The Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists exhibition is multilingual with descriptive text presented in both the artist’s Native American or First Nations languages, as well as English, aiming to present the works in the context of each artist’s own culture and voice.
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists
Christi Belcourt (Métis),The Wisdom of the Universe, 2014, acrylic on canvas; Art Gallery Ontario, Toronto; Purchased with funds donated by Greg Latremoille © Christi Belcourt
“At long, long last, after centuries of erasure, Hearts of Our People celebrates the fiercely loving genius of Indigenous women. Sumptuous, gorgeous, eternal, strange, this art is alive. Be prepared for an encounter with power and joy!”
—Louise Erdrich, author
Women have long been the creative force behind Native American art, yet their individual contributions have been largely unrecognized, instead treated as anonymous representations of entire cultures. Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists explores the artistic achievements of Native women and establishes their rightful place in the art world.
Description
This landmark exhibition is the first major thematic show to explore the artistic achievements of Native women. Its presentation at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery includes 82 artworks dating from antiquity to the present, made in a variety of media from textiles and beadwork, to sculpture, time-based media and photography. At the core of this exhibition is a firm belief in the power of the collaborative process. A group of exceptional Native women artists, curators, and Native art historians have come together to generate new interpretations and scholarship of this art and their makers, offering multiple points of view and perspectives to enhance and deepen understanding of the ingenuity and innovation that have always been foundational to the art of Native women.
The exhibition is organized by Jill Ahlberg Yohe, associate curator of Native American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Teri Greeves, an independent curator and member of the Kiowa Nation. An advisory panel of Native women artists and Native and non-Native scholars provided insights from a range of nations.
The presentation at the Renwick is the third stop on a four venue national tour. The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue, which includes essays, personal reflections, and poems by twenty members of the Exhibition Advisory Board and other leading scholars and artists in the field. It is available for purchase ($39.95) in the Renwick Gallery online store.
Note: Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists was scheduled to be on view from February 21 through May 17, 2020. Its run at the Renwick Gallery was cut short when the Smithsonian closed its museums as a public health precaution to help contain the spread of COVID-19. The museum was closed from March 14 through September 17, 2020.
Visiting Information
Videos
Video Player is loading.
Current Time
/
Duration
Loaded: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -
1x
- Chapters
- descriptions off, selected
- captions and subtitles off, selected
This is a modal window.
-
-
“Hearts of Our People” Curator and Artist Conversation -
Hearts of our People Exhibition Video: Legacy -
Hearts of our People Exhibition Video: Power -
Hearts of our People Exhibition Video: Relationships
On Thursday, October 1, 2020, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) presented a virtual conversation about the collaborative curatorial process and the exquisite artwork by Native women featured in the landmark exhibition “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists.” Exhibition curators Jill Ahlberg Yohe, associate curator of Native American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Teri Greeves, an independent curator and member of the Kiowa Nation, and featured artists Kelly Church (Ottawa/Pottawatomi) and Carla Hemlock (Kanienkeháka) join Anya Montiel, curator of American and Native American Women’s Art and Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for this engaging dialogue.
It saddens us greatly that the exhibition was not able to be seen fully during the presentation period at the Renwick Gallery because of the global pandemic. We are delighted the exhibition will, however, be seen in its next venue, and we are sending it off with love and pleasure to make sure that it can be enjoyed by many more. And thus, today's digital program is one way in which we can continue the conversation in honoring these dynamic curators, as well as the powerful artists who are part of this exhibition project and have been so since the very beginning. Thank you.
- (Anya Montiel) Hello. [unintelligible] My name is Anya Montiel, and I'm the curator of American and Native American Women's Art and Craft at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. I am the moderator for this conversation, and I'm excited to introduce all of our panelists.
Jill Ahlberg Yohe is the Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a co-curator of the Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artist Exhibition. Jill received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico and wrote her dissertation about the social life of weaving in contemporary Dine' life.
Teri Greeves is an artist and also co-curator of Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists. She's a Kiowa Tribal citizen and was born on the Wind River Reservation. Teri has received numerous awards for her beadwork and was a USA Distinguished Fellow in Traditional Arts.
Kelly Church is a black ash basket maker from an unbroken line of basket makers. She is Anishinaabe enrolled in the Gun Lake Tribe of Pottawatomi and decedent of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Ojibwe Indians. Kelly received her BFA from the University of Michigan and her associate degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe. She has been a NEA National Heritage Fellow and a Smithsonian Native Scholar Fellow.
