This installation highlights the ways in which Native artists have increasingly asserted agency—the exertion of one’s own power—over representations of their communities and identities over time. In the early 20th century, white arts educators encouraged Native artists to create “authentic” art—as defined by settlers—that embraced traditional subject matter while often neglecting present realities. In the decades that followed, generations of artists have shrugged off settler expectations by depicting their community on their own terms.

Nicholas Galanin’s (Lingít and Unangax̂) exhibition presents existing works alongside new work inspired by his continued critical examination of cultural appropriation, colonization, and the complexities of Indigenous identity in the contemporary world. His work in Baltimore finds root in his conversations with the local Native community, which sparked directions for his sculptural installations and interventions.

“Blood is a gift and the land is a gift and our past is a gift. In the questions they ask and in the wandering they do, the short films in this program uncover and explore generational memory. They give thanks to those who are gone and those who are yet to be born, and to those who are here living right now. They drift through time, movement, memorial, and landscape towards some unknown and neverknown place and serve as a much-needed reminder that we’ll all get there together, just not at the same time.” —Sky Hopinka, Guest Curator

This exhibition pairs Henri Matisse’s compositions with those of 19th-century Japanese woodcut artists to explore the global appeal of color and pattern across space and time. The Art of Pattern: Henri Matisse and Japanese Woodcut Artists features several paintings and prints by Matisse from the 1920s, with posed models and heavily patterned interior backgrounds, reflecting the artist’s interest in layering his works from this period with decorative items from around the world.

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s award-winning installation is the first of a series of exhibitions presented as part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth environmental initiative. The installation celebrates Baltimore’s community health workers during the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine through a series of portraits and related narratives mounted on 18 socially distanced, stainless-steel IV poles. This powerful and deeply evocative artwork offers an alternative approach to monument-making that challenges us to consider the nature of how and who we honor.

This presentation speaks to Native people’s dynamic and powerful relationship with land, home, and sanctuary. While they have beliefs and practices as wide and vast as this continent, Native communities share a recognition that humans exist as part of a larger ecosystem that must stay in balance. As the pressures of colonization and contemporary life have assaulted traditional lifeways, the works in this exhibition demonstrate the resilience and versatility with which Native artists maintain their cultures, community connections, and sense of home.

This exhibition puts Laura Ortman’s (White Mountain Apache) My Soul Remainer into conversation with a historic Apache violin by Amos Gustina. Ortman’s video work features the artist playing the violin against the dramatic backdrop of the Southwestern landscape, while her collaborator Jock Soto (Diné) assumes reverential postures. Ortman’s original score builds upon then radically departs from the overwhelmingly white, male canon of classical music—her score samples a classical Mendelssohn piece, which bleeds into an atmospheric and ethereal composition.

Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) presents one new and two existing sculptural works from her Carry series. Each Carry piece, composed of a large copper bucket and ladle adorned with glass beads, bears extravagantly long fringe whose draping emulates arboreal root structures. Alongside the artist’s works, White Hawk selected historic Lakota belongings from the BMA’s collection. Through these works, White Hawk insists upon an interdependence between art and function—and by extension art and life—effectively calling into question art history’s tendency to devalue craft.

This exhibition reflects upon the buffalo as essential to Indigenous lifeways on the Plains since time immemorial. Euro-American colonizers and the United States government attempted to eradicate the species in a calculated strategy to subdue Native people and force them onto reservations in the late 19th century. This effort fundamentally transformed Native artmaking, both historically and presently. The critical importance of the buffalo within Plains Indigenous cultures can be felt across artworks that pre- and post-date the attempted eradication of the species.

Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations) presents a solo exhibition of her large-scale, backlit, color transparency photography, which she terms “fireboxes.” Works from her Lasso and Headdress series, including a newly commissioned Headdress portrait, draw together contemporary Native subjects with regalia and items from the subject’s own cultures. The exhibition situates many of the objects depicted in the firebox images alongside objects from the BMA’s historic Native art collection.

For this new solo site-specific installation, Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French) interweaves inspiration from eel trap pots made by Indigenous people of the Chesapeake Bay watershed along with traditional Anishinaabe longhouses. The artist responds to the Museum’s architecture as a departure point for her distinct aesthetic vocabulary, which inscribes traditional Anishinaabe motifs and cultural practices within contemporary forms and materials. Optically vibrating and resonating outwards, the forms forcefully claim space while also reflecting both a sense of reception and transmission.

Calling All Artists, Arts Organizations, and Arts Educators!

Baltimore’s arts community is vibrant and diverse, filled with immense talent. Together, we can advocate for an arts council that reflects and supports the immense talent in this creative city.

Join us on Thursday, December 12, from 4–6 PM for a virtual convening focused on the role, purpose, and possibilities of a successful arts council.

This session will include: