Fred Harvey and American Indian Art

At the turn of the last century, Fred Harvey worked in partnership with the Santa Fe Railway to promote travel through the Southwest to California. The marketing tactics focused on using American Indian imagery—both of people and artwork—to create a mystic image of the land, its people and the artwork created. The main buyers for Fred Harvey’s Indian Department, J.F. Huckel and Herman Schweizer, used several strategies to engage visitors. They employed artists to demonstrate the making of cultural crafts, they purchased exhaustive collections of Indian art and displayed artwork in showrooms and hotels throughout the Southwest, and they wrote or hired others to write books, brochures and advertisements that lured travelers to the West. Huckel and Schweizer also oversaw major displays at world’s fairs that included multi-storied pueblo-style buildings that housed artist demonstrators while the Santa Fe Railway offered special rates to fair travelers.

At 2 pm on Sunday, April 19, Diana Pardue, curator at the Heard Museum and co-author of Inventing the Southwest: The Fred Harvey Company and Native American Art, speaks in the History Museum auditorium on “Fred Harvey and American Indian Art.” Part of the exhibit, Setting the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy, her lecture is free with admission; Sundays free to NM residents.