90 MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
An in-depth look at the 2019-2020 exhibition season from museums across the country.
Insights from top curators about the major exhibitions of Native American art being organized at key museums.
The traditions of Native American culture expressed in historic and contemporary arts highlight the year. Jennifer Stevens, an Oneida potter, responded to a question about creating: “It’s not just a physical experience. It’s a rich spiritual experience that fuels our identity as Indigenous people. It helps ground us, it helps heal us, it helps to connect us.” Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes
Our World continues at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., through late 2021. “Our Universes focuses on Indigenous
cosmologies—worldviews and philosophies related to the creation and order of the universe—and the spiritual relationship between humankind and the natural world. Organized around the solar year, the exhibition introduces visitors to Indigenous peoples from across the Western Hemisphere who continue to express the wisdom of their ancestors in celebration, language, art, spirituality and daily life.”
The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe has a special exhibition at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. “Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art showcases authentic, historical Native artifacts alongside contemporary works of American Indian art—demonstrating examples of cultural traditions which have been handed down through generations. Native communities from seven geographic regions across the United States are included in the gallery.” The exhibition continues through December 31.
In its own galleries, MIAC shows Here, Now and Always through January 1, 2020. “Here, Now, and Always is a major exhibition based on eight years of collaboration among Native American elders, artists, scholars, teachers, writers and museum professionals. Voices of 50 Native Americans guide visitors through the Southwest’s Indigenous communities and their challenging landscapes. More than 1,300 artifacts from the museum’s collections are displayed accompanied by poetry, story, song and scholarly discussion.” Additionally at MIAC will be The Brothers Chongo: A Tragic Comedy in Two Parts, featuring the Cochiti Pueblo brothers Diego and Mateo Romero, which continues through October 31, 2019; and Diego Romero vs. the End of Art, which opens October 6 and continues through April 5, 2020. Another MIAC exhibition, San Ildefonso Pottery: 16001930, continues through August 31, 2020. “San Ildefonso Pueblo pottery are an art form that is simultaneously both ancient and contemporary; being a constant for
Pueblo people for millennia… artisans work in a variety of styles, always evolving in response to the changing circumstances of their own lives and the world around them. Pottery, or more precisely, its aesthetics and production is ritualized behavior, serving as a critical and material conceptual ideal of the San Ildefonso world.”
Treasured Traditions: A Statement of Place continues at the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, New York, through November 30. The exhibition highlights “a selection of art forms that are well integrated into, and delineate the individual character of five Haudenosaunee communities. Stone carving at Six Nations Reserve and raised beadwork at Tuscarora demonstrate tremendous endurance. Seneca basket making and traditional Oneida pottery represent expressions that have been lost, rediscovered and resurrected. Lastly, we celebrate quilt making at Akwesasne—an artistic tradition that, although non-native in origin, has come to bear a decidedly Iroquoian signature.”
The Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff presents the Star Wars-themed The Force is with our People, October through March 2020. Another exhibition with roots in science fiction is Virgil Ortiz: Odyssey of the Venutian Soldiers Exhibition, which continues through June 14, 2020, at Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey.
Colors of Clay continues at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City through May 10, 2020. The exhibition “explores the cultural and regional diversity of Indigenous ceramic vessel traditions in North America. Vibrantly colored and sculpted with absolute precision, clay pots, bowls, pitchers and jars were a dominate fixture of Native American daily life and are today viewed as one of the most notable Native American art forms. From the Eastern Woodlands to the arid Southwest, these vessels continue to evolve, yet maintain a traditional aesthetic unique to this part of the world.”
The Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis celebrates its acquisition of a major collection of historical Native American art from the Great Lakes region that will figure significantly in a dramatic renovation of its Native galleries. “These objects from across the Great Lakes region movingly tell the stories of Indigenous peoples whose families have lived here for centuries,” the museum’s president and CEO John Vanausdall said.
