Book Notes
- Book Notes
by William D. Layman and Randy Lewis
Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, Wenatchee, Washington, 2021. Photographs. 45 pages. $17.00 paper.
by Carole MacRobert Steele
Luminare Press, Eugene, Oregon, 2021. Photographs, bibliography, 423 pages. $25.00 paper.
by David F. Martin.
Cascadia Art Museum, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2020. Illustrations, notes. 264 pages.
$39.95 cloth.
edited by Robert Anderson
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, 2022. Available digitally at http://monographs.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/sfulibrary/catalog/book/93. Illustrations.
136 pages.
Oregon Historical Quarterly volunteers and staff created these Book Notes by drawing on publishers’ descriptions.
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Sunset and Moonrise on the Great Chief
by William D. Layman and Randy Lewis
Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, Wenatchee, Washington, 2021. Photographs. 45 pages. $17.00 paper.
During the 1880s, artist James Everett Stuart visited Celilo Falls, where he met “an old Indian” who told him of an island five miles upriver, which showed a great chief who had been turned to stone. The elder called it “The Ruling Spirit of the Columbia” and related that Indians throughout the Columbia basin once gathered there to worship the rock. Intrigued, Stuart traveled to the island to create his own interpretation of the Great Chief. Stuart’s 1894 painting, Sunset and Moonrise on the Great Chief — Ruling Spirit of the Columbia has been extensively restored by the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center. In this book, the third in their collaboration, the authors offer a glimpse into Stuart’s life. More importantly, they emphasize the essential message of the painting — that the lands of the Columbia River and its Indigenous peoples have been and always will be sacred.
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A Pictorial History of Highway 99: The Scenic Route — Redding, California to Portland, Oregon
by Carole MacRobert Steele
Luminare Press, Eugene, Oregon, 2021. Photographs, bibliography, 423 pages. $25.00 paper.
Spanning the early 1900s through the 1960s, the book’s nostalgic ride through northern California and Oregon is a visual history of U.S. Highway 99. Hundreds of vintage postcard images document how the crudely constructed Pacific Highway transitioned to the modern and paved U.S. Highway 99, only to be mostly abandoned when the new interstate opened. Traversing through myriad landscapes, Highway 99 meanders through towns and cities, canyons and valleys, and past rivers and mountains such as Mt. Shasta, Mt. McLoughlin, and Mt. Hood. Mostly abandoned stretches of the old highway reveal the remains of deserted motels, gas stations, and tourist spots, now preserved in vintage postcards.
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The Lavender Palette: Gay Culture and the Art of Washington State
by David F. Martin.
Cascadia Art Museum, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2020. Illustrations, notes. 264 pages.
$39.95 cloth.
The Lavender Palette is the first study of how gay and lesbian artists influenced and established a regional cultural identity during the first half of the twentieth century and chronicles and contextualizes pioneering gay and lesbian artists from the pre-Stonewall era. Published in conjunction with a previous exhibition at the Cascadia Art Museum, the book looks back as far as the 1910s through original research drawn from the artists’ unpublished archival materials. The volume consists of three essays as well as individual biographies of thirteen artists. Generously illustrated with artwork and personal photographs, The Lavender Palette sheds light on significant contributions from a marginalized and understudied group. Museum curator David F. Martin aims to amend the formerly pejorative use of the colors lavender and purple in association with homosexuality as signs of weakness and frivolity and to establish the effect these artists had in defining a regional aesthetic that remains to this day. [End Page 316]
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Hiding in Plain Sight: Uncovering Nuclear Histories
edited by Robert Anderson
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, 2022. Available digitally at http://monographs.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/sfulibrary/catalog/book/93. Illustrations.
136 pages.
Nuclear histories are global, yet worryingly incomplete. Hiding in Plain Sight is a trans-disciplinary...