Carla Hemlock is Kanienkehaka textile and multimedia artist. She received the Excellence in Iroquois Arts Award from the Iroquois Museum. Her artworks are in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
My first question is this exhibition, which I'll refer to as HOOP for brevity, recognizes the creative force of women in Native American art and highlights their artistic achievements. There have been other exhibitions focusing on Native women artists, such as Women of Sweetgrass Cedar and Sage in 1985 and Watchful Eyes in 1994, but it has been a long time since those exhibits. What did you want to say in this exhibit, and why now?
- (Teri Greeves) I would like to start by recognizing all of the women that came in the past, which is really the instigator of why I got involved, to begin with. And I think it's probably part of why Jill also recognized that this exhibition was needed. It came about from a conversation that Jill and I had with recognition that there hadn't been exhibitions put forward recently. And that also her and I... Perhaps me, earlier in my life than her, noticed that most exhibitions of Native American art really were majority exhibitions of women's Native art and that it hadn't been recognized in the art world that that's actually what they were looking at. The collections in most major museums and certainly in exhibitions of antiquities is majority women's work. There are much men's things that are there, but it's the materials, the technical skills, and all of that. Beadwork, textiles, ceramics, quillwork. All of these things are mediums that are held by women traditionally in our communities, passed through women's hands and eyes, and hearts to the next generation, and that is where this came from. It was our recognition that it had not been recognized in the fine art world.
- (Anya Montiel) I think some people might not realize the amount of time it takes to plan an exhibition, especially one like HOOP, with an advisory board and multi-venue locations. When did this exhibition idea begin? How did it come together? What was the timeline?
- (Jill Ahlberg Yohe) Well, as Teri mentioned before, this began with a discussion between Teri and I. We had been thinking about this independently, and we came together in a conversation actually at a art market one day. For me, it was this understanding that there had been no exhibitions dedicated to celebrating Native women artists across time and place, and that was absolutely stunning to recognize that, as Teri talked about. So we knew nearly seven years ago, I believe it was, that this was something that required a range of different perspectives, required time built in, required deep conversations, required deep listening. Something that is perhaps different than other musicological kind of approaches that seek to create one narrative. We had no interest in having one narrative. We wanted as many narratives to be present in the exhibition. So that required a long period of time. So it took from start to finish from about five, maybe six years, for it to work. And that was through commitments to these ongoing conversations that we had with our advisory boards, with our community engagement boards, and with fellow artists.
- (Anya Montiel) HOOP takes a collaborative and inclusive territorial approach. Jill and Teri, you formed an advisory board consisting of Native artists, curators, and Native art historians. The catalog also contains 70 essays and almost as many authors. This inclusive approach allows for multiple voices and perspectives, moving away from the curator as expert model. Please talk about the power of the collaborative process, especially as a model for museums.
- (Teri Greeves) As a Native person, as a Kiowa woman, I have no right to speak for Kelly Church, or Carla Hemlock, or anyone else. I'm not from their place. I'm not of their people, and I don't have the rights and responsibilities that are granted with that. This is something that is intrinsically known, I think, with most Native people who grow up in their home communities or are connected to their home communities, that I would never speak as a Seneca. I can't. I would never speak as a Ojibwe. I can't. That's not for me to do. And so I really think that the territorial process was built on the idea that multiple voices are needed because representation can not be done by one singular voice or one particular person because, at least from my perspective, and I definitely feel this from other Native artists, that in no way can fully represent an individual of another Tribe. So, the idea came very early on that we needed as many voices as we could have to help us understand what we were going to be looking at. I have a background in beadwork. I do not have a background in ceramics, in basketry, in textiles, and all the other amazing beautiful mediums that are out there. Jill has a background in textiles, which she learned at school. So all of this required us to bring in as many voices as we could get. And that's where our advisory board came.
Twenty-one women, artists, scholars, Native, and non came together to help us understand what this exhibition was going to be about. And the question that Jill posed initially was, why do Native women make art. And it was a very simple question that every single woman sitting around that massive table had an answer for. Different, but we all had answers for it. And that's why it probably took us five years cause this thing has never happened before, and it is also, and in no way, a complete vision of what Native art looks like, by far, and what Native women's art looks like either.
