Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo

Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo explores the intercultural exchange between French-born and -trained American artist Jules Tavernier (1844–1889) and the Indigenous Pomo community of Elem at Clear Lake in Northern California.

Investigating Tavernier’s life and career, the exhibition is centered around his rediscovered masterwork Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), which depicts a ceremonial dance of the Elem Pomo known as mfom Xe, or “people dance,” in an underground roundhouse. Commissioned by San Francisco’s leading banker, Tiburcio Parrott, as a gift for his Parisian business partner, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the work celebrates the rich vitality of Elem Pomo culture, while also exposing the threat posed by White settlers, including Parrott, who was then operating a toxic mercury mine on the community’s ancestral homelands. Designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990, the mine continues to negatively impact the lives of the sovereign people of the present-day Elem Indian Colony.

The exhibition brings together approximately 60 works by a range of artists—paintings, prints, watercolors, and photographs—to tell the story of Tavernier’s travels through Nebraska, Wyoming, California, and the Hawaiian Islands, incorporating a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, including those of Pomo cultural leaders and curators, who offer new interpretations. Major paintings by Tavernier will be shown alongside examples of 19th- to 21st-century Pomo basketry and regalia, including works by weaver Clint McKay (Dry Creek Pomo/Wappo/Wintun, born 1965), to celebrate the resiliency of Indigenous Pomo peoples and highlight their continued cultural presence today. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker Robert Joseph Geary and Dry Creek Pomo/Bodega Miwok scholar Sherrie Smith-Ferri, Ph.D.

Accompanied by an issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.

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The exhibition is made possible by Jan and Warren Adelson and The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts.

It is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

This Bulletin is made possible by the William Cullen Bryant Fellows of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Met's quarterly Bulletin program is supported in part by the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, established by the cofounder of Reader's Digest.

Learn about Clear Lake and Elem Pomo roundhouses, the importance of the landscape and natural materials in Pomo basketry, and the environmental and cultural impact of mining and land loss—as well as the continuum of Pomo ceremony at the site. Narrated by Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker Robert Joseph Geary, Dry Creek Pomo/Bodega Miwok scholar Sherrie Smith-Ferri, PhD, and Eastern Pomo artist and curator Meyo Marrufo.