The Poeh Cultural Center at Pojoaque Pueblo near Santa Fe celebrates the return of ancestral Pueblo pottery to their home. An exhibition, Di Wae Powa, will be part of a new educational resource center that “will be dedicated to, and utilized by the Tewa Pueblo
peoples that live in the neighboring Pueblos of Pojoaque, Nambé, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Ohkay Owingeh and Tesuque. It will be shared year-round with the many students, artists, scholars, educators and tourists.”
The people themselves are celebrated For a Love of His People: The Photography of Horace Poolaw at the Eitlejorg Museum through April 5, 2020. On loan from the National Museum of the American Indian, the exhibition features more than 75 black-and-white photos taken by Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw (1906-1984).
The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, hosts the exhibition OURS: The Zia Sun through October 20. The center explains, “The Zia sun is seen everywhere, from commercial planes flown across the United States to tattoos proudly displayed as a badge of honor. Yet, do we know the true origin of the Zia symbol and its original meaning? This exhibit that includes community contributions will take you through the journey of the symbol’s origin in Zia Pueblo to its commodification that continues to grow in popularity, analyzing the question of ownership.”
Thomas “Breeze” Marcus (Tohono O’odham/akimel), will be featured in the exhibition Current State at the Arizona Heritage Center in Tempe, from November 13 through September 26, 2020. “Curated in collaboration with the Arizona Historical Society, Current State is a collection of works that explore Breeze’s personal experiences and identity as a part of the Akimel and Tohono O’odham communities. Displayed in conjunction with cultural artifacts and stories, the exhibition showcases how history, cultural heritage and identity influence contemporary works”
The Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles presents Coyote Leaves
the Res: The Art of Harry Fonseca through January 5, 2020. Fonseca (1946-2006) was of Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian and Portuguese heritage. He began the Coyote Series in 1979. His main character is Coyote, which represents different things in different Native American myths but is often a trickster or transformer. Fonseca placed the cultural icon in contemporary settings, exploring his own life and the place of tradition in the development of a contemporary Native consciousness.
The Autry also hosts another one-artist exhibition through January 5, Indian Country: The Art of David Bradley. Bradley (Minnesota Chippewa) was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2014. The artist says, “I try to use my art to spotlight the Indian worldview and sociopolitical realities. To expose social injustice is to begin to overcome it.” The exhibition’s curator Valerie Verzuh, curator at MIAC, says, “David Bradley is a painter of keen sensitivity and intelligence with a singular vision and Native American voice. He redirects the gaze of American life by depicting daily lives, thoughts and histories from an Indian point of view. Through his artwork he confronts his world with paradox, incongruity, irony and humor.”
The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico, hosts Highlights from the Collection: RC Gorman through November 1. Gorman (Navajo, 19312005) moved to Taos in the 1960s where he opened the Navajo Gallery in 1968. The New York Times later called him “the Picasso of American Art.” His lithographs of Navajo women were inspired by Navajo matriarchal tradition and the role of his maternal grandmother in his early life.
A contemporary artist shows her work at the Harwood through January 5. Susan Folwell: Through
the Looking Glass features the work of the Santa Clara potter who has studied the Taos Society of Artists’ paintings for the past three years and incorporates their images into her work. J. Matthew Thomas, curator of exhibitions, says, “The juxtaposition of Folwell’s works with significant Taos Society of Artists’ paintings draws attention to the stories being told in the paintings and on the pottery, thus better understanding who is doing the storytelling.” Grand Procession: Contemporary Plains Indian Dolls
from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection continues at the Heard Museum in Phoenix through April 17, 2020. “Grand Procession celebrates an exceptional collection of dolls, also known as soft sculptures, created by Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/shoshone
Bannock), Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Sioux/lakota) and three generations of Growing Thunder family members: Joyce Growing Thunder, Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder (Assiniboine/sioux).”