And so, our hope was... We knew going in that it was a beginning of a conversation with a lot of people, a lot of communities, and a lot of communities and that it was the very first, hopefully, of many more conversations to happen that would choose to use this process of actually engaging with the communities with which the work that is being shown in these institutions are actually involved in presenting that to the public. That was very important to us, and consequently, we had a very large group of people we were working with and much input, and a lot of juggling, and it was not easy. By any means, it was not easy, but I think it was well worth it.
- (Jill Ahlberg Yohe) I just want to add, too, from a curatorial perspective of having a career in curation. It is supremely important to recognize the history of curatorial practices in Indigenous art and of art more broadly. And it is standard practice that the idea, as Anya as you had pointed out, of the curator as the expert in the field, as the curator as the authority in the field. And that was something that we felt very strongly that that model needed to be shifted because it is an assumed model that one person has the right and the authority to talk about a whole range of art forms and philosophies and ways of life and ways of being, that it is impossible.
And instead, we created this exhibition board, the advisory board, with these phenomenal women who we knew had the expertise. We could all draw upon their expertise to help create something. Yes, as Teri said, it was hard. That it was difficult. This is a hard process to do, but in the long run, this is a practice that I would argue should be standard practice in all curatorial processes.
- (Teri Greeves) I have something to add to that. The feedback I keep hearing is, "Wow, this is very interesting. What a wonderful thing that you have added artists to your curation. It's really nice to have a artist-led curatorial team. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful?" This is not an artist-led curatorial team. This is an Indigenous-led curatorial team from Indigenous communities, and these women are artists as well as being culture holders, language bearers. Multiple faceted things. They are not just artists that were brought in to help curate an exhibition of other artists. These were women that we specifically asked because of their community and cultural knowledge. And so, while it can be curatorially seen as an artist curatorial team, that's not actually what Jill and I were doing. We were asking women who had not only community knowledge but also artistic knowledge to help us come together to form the curatorial team for this exhibition.
- (Anya Montiel) I have a follow-up question. Jill and Teri, as co-curators, how did you support each other through this process? How did you use your strengths?
[laughs]
- (Teri Greeves) We're like, I don't know. How do you say -
- (Jill Ahlberg Yohe) Kindred spirits.
- (Teri Greeves) Yes, kindred spirits. Exactly. Like, [unintelligible] on stuff and definitely like zoom, let's go do this. Yes.
[laughs]
- (Teri Greeves) You know? So we meshed. We meshed. We meshed from the beginning. A partnership, I think, as in a marriage or anything else, really requires trust. And I think that I definitely trusted Jill, and hopefully, she trusted me.
[laughs]
- (Jill Ahlberg Yohe) Absolutely.
- (Teri Greeves) Yeah, to figure this out because this is really important and heavy stuff. This is not stuff to be messing around with. And I think both her and I went into this with the recognition that it wasn't just about individually us or our careers. That it was a much bigger thing that we were trying to do, and it required us to be respectful and all of that. And that's what the trust was.
- (Anya Montiel) This question is for everyone on the panel. The exhibition is organized around three things that relate to the core question, why do Native women artists create. The themes are legacy, relationships, and power. Would someone share with me what each of those things mean to you?
- (Kelly Church) I think all of them are very important to everything that we do because they speak of how we carry on things, how we continue our relationships with our two-legged beings, our winged friends, with our water friends, and with each other. And so part of it, the relationship part, the relationship equated to the relationships to each other in our communities, our relationships by bloodlines, the relationships by clan lines, and relationships to nature, to everything that we do. So each one has these powerful pieces that speak to each of these things. And so as you walk through the show, if you read what each of those pieces are saying from the women's voices, from their languages even, you can get this strong sense of what relationship is, what legacy is, and what power is. In each piece, you'll feel the power in that piece. You'll see the relationship. And legacy is everything that we have and that we continue to bring forward, but we leave behind as well.
- (Carla Hemlock) Now, when we had to ask that question of ourselves, is why do women create. Why do Indigenous women create? We had to really look back at the timeframe of our women. We had to look back pre-contact. Why were they creating at that time? What were they creating? What was coming out of them? What was going on in that time? And then if the viewer, when they do go and look at the works, I think it's really important for the viewer to ask yourself, when you look at that particular piece that you're looking at, what was going on at that time. What were their people going through? Why did she make this? If you look at a lot of that work, these were not happy times. But the most beautiful work came out of those women. You know, I look at the time now. There's such an uncertain time right now. But what are people creating? What are we going to see out of the women even now? I guarantee you it's going to be nothing but beauty. Guaranteed. So when I ask the viewer, when you go through this when you look at this, look at the time frame and what were they going through? And then ask yourself why did they continue to create? And they created out of beauty. And they had to. They had to continue to create out of beauty.
