Deer
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
- In his
mural, Deer, Potawatomi artist Woody
Crumbo composes a tender scene of a doe with her fawn. At center, a stylized
sun haloes the head of the doe, and Crumbo stages both animals in a landscape
with tufted grass and flowing reeds next to asmall pond. Design elements
encircle the central vignette with two stylized Peyote birds painted in the
upper corners. This aquatic spirit bird represents the renewal of life and is
an important emblem of the Peyote Religion, which originated in the territory
now called Oklahoma.Woodrow Wilson Crumbo, better known as Woody
Crumbo, was Director of Art at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, when he
traveled to Washington, D.C. to complete his mural series at the new Department
of the Interior building in 1940. He was one of four Native American artists
who painted 2,200 feet of murals for the eighth-floor penthouse, which served
as the employee lounge. While Crumbo painted the south corridor, Zia Pueblo
artist Velino Herrera covered the north corridor. In the main room, the walls were
divided between Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser and Navajo painter Gerald
Nailor. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning
artwork by Native American artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of
Fine Arts invited Crumbo, Herrera, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the
penthouse project and contacted two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen
Mopope, to paint murals for the cafeteria.