In conjunction with its exhibition David Hockney’s Yosemite, the Heard Museum presents Masters of California Basketry, which opens October 28 and continues through April 5, 2020. The Indigenous peoples of the Yosemite Valley used the natural materials of the region in their artwork. “During the 20th century, production of baskets in the Yosemite Valley was at its zenith, fueled by a newly established tourism-based economy in the 1920s,” according to the museum. “Miwok and Mono Lake Paiute women began expanding their practice of making baskets as traditional functional objects, evolving them into objects designed for artistic consumption.”
Maria Hupfield: Nine Years Towards the Sun opens December 6 at the Heard and will feature more than 40 works by the conceptual performance artist who is an Anishinaabek citizen of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada. She says, “I am an active member of the Indigenous Womxn Collective in New York, and also sing with ‘Nishnaabekwewag Negamonid’ a three-member Anishinaabe women’s hand drumming group based in Brooklyn, committed to language and cultural revitalization, using song to disrupt colonial spaces and speak to prior, persisting Indigenous presences. The group was born as part of an Anti-columbus Day action in the American Museum of Natural History in 2016.
Wendy Red Star will highlight the photographer’s work at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, June 6 through September 6, 2020. She was raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, and incorporates her heritage with photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts and performance.
Continuing through the fall of 2021 at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York is Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting. “Since 1940, many Native artists have pushed, pressed and expanded beyond narrow, marketdriven definitions of American Indian art. Drawing from the National Museum of the American Indian’s rich permanent collection, Stretching the Canvas presents nearly 40 paintings that transcend, represent or subvert conventional ideas of authenticity.”
The Art of Jack Malotte continues at the Nevada Museum of Art through October 20. Malotte (Western Shoshone/washoe) “makes artworks that celebrate the landscapes of the Great Basin, with a unique focus on contemporary political issues faced by Native people seeking to protect and preserve access to their lands. Malotte infuses wry humor into his work, even as he delves into subject matter that is sometimes serious and sobering.”
The Art of the Naminghas: Dan, Arlo and Michael continues at the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, through January 5, 2020. Dan Namingha and his two sons are of Hopi-tewa heritage. Dan’s landscapes range from representational to abstract. Arlo’s sculpture in various media reflect his Hopi-tewa heritage. Michael works in a variety of media including installation, video and photography.
The Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York, presents Eye Contact: Contemporary Native American Photography from the Permanent Collection through December 31. “This intimate exhibition explores complex themes of Native American identity as seen through the lens of First Nations photographers, including Zig Jackson, Shelley Niro, Mario Martinez and Rosalie Favelle. Through their work, many Native American artists address the complex and often conflicting nature of their cultural identity, being both Native Americans and United States citizens.”
Humor and Satire in Native American Arts, 1930 to
the Present “will include paintings, drawings, sculptures and other items from the 1880s to the present, in which Native artists have parodied non-native individuals, appropriated non-native historical figures to poke fun at both Native and non-native culture, and put a humorous spin on current challenges faced by Native peoples and communities.” It opens November 11 and continues through October 4, 2020, at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. Other Wheelwright exhibitions include Old Man Looking
Backward: Bob Haozous, featuring sculpture and works in other media from the Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache artist, through October 6; and LIT: The Work
of Rose B. Simpson, through October 6. Simpson is the daughter of potter Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara) and Patrick Simpson, a metal artist. She was educated at the Institute of American Indian Arts and at Rhode Island School of Design. The exhibition contains new and retrospective work including life-size clay and mixedmedia sculptures, clay faces and monumental figures.
Simpson states, “My life-work is a seeking out of tools to use to heal the damages I have experienced as a human being of our postmodern and postcolonial era—objectification, stereotyping and the disempowering detachment of our creative selves through the ease of modern technology. These tools are sculptural pieces of art that function in the psychological, emotional, social, cultural, spiritual, intellectual and physical realms. The intention of these tools is to cure, therefore, my hope is that they become hardworking utilitarian concepts.”