So it wasn't hard for us to, as a group of women, to define the three parts of this exhibit. It just wasn't difficult at all. What was amazing when all of the women did come together was we were all on the same page, which I thought was, oh my gosh, there's a lot of voices coming in here. What direction is this going to go about? It was almost like we just all walked in there as one, and the voices were as one. And I think it reflects in what you're going to see in the exhibit.
- (Anya Montiel) What is the surprise that came about during the planning or execution of the exhibition?
- (Jill Ahlberg Yohe) One thing that I'm gonna say is surprising, but not was the support that we received. The outpouring of support that we received in terms of allowing this exhibition that cost a whole bunch of money. We have loans from 70 different institutions. We had more than 100 loans. So they came from across the United States, whereas now the United States and Canada, the requirement for the development of this kind of exhibition requires a lot of resources. One of the things I think that I was kind of surprised, but not surprised and so grateful for, and I think that was, it's good for the field to understand, is the financial support that we had from our funders. From private foundations, from large foundations, from individual people. And the reason that they supported this not only because this was the first kind of show in this kind but they believed in our curatorial process the most. They supported this show and gave abundant resources so that we could realize a project that at its foundation was allowing Indigenous women to create and speak and give the opportunity for people who may not have any understanding of what Indigenous art is the experience from Indigenous women. And I think that that was something that was really surprising. But I think that that is something that is important for the field, that people will fund these kinds of projects in the future because they believe in this kind of process.
- (Teri Greeves) Well, I'll speak up because on a personal level, what was surprising to me, Jill and I went on exhibition... I mean, Jill and I went on collection visits. We went on several collections visits. Over a dozen of them to many different museums all across the US and all different types of museums, from big ones to little ones, and I'll tell you what I was shocked at. That there are acres and acres and acres of our things being held in dark cabinets, literally covered in poison, all across the United States. I didn't have actually a conceptual understanding of how much material from our people is warehoused in the United States, and we didn't even get to Europe. God only knows what they have in Europe. So on a personal level, bearing witness to our things being held in prison, covered in poison, and held behind gatekeepers who, in general, don't allow Native people in to visit these things. You have to be affiliated. You have to know someone. You have to know how to go through the process. It's not easy to get in there. All that kind of stuff. Jill got me in.
So that was a very huge wake-up call. I had been in collections since I was a teenager with my mother. She was a trading post operator and an appraiser, and oftentimes that went into museums. And I've been in a couple, but it was the tour across the country with Jill that really opened up my eyes to the vast quantity of material culture held behind locked doors, really. Held behind locked doors. Held away from Native people who might want scholarship from it or something like that. And mistreated. Much of it mistreated. Many things that I saw I was shocked.
[laughs]
- (Teri Greeves) I was shocked. So that would be my big surprise on a personal level. That's where I'm gonna leave it.
- (Anya Montiel) Kelly and Carla, you're artists who have worked in the exhibition as well as being Advisory Board members. I think people may not understand, especially from an Indigenous perspective, the responsibility involved with being on a museum Advisory Board. Why did you decide to be involved with this exhibition? And how did you see your role on the board?
- (Kelly Church) Number one, I did this because Teri asked and because I trust Teri. I know Teri asked and had faith in us. And to be given that really big responsibility of someone trusting you and having faith in you to do that big job, I was not going to say no, and I was going to put my best foot forward and put my all into that. And as big as a responsibility as it was, I was really honored and grateful to be part of that responsibility to help give some voices to our Native women and to the Native women's art is all over the world.
- (Carla Hemlock) Quite honestly, when I was first asked, I was approached by both Teri and Jill, and my immediate reaction was no way. It was no. It was absolutely. I don't think so because it scared the living daylights out of me. Just this entire idea. Even today, it scares me. To be honest, even though it's done and it's traveling, it still scares me. It's a huge responsibility for me to have agreed to it. I listened to them, and they told me a lot of the women that were coming on board, and I just thought, oh my gosh. The responsibility I can't even begin to describe the feeling. You're talking about women's work that you're asked to look at from pre-contact to present. We were asked to really come up with names of women's works or indifferent works, and I can't even begin to tell you the sleepless nights, the bellyaching, you name it because the responsibility was... It's something that will always weigh on me.
