Stealing Horses

In a large mural titled Stealing Horses, Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo conveys a keen sense of movement through the horses’ flowing manes and the fluttering garments of the Potawatomi man, who attempts to capture one of the horses with the use of a blanket. Crumbo paints with flat fields of colors using deeply saturated tones of brown, tan, and umber. Any sense of depth or space is suggested through overlapping horses and receding tufts of grass and sinuous reeds. A decorative register below the scene continues along the chair rail to the left of the doorway, which leads to the next mural, titled Peyote Bird and Symbols. 

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.