`1492' Depicts History From Many Viewpoints

"1492," exhibit by Deborah Small, Third Floor Gallery, Tacoma Art Museum, 1123 Pacific Ave. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday noon-5 p.m. $2 admission, $1 for seniors and students. --------------------------------------------------------------- What's it like to be discovered?

That's a question that Deborah Small has been raising throughout her career. Even before this year's 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing became the impetus for public re-evaluation of the explorer, Small was taking critical looks at his travels.

Small, a San Diego artist whose "1492" exhibit is at the Tacoma Art Museum through June 14, has focused much of her work on Columbus's role in the colonization of the Americas.

First shown in 1986, Small's "1492" uses traditional views of Columbus, such as the Vanderlin painting "Columbus Landing," which hangs in the capitol rotunda and remains the standard history text illustration of Columbus's travels. The exhibit juxtaposes them, however, with the illustrations of 16th century artist Theodore de Bry, which depict hangings, torture and mutilation of Hispaniola natives at the hands of the Spaniards.

"What I'd like people to walk away from the exhibit saying is, `Why haven't I seen that before?' and `Why have those images been ignored or suppressed?' " Small said about "1492." "A lot of people, for instance, don't realize Columbus was a slave trader. When he didn't find as much gold as he thought he would, he turned to human gold."

The piece consists of nearly 200 panels arranged in a grid to fit the display space. Small uses images from a present-day Columbus statue in New York and art from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who turned out some of their most famous work in Columbus's day, as well as scenes representing many aspects of the landing. Bright and Day-Glo colors are used to symbolize what Small sees as myth. The de Bry panels are left in stark black and white.

Also in black and white are striking quotes from Columbus's journals, which range from cutting off the noses and ears of natives who steal to praising the natives' potential for adapting Western customs. These quotes are explored in detail in a book by Small and San Diego poet Maggie Jaffe, which is filled with Columbus-related research and accompanies the exhibit at a reading table.

Small's work is usually confrontational, and she often works with other writers and artists in public forums. Her most recent collaboration dealt with a serial murder case involving 45 prostitutes, drug addicts and transients in the San Diego area. The piece was called "NHI," short for "no humans involved," which Small said is police slang for murders involving transient or marginal members of society.

Small also pushed recent public debate over erecting a statue in San Diego of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean. Balboa's travels led to the foundation of Spanish missions in the region, and much of San Diego's heritage is wrapped up in these missions. Some indigenous people to the region, however, call the missions "Auschwitz with roses." Small and her collaborators were unable to change the city's vote, but they continue to wage a public campaign against the monument.

To Small, the presentation of Balboa and Columbus as heroes is symptomatic of presenting history from just one point of view. "History is not how things were, but who writes it," Small said. "We need to have histories, not History with a capital H, to tell the stories of the vanquished as well as the victors."