There are works that should have been in there. There are 10 more spinoffs of this that should take place. This was just the beginning. It just opened the door because there are... Those doors opened, and now that they're open, there are so many women that their voices need to be heard. And I just hope that we were able to just kick that door open a bit.
- (Anya Montiel) I have another question for Carla. Walking Through Time, your artwork consists of a coat, hat, and a purse. The materials used in this work have historical significance along with the bead designs. What are some of the meanings that you wanted to exhibit through Walking Through Time?
- (Carla Hemlock) Oh boy, that. How it came about is I came across that hat in a hat shop, and I purchased a hat, and when I immediately saw that hat, it took me back to the time in our community from the fur trade. It wasn't the men, but our women wore those hats, and they wore the beaver skin hats. And so as soon as I saw it, I purchased it, and I placed it, for actually a couple of years, where I could just look at it. Look at it. You know, I would just envision, and I would think about this coat, and I knew it was going to be the coat that was going to transcend time. It was a coat that was going to be as fashionable a hundred and fifty years ago as it could be today. And it would be worn from women who are carrying what they were carrying all those years ago to what we're carrying now.
And I called it Walking Through Time because a lot of that beadwork that you see in there, it's connecting the women from who came before us the to the women that are walking now. And we're still walking, and we're still able to exist as Kanienkehaka women from their struggles, from what they went through. And we still carry this. We carry it today. But we also carry the beauty of their strength. We carry their will to go on.
In the back of the coat is our skydomes. That's part of our Creation stories. There's a wampum that hangs down, and the wampum tells our stories. In our wampum belts, that's our written language. When an orator would get up, they would hold those belts, and they could speak for days on a belt. Those wampum belts tell our stories. I wanted to put that wampum in because, as women, we have a lot of stories, so that coat really was just to transcend time. And hoping that in a hundred years from now, when someone else sees it, it'll be as fashionable in a hundred years as it is now.
- (Anya Montiel) And Kelly, your black ash basket in the exhibit entitled Sustaining Traditions Digital Memories has exterior and interior layers. Would you explain some of the messages in the work and what are some of the traditions and the memories you're speaking about?
- (Kelly Church) The basket is made out of black ashes. So in our about 21st year of being infested by the emerald ash borer. Emerald ash borer is an invasive species that came over here on a ship from Asia. It started spreading in Windsor and Detroit, by Detroit, Michigan. So it was in Michigan for about 10 years before we ever discovered it. So by the time we discovered that, we had lost tens of thousands of trees. But by the time we began to really understand what was going to happen to our trees as Native basket weavers, we were losing even tens more thousands.
So I started making baskets to tell about the emerald ash borer because when I just told people about the emerald ash borer, they'd be like, cool, Kelly, you're talking about a bug. You know, no one wants to hear about bugs. So I started making these baskets in the shape of a Faberge egg. So the egg represents fertility, kind of like a beginning, which is why these baskets start. They start from this tree. And then it also has the emerald ash borer in there, which is kind of like the demise of our baskets. But then there's a flash drive in there which is all of the teachings, so we can save them. Now, we've always passed on our teachings with our orator stories, and always by visually taking our people into the woods, our children, and showing them exactly how everything's done.
We haven't had a reason to record this because it has continued on for thousands of years and many, many generations. But we had a discussion. I did, with my Akwesasne friends, Les Benedict, and Richard David, and we were talking about collecting seeds for future generations. And then we begin to realize that we might skip a generation or two, even and hopefully not two, of harvesters because what if there are no trees to take the kids out to show them how to harvest? And so the seed collection is what we were meeting for that day, and that is the most important part of it. But if you have the seeds, you grow the trees, you still need to bring back teachings to the people.
So on this flash drive, I have every little step showing you where the trees grow, what the [unintelligible] look like [unintelligible] buds in winter, how we identify our bark, how we mash into it, and check the growth rings. And then, we translated it all into our Akwesasne language. And I hope to share it with others so they can also translate it into theirs. And so the translation is also our words. We have words for our basket weaving. We have words for our baskets. They need to be kept alive as well. And it's also to purposely make it available for those who are meant to hear it.
