Now we need to find the original and the copyright holder. Sleuth on!
Posted on 02/24/2005 10:19:19 PM PST by Fizzie
Churchill Art Piece Called Into Question
by CBS4 News reporter Raj Chohan
Feb 24, 2005 8:03 pm US/Mountain BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) Boulder County resident Duke Prentup has been a fan of native American art for as long as he can remember. That love of art took him to the home of Ward Churchill in the early 1980's, where Prentup bought several pieces of Churchill's art, including a serigraph titled "Winter Attack."
"I have enjoyed them ever since immensely, they're obviously up inside my house," Prentup said.
Last month came a stunning revelation, though, as as Prentup flipped through a 1972 book called The Mystic Warriors of the Plains written and illustrated by the late artist Thomas E. Mails. He found a sketch that was strikingly similar to the Churchill piece.
(Excerpt) See the rest of the article, and photo comparisons of the 2 pieces of art here: http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_055200531.html
(Excerpt) Read more at news4colorado.com ...
But look what somebody found and Freepmailed me:
I’m not sure that I agree with Ophelia Benson about Ward Churchill. She quotes the following passage (I can’t tell where it was from):
David Bradley, a well-known Indian artist in Santa Fe, earned Churchill’s wrath by championing federal legislation that required those selling their work as Indian art to be able to prove their tribal ties. “In the 1980s, money was flying like confetti around here. You had dozens of people pretending they were Indian and selling their art,” Bradley said. “We had everything stolen from us for 500 years, and I wasn’t going to let them take our art as well.” Churchill, who is also a painter, took issue with the effort. “He wrote this slanderous attack about me. He tried to impugn my motives,” Bradley said. “He ought to be fired. Shame on CU [University of Colorado] for giving this con man a job.” Bradley believes Churchill opposed the law because it affected his ability to sell his paintings. Churchill attacked the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts legislation, saying it gave rise to “witch hunts” among tribes looking for phony Indians and put undue importance on racial purity.
In things like this, I tend toward being a minimal government man. If you buy a painting, it’s something you hang on a wall. It you like it, it’s good; if not, not. If you pay a premium because of something about the artist other than talent, you’re an idiot in my book. Caveat emptor and all that. I don’t know what Churchill’s motives were, but any importance given to racial purity is too much for me. So i don’t follow Ophelia’s snark:
Oh yeah? Undue importance? Well what are you doing teaching ‘ethnic studies’ then?
Because one can teach ethnic studies without being ‘ethnic’ I’d have thought. For years universities have taught ancient Greek philosophy without employing any actual ancient Greeks.
Whatever, if there’s a market for ‘Indian’ art and you’re a painter struggling to see your daubs, help is at hand. I can make you talk like a Native American.
Boom! Tssch!
Move along now, nothing to see here.
These 172 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:08pm GMT
Credit to PRND21.
| Churchill Art Piece Called Into Question |
||
| Posted by Fizzie On 02/25/2005 1:19:19 AM EST · 241 replies · 2,934+ views News4 Colorado ^ | 2/24/05 | Raj Chohan |
||
Okay, I've emailed O'Reilly and all the other Fox News email addresses, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, all the local Clear Channel radio hosts on KHOW 630am and KOA 850am here in Denver, Monica Crowley of the new Connected show on MSNBC, the CU Board of Regents, the Univ of Wisconsin Board of Regents (where Churchill is speaking next - Whitewater campus), all the media contact in Milwaukee and Madison, WI and a whole slew of bloggers. That'll help out on the investigation for sure!
Looks like he knew he was going to be exposed.
The Denver Post
Churchill artwork mirrors artist's
By Arthur Kane
Denver Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 25, 2005 -
New questions arose Thursday about the professional history of controversial University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill when his artwork was shown to be nearly identical to that of a well-known Western artist.
