The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will present Peoples of the Plateau: The Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse 1898-1915 July 27 through September 24 in its Lower Level Galleries.

Opening events will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 31 with a lecture by Steve Grafe, Curator of American Indian Art at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A reception will follow from 6:30 - 8 p.m. On Friday, August 1 the Museum will hold a Plateau Basketry Symposium beginning at 10 a.m. with independent scholar Dawn Glinsmann, PhD of Seattle, Washington, presenting "Strong and Beautiful: Plateau Baskets and Their Makers." At 11 a.m., Pat Courtney Gold, Wasco-Wishram Native American basket weaver of Scappoose, Oregon, will present "Wasco Native Heritage and Their Eloquent Baskets." Gold will also present a "Trunk Show and Weaving Demonstration" at 2 p.m.

Born in Iowa in 1850, Thomas Leander "Major Lee" Moorhouse crossed the Plains by wagon as a child with his family and settled near Walla Walla, Washington. As an adult, he lived in and around Pendleton, Oregon, finding employment as a shipping clerk, wheat rancher, merchant, and insurance salesman.

Moorhouse took up photography as a hobby around 1897 and during a 25-year career, produced over 9,000 glass plate negatives. Two-thirds of these images record turn-of-the-century life in rural northeastern Oregon and Washington. Best known among Moorhouse’s photographs are his images of the Indian people of the southern Columbia River Plateau.

Moorhouse served as agent for the Umatilla Indian Reservation from 1889 until 1891 and was heralded as an authority on Indian life. He bought and sold Indian curiosities for several decades and was known for a collection of objects that was an institution in northeastern Oregon. The popularity of the 1898 Cayuse Twins enabled the photographer to begin reaping an early monetary return on his hobby. He produced and sold many other Indian photographs as both prints and postcards as well as views of rodeo scenes.

Peoples of the Plateau is part of a national tour that consists of approximately 51 black and white photographs reproduced from Moorhouse’s original glass plates. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Regions, Laurel Ford, Lincoln, Mercury & Kia, and The Jean Chisholm Lindsey Exhibition Endowment Fund.

For more information call 601-649-6374 or visit www.LRMA.org.