These teachings are not meant for everybody. They're very culturally entwined. We have Creation stories that come out of black ash. We have used them through ceremonies. And you have to use these materials sustainably, which means when you take a tree, you plant a tree, you save the seeds. So there's a lot that goes into it. So on that flash drive, that tells all of that. It tells about the emerald ash borer. It tells about our seed collection, ways that we have been trying to preserve this tradition for future uses, and make flashcards and make videos. I work with a lot of kids. That's the most important part. They would be the planters who sow those seeds in the future.
So the basket itself is emerald green like the emerald ash borer. Ash borer has a copper belly, and so I incorporated copper wove it in all around the basket, and that represents the Copper Valley. But we also have copper from Michigan. That was the first metal that we used here in Michigan for our tools, and so that's very important to us as well. So we incorporated all of these materials that we have always used. Our copper, our black ash, sweet grass, and then combined it with our technology of today. And that's this is to make sure that these traditions are sustained indefinitely.
And while I will share this with Tribes here that are interested, that want the teachings, there are Tribes that still lose those teachings. You know, I could give them the flash drive, and they could get lost in a file. It could get lost with a departing person who knows what happens, but those can get lost. The most important way to teach this is by the visual teaching and such. But if we are going to miss this generation, we will have the flash drive to make sure it is brought back in the future.
- (Anya Montiel) What does the field of American art need to educate itself about Native American art?
- (Jill Ahlberg Yohe) One of the things that was really impactful in this exhibition is that we have been able to create some opportunities for visitors and for people who read the catalog to see the relationship that has always been a part of Indigenous art and American art. We have been able to, in the exhibition and through catalog essays, been able to illustrate the intricate web of relationships that connect American abstraction with abstraction of Indigenous women artists. So we have that in the art historical record that is lacking in that kind of scholarship and in that kind of awareness, although that awareness of abstraction, as Teri, I'm sure, will elaborate on, is clear and known in many Indigenous communities and that that's the work of women.
And it is... We are at a moment, I think, in museums... I'm speaking as a curator... Where we are reexamining those categories that we have placed on individual people and communities in, particularly with American art. And that's a question for us living in the United States right now. And I think each museum is grappling with this issue, and how is the history of the exclusion of Indigenous art in the American art canon going to be addressed? And how are museums going to do the reparative work that is necessary, that aligns itself more to telling the story, the full, the true story of American art history and history more generally? And I think that Hearts Of Our People can contribute to that ongoing, everlasting conversation.
- (Teri Greeves) So my proposition is that American art doesn't exist without Native American women's contributions to it. Native American women have been contributing to it through what Jill brought up, which is the ideas of abstraction. Native women, Indigenous women, I think, across the planet, speak through abstraction. The baskets that are behind your head, Anya, the beadwork that is behind my head, the textile work that's behind Carla's head, like all of this, is abstraction. We've been abstracting the world since the beginning. And I know this for my people, specifically. Kiowa's, the men do the pictorial work. They do the representational work, and they are the history keepers because of it. The calendar keepers.
For us women, we look at the world through a different set of eyes, and our job is to take that world, put it in some kind of way that when we put it on our people, on our children, on our most important objects, that that language of who we are and how we interact in this world that has been abstracted is put on those pieces and those people, community members. Then when they're looking at that abstraction, they see themselves in that. Right? Just as Carla's family sees themselves in that [unintelligible] or your people see themselves in that baskets behind you. So I think that if you're truly going to be a curator of American art, to not look Native women's contributions to American art and what American art has become is you are missing an enormous chunk of the picture. And I believe that any art historian working today really needs to consider... American art historians working today needs to really consider how Native women's art, which has represented all Native art for a long time since the anthropologist first started gathering it and bringing it east. All right. They've been using women's art to collect us. And to have missed that fact that it is women's art, by and large, that fills these collection spaces that the anthropologists and our historians have been using for years now. Generations of them now have come through those collection spaces, and not one of them have recognized that it's women's voices that they're seeing. At least half. More than that when I went. But at least half. I would say that that is a huge hole in American art history, American art curation, and American art, period. So it is my hope and my prayer it has been since the inception of this exhibition and one of the reasons why I got involved with it.
Our people back home, they don't need this exhibition. They don't need an exhibition to tell them how important our women are to the formation of who we are and how we have... Who we were, who we are now, and who we are going to be in the future. We know that. At home, we all know that. This exhibition is for America so that you all can recognize actually that you have a lot that has been given to you, transferred to you, opened up your ideas of things like democracy and other philosophical ideas, the fact that perhaps we're all interrelated in the environment. Our crushing the environment actually has impact on us because we are interrelated. These are big-picture ideas that come from our people, and I think now is the time. If now is not the time, now is the time for every museum out there to pitch into this, to recognize that you have been missing a big part of your own story. This is the American story. White America does not exist without the Native American identity. American art, therefore, can not exist without Native American women's art.
