Our largest fundraiser of the year will be held Saturday, February 6, 2010.

"The Rise of the Pheonix" The Best Is Yet To Come...
19th Annual Gala / Auction
The annual art auction and gala is the Arlington Museum of Art's largest and most successful fundraising event.

Download the 19th Annual Auction Invitation (PDF).

Rainforest Baskets     Download Rainforest Basket information (PDF).

You will have the opportunity to bid on beautiful Rainforest baskets woven by the Wounaan and Embera Indians, who inhabit the most lush and unique neotropical rainforest in the western hemisphere outside the Amazon basin. Three hundred inches of rain a year. Virtually all travel is by bush plane and dugout canoe. The rivers are their highways. The most remote villages could be lifted out of the stone age. Except for a few outboard motors, plastic containers, aluminum utensils, and an occasional visit by an outsider, their life revolves around fishing, hunting, singing, dancing and making baskets or carvings.

More specifically, the area is the infamous region called the Darien Gap which is somewhat misleading because of its wild and densely forested area along the narrowest strip of land connecting Central and South America through which no road passes. The Gap is absent of any doable passage and where the Pan American Highway from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego is interrupted. The Darien has become a very sensitive area.

Native people are feeling the squeeze as there is an assault on this ecosystem as well as their way of life due to political decisions allowing mining, farming, ranching and logging. The encroachment of squatters is another issue of concern. This area has been organized into the Comarca Embera-Wounaan which is all of the territory divided into two districts. The Districts are named Cemaco and Sambu. Each district has a number regions in which there are a number of villages similar to the pueblos in the US. In the Cemaca District there are 20 plus villages with a population of approximately 7000 while in the Sambu there are 12 villages inhabited by about 2000 natives. The Embera and Wounaan people live in both districts.

The Cemaco District covers about 1100 square miles and the Sambu District is around 500 square miles. To reach these districts from Panama City, it is a 45-minute plane trip to the south heading toward Colombia. The districts are also separated by a 45-minute plane ride.

Each region is headed by a regional chief that form the General Congress which is the main governing body for the Comarca Embera-Wounaan. Their main goal is to protect the rights of the people and advance their education and development in their areas.

Basketmaking has helped these people build an economic base to secure their family units and protect their valuable rainforest resources. All the materials for the baskets are natural and hand done. The chunga palm tree is the main source of material along with nahuala, the Panama Hat Palm. Almost all the colors are natural and extracted from natural products found in the rainforest such as leaves, fruit mud etc..

These baskets come is various styles — black and white geometrics, colored geometrics and pictographic. They can range in size from huge( 3ft in diameter) to miniatures (one half inch across). A typical basket has about 35 stitches to the linear inch. On a square inch basis the count is about 200-250. Some exceptional ones can reach 80 per linear and 1200 per square. This is finer than silk. All this done by hand, in a thatch hut, no running water or electricity and in a place with no time. The result being identified by most authorities as the finest woven in the world.