1569

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Born in Seattle, Washington in 1903, Maud Oakes grew up in New York City surrounded by the artistic culture of the 1920s. In addition to her work as a painter and printmaker, Oakes was an anthropologist, ethnologist and writer. After a trip to Bainbridge Island in Washington, Oakes became fascinated with Native Americans and spent the rest of her life studying and recording the indigenous cultures of Native American tribes, including the Navajo of the American Southwest and the Mam of Guatemala. She is well known for her books, recording these tribes’ ceremonies, art and stories. She died in her home in Carmel, California in 1990.