William H. Crowe, a Cherokee designer-craftsman of international repute, has been named to a four-year term as Commissioner on the five-man Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Secretary of the Interior Robert C. B. Morton announced today.
Crowe succeeds Vincent Price, actor and patron of the arts, whose Commissionership on the Arts and Crafts Board expired last July. The Board was established in 1935 to encourage the preservation and development of American Indian and Eskimo artistry.
A professional member of the Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild, an association of outstanding Appalachian craftsmen, Crowe maintains his studio workshop on his native reservation at Cherokee, N.C. He has been retained as a master craftsman by the Smithsonian Institution to assist with exhibitions of arts and crafts.
Crowe, who is 50 years old, was one of the organizers in 1948 of Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., a Cherokee craftsmen's cooperative, and he recently served as Qualla’s vice-president. Currently, he is serving as vice-chairman of the board of directors of the Native American Marketing Enterprise, Inc., a new non-profit organization that serves as a marketing clearinghouse for Native American arts.
Secretary Morton's appointment of Crowe followed his meeting with the Board November 19 and 20 -- the first since Morton took office. At that time, the Secretary unveiled his desire to enlarge the mission of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, involving it more directly with economic and education as well as cultural development of Native American artists and craftsmen. He charged the Board with the task of strengthening ties with 0ther government agencies and organizations related to the arts, in order to enlarge the sphere of impact of Native American crafts, and to increase funding for the perpetuation of Indian, Eskimo and Aleut artistry.
The Board operates three museums in the West, in areas representative of more than half the entire American Indian population. The museums, located in Browning, Mont., Rapid City, S.D., and Anadarko, Okla., function as conservators of Indian artifacts and as centers for the exhibition and sale of authentic contemporary Native American arts and crafts. They provide advisory services and research to major museums throughout the world.
Other Commissioners on the five-man Indian Arts and Crafts Board are: Lloyd H. New, chairman, and director of the Institute of American Indian Arts of Santa Fe, N.M.; Howard Rock, artist and editor of Tundra Times, the Alaskan Native weekly newspaper published in Fairbanks; Royal B. Hassrick, author and anthropologist (specialist in Plains Indian culture) of Surrey, Va.; and Paul F. Huldermann of Scottsdale, Ariz., civic arts leader and dealer in arts of the Americans. The late Rene D'Harnoncourt, for many years as director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, had also served on the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
