The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Bowl with Two Pronghorn Antelope

Bowl with Two Pronghorn Antelope

c 1000–1150
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Composing on a round surface challenges artists to use space without simply repeating circular motifs.

Description

The Mogollon people of New Mexico's Mimbres region produced thousands of bowls painted with black-and-white designs on their interiors. The designs range from geometric motifs to abstract humans and animals, like the pronghorn antelopes shown here. Meaning may have dwelled in part in the domed shape of the bowls, which often were ritually punctured before they were inverted over the heads of the deceased. Perhaps, like modern Pueblo peoples, the Mimbres believed that the sky was a dome pierced to allow for passage between worlds, from the realm of the living to the dead.
  • 1920s
    Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM, 1930, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1930
    The Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Bradfield, Wesley. Cameron Creek Village, A Site in the Mimbres Area in Grant County, New Mexico. [Santa Fe, N.M.]: [The School of American Research], 1931. Plate LXXV, figure 313, caption p. 94
    "Some Examples of Mimbres Valley Pottery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 17, no. 4, part 1 (April, 1930): 75-77 Mentioned: p. 77 www.jstor.org
  • Mansfield Arts Center, Ohio (March 7 - April 4, 1993) "Art of the First Nations"
  • {{cite web|title=Bowl with Two Pronghorn Antelope|url=false|author=|year=c 1000–1150|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1930.48