Churchill once sold prints under his name that bear an uncanny resemblance to a drawing done by the late artist Thomas E. Mails, CBS4 reporter Raj Chohan reported Thursday night.
The print made by Churchill in 1981, called "Winter Attack," appears to be a mirror image of a pen-and-ink sketch in a 1972 book called "The Mystic Warriors of the Plains" by Mails.
Churchill, after first angrily refusing to talk to Chohan on camera, admitted the work was based on Mails' rendering and said he had noted that fact during the initial release of "Winter Attack."
Boulder County resident Duke Prentup, who had paid about $100 for the Churchill work, discovered the similarity while leafing through a book of Mails' work, according to the CBS4 report.
Meanwhile, how Churchill came to win accelerated tenure at CU continued to be questioned. Churchill was never formally offered a job at California State University at Northridge, although CU officials believed he had been when they shortcut the hiring process to give him a tenured position, a Cal State spokeswoman said Thursday.
Michael Pacanowsky, head of the CU communications department at the time, wrote on Jan. 10, 1991, that the process to find Churchill a job had to be accelerated because of the competing offer, but Cal State spokeswoman Carmen Chandler said the controversial professor was never officially offered a job.
"We have (records of) every formal offer, and there is no record any formal offer was made" to Churchill, Chandler said Thursday. "We also don't look at people without a Ph.D."
Pacanowsky wrote in the January 1991 letter that he was asked to appoint Churchill to the communications department after the Cal State offer.
"I was initially told we had some time to consider the matter. ... Unfortunately, Ward has been offered a full professorship at Cal State-Northridge, and we need to make our decision well before the end of January," wrote Pacanowsky, who was returning from Germany on Thursday and could not be reached for comment.
E-mails and memorandums from 1991 show that the supposed competing offer was the primary justification for swiftly promoting Churchill from a one-semester temporary teaching job he had barely started into a full-time tenured faculty slot. But the records don't say who created the belief that Cal State-Northridge was competing for Churchill's services.
A Feb. 8, 1991, memo from Evelyn Hu-DeHart, director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America, wrote that Churchill's job was a "special opportunity" position, which is often a job to help hire a more diverse faculty.
Administrators did not have to submit a search plan or advertise the position, she wrote, but the department decided to advertise the position and came up with three finalists, including Churchill.
Hu-DeHart, now at Brown University, refused to discuss the matter over the phone but answered some questions by e-mail this week.
She said Churchill would have had to prove he had an offer from Cal State and that he was more "senior" than a University of Arizona candidate despite never being a professor.
"'Senior' can be defined in more than one way, for example, by scholarship and number of publications," Hu-DeHart wrote via e-mail.
Cal State's Chandler said there could have been some informal talks between Churchill and the school, but any record of that may have been destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Records of formal offers were preserved.
George Wayne, a former CU employee who at the time was an administrator at another Cal State campus, said he knows Churchill was a candidate for a job at Northridge because he was contacted by a Cal State colleague about Churchill sometime around 1991. Wayne did not remember who contacted him.
Churchill could not be reached for comment Thursday.
You did a great job!!!
I just emailed the Denver Post and linked to eBay and this thread.
I have been here since 1998; I have about 500 bookmarks concerning Mr. And Mrs. Clinton, just waiting to be used when she runs.
A good Freeper NEVER loses a bookmark that might come in handy later. :-)
I just emailed all the folks covering this story at the Rocky Mountain News.
We have done our part to get it moving; let's see where it goes.......
Now, I'm going to bed (I need to move to a different time zone!)
Night everybody -- and thanks, it was fun!
Now we need to find the original and the copyright holder. Sleuth on!
Michelle Malkin has linked to this thread!
Warms my heart.
God...PLEASE let me be watching the news when this guys head implodes (cannot explode, need matter and substance inside for that) and he goes Berzerker! What a complete phony and indian wannabe. And it's close....oh so friggin' close.....you can see his thin veneer is cracking already.
Thanks Michelle!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.