Inner Voyage to Native America

You also collect contemporary Native American art. I have long admired Haida art, particularly the totemic works at the American Museum of Natural History: the ovoid forms, the intimate dialogue between spirit, human, and animal, the modernity of ancient shapes, and a people who integrated art so deeply into collective identity that it became inseparable from life itself. I find resonances there with certain deeply spiritual art forms in India, from Kalamkari to Kerala mural painting.

What first drew you—intuitively and personally—to this tradition? On the surface, it seems far removed from your Russian heritage and from the Indo-Tibetan world associated with Roerich. Yet there appears to be a pattern here: Roerich drawn to the Himalayas, Blavatsky to Tibet, yourself to Native America. It suggests something deeper—a search for the “other” that expands the self and refines perception, with the East perhaps acting as a mediating and unifying force.

Dmitry Popov:

Oh, it is both simple and profound.

As a child, like many boys and girls in Russia—and indeed throughout Europe since the late nineteenth century—I was fascinated by the world of Native Americans. Everything drew me in: the wilderness, geography, flora and fauna, and above all the way of life of peoples who seemed an organic part of nature itself.

At first, I read with equal enthusiasm about North and South America and their Indigenous peoples; about Africa and its many cultures; about Siberia and its peoples, linked in distant ways through Chukotka and Alaska. But in time, my particular interest settled on North America as a distinct macro-cultural world.

Several factors likely shaped this. One was the extraordinary abundance of material preserved in American and Canadian scholarship and literature. Another was the remarkable diversity of Indigenous lifeways, cultures, and artistic forms across the continent.

Perhaps it also mattered that Russia, like England, France, and Spain, once had historical ties there, and I was naturally curious to explore the story of Paleo-Indians more deeply. [1]

In addition, the cultural relationship between Asia and America is undoubtedly far deeper and more complex than we yet understand. One need only think of the important research produced over the last quarter-century on resonances between Navajo spiritual culture and Tibetan Buddhism. [2]

As for Nicholas Roerich, he followed a path very close to my own heart: a deep interest in the cultures of the Stone Age and their archaeology; in the small peoples of Northern Russia and Siberia; in the affinities between Mongolia and the American Southwest; and finally, in Native America as a kind of Farthest East.

And I believe you are quite right to suggest that the Indo-Tibetan East has served as a unifying spiritual force for humanity. Homo sapiens, as a biological species, emerged from Africa, while from the great crossroads of Hindustan and Central Asia countless threads—less biological than cultural—have extended across much of the planet.

We are not speaking merely of love for nature, but of the perception of oneself as part of nature itself.
—Dmitry Popov, Curator & Collection Manager of the Nicholas Roerich Museum

On Collecting, Living With, and Sharing the Work

You mention that the Roerich Museum itself organized some of the earliest exhibitions of Pueblo and Navajo artists in New York. Is your own collection accessible to the public, or do you envision it becoming so? And how do you curate it personally—as a scholar, as a collector, as someone who has clearly lived with these works?

Dmitry Popov:

Yes, returning to Native American art itself, I must admit that what has fascinated me since youth—in both traditional and contemporary poetry, and in visual art old and new—is its inseparable organic connection with nature.

Nicholas Roerich often repeated a phrase, attributed to the ancient Maya, which he deeply loved:

This expresses something essential. We are not speaking merely of love for nature, but of the perception of oneself as part of nature itself—like mountains and plains, forests and rivers, plants, animals, clouds, and winds.

Upon arriving in Santa Fe, Roerich immediately met Edgar Lee Hewett, one of the great figures of ethnology, archaeology, and museum work in the American Southwest. From their first meeting, they were united by a shared love of wilderness, archaeology, so-called primitive cultures, the visual arts, museum work, and religious-philosophical inquiry.

Professor Hewett was also among the first to take Native American artists from San Ildefonso Pueblo and other New Mexican pueblos seriously. He supported them as a collector and patron, and later as a researcher and critic. This naturally touched Roerich, who instructed the directors of his New York institutions first to organize an exhibition of Pueblo artists from Hewett’s collection, and later to begin building one of their own.

My first acquisitions, by a curious turn of fate, were also made in Indian pueblos. At first, I simply bought works that I loved. But my passion for research quickly led me toward a deeper study of Native American artistic traditions, and of the schools, movements, and styles of twentieth-century Native art that grew from them.

From there came the desire to collect works representing these many currents. That systematic approach became the principal driving force of my work in this field.

As a museum curator, I naturally began to conceive an exhibition within my own apartment, bringing together works from the Southwest—Pueblo and Navajo—the Northern Woodlands, including Ojibwe, Cree, and Iroquois traditions, the Great Plains with Sioux and Cheyenne, the Southern Woodlands with Cherokee and Creek, and the Northwest Coast, from Gitxsan and Coast Salish to Haida…

Of course, I wanted to share this joy with others. Small exhibitions began to appear—independent displays within larger art exhibitions. People responded with thoughts, emotions, and reflections, and this only deepened my enthusiasm.

Gradually, a small private museum with a permanent display and internal storage took shape in my own home.

Preparing to move to New York raised a question: should all of this return to the homeland of the artists? I came to feel that the collection—around one hundred works—could be divided in two, each half still representing Native American art as a whole. I offered one part to an art museum in Russia, while keeping the other close to my heart.

Fortunately, the offer was accepted by the State Museum-Institute of the Roerich Family, and the transfer took place. I sincerely hope that, in time, this small but lovingly assembled collection will find its way to the public.

And so, in New York, my new museum became an apartment on the Upper West Side. For now, only family and guests can see its treasures, while the storerooms await future opportunities.

My most recent major acquisition was a group of paintings and drawings purchased at an exhibition of works by students from Native American art schools in Phoenix. In my view, they added another important and necessary element to the collection.

As for the history of Native American exhibitions at the old Roerich Museum, this year marks exactly one hundred years since the first of them. For that reason, we have decided to organize a June exhibition bringing together Roerich’s own works dedicated to Native America and works by Native artists from my collection.

For me, the opportunity to share these treasures with others is a joy that repays all the effort.

True happiness—still existing only in my dreams—would be the chance to help create a small but vibrant museum of Native American art here in New York. For now, it lives only in the inner space of the self. But there, it is very real, and an important part of my personal world.

[1] Gill, Lee & Jeong, “Reconstructing the Genetic Relationship between Ancient and Present-Day Siberian Populations,” Genome Biology and Evolution, Vol. 16, April 2024.

[2] John Travis, Eduardo Duran, Fred Wahpepah, Lorain Fox Davis, Tsultrim Allione, Susan Murphy, Indigenous Dharma: Native American and Buddhist Voices

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