- (Anya Montiel) My last question. Author Louise Erdrich remarked that this exhibition celebrates the fiercely loving genius of Indigenous women. During this time of multiple pandemics, what lessons can we draw upon from the works in this exhibit to find strengths for today and the road ahead?
- (Kelly Church) I'll say that the resiliency and the strength. I think right there are the two things that you can see throughout the show, and those are two things that are going to carry us through today. You know, this pandemic, it's serious. It's new. It kills. It's no joke. But our people have been through many of these "no jokes" in the past, and I think that we have strength and we have resilience, and we know how to get through. We know how to weather storms. We know how to come together as a community because coming together at times like this, that is what matters the most. That's where the strength comes from. Knowing that you can make it and thinking of how you're going to make it. Not thinking of how bad things can get. The thinking of how you can make things different and more adaptable to where you are today. That is where your resiliency comes from. So out of this show, look at these fierce women with the fierce voices that are coming from these pieces and feel that resiliency and feel that strength. That will help you get through today.
- (Carla Hemlock) I just want to maybe go back just to add something to that last question also to what Teri and Jill already spoke to. And that's a lot of the work that you see in museums across Turtle Island. There's times when I've gone into exhibits, and I've seen work that's been there that shouldn't be on those walls. There are work that really is off limits, and I think we were able to address that in this exhibit because we did have one piece that we really rallied behind that we did not want to show. And if there's anything that museums can learn, is that everything that you do have of ours, not all of it is supposed to be out there for the viewing of the public. It actually shouldn't even be in your possession. It should be back to those societies. It should be back to the people where they belong. So in the future, if there's going to be any type of another Native show... Yeah, I'm sure there will be... I hope the respect is given to those items that should not be out there because I cringed when I walked through some major museums and saw things on the wall that had no place there. So if there can be a voice to that, I'm glad that it could take place now.
As for this pandemic, oh my gosh, I can't wait till 2020 is over. You know, this it's like it stopped us in our tracks. Stopped every one of us. And I think it stopped us really where people are looking at it, that it's this is that. It's something totally invisible that stopped us. And it's stopped us for a reason -
- (Teri Greeves) Ha!
- (Carla Hemlock) Cause maybe we were just going a little bit too fast. And if you look and you speak to everybody right across the country, boy, is there ever a lot of self-reflection.
- (Teri Greeves) Ha!
- (Carla Hemlock) There's people who are home with lots of time on their hands. There's people thinking of those projects that I really need to create. What am I going to create? What am I going to say? What's my voice gonna be? Is it gonna be doom and gloom? Hell no. The voices of our women, the voices of our people, are going to be nothing about the future. It's about beauty. It's about getting over this, getting over this together, getting over this with your families, your extended families in your communities. And it's about helping each other. It's about reaching out not only as women but as human beings, as [unintelligible] people, as a human being. And reaching out to each other to get through this time. I can't wait to see the artwork that comes out of this time.
- (Anya Montiel) Thank you so much. The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum would like to thank Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Teri Greeves, Kelly Church, Carla Hemlock, and all the artists and Advisory Board members of Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists for this wonderful exhibition. Very sad that we only had it in Washington, DC, at the Renwick for a few weeks. But I want you to know that the exhibition will open to the public on October 7th, 2020, at its last touring venue, the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. Oklahoma. I encourage you to visit philbrook.org for exhibition and programming information. Thank you.
Audio
Credit
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists is organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The exhibition has been made possible in part by a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.
The presentation at the Renwick Gallery is organized in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian. Generous support has been provided by the James F. Dicke Family Endowment, Chris G. Harris, the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Provost of the Smithsonian, the Share Fund, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, and the WEM Foundation.
SAAM Stories
02/14/2020
The groundbreaking exhibition at the Renwick features more than 80 works from antiquity to the present
Teri Greeves
Luce Foundation Center08/04/2020
A closer look at three Native women artists in SAAM's collection
Karen Canova
Luce Foundation Center Volunteer
Exhibitions03/11/2020
Why Hearts of Our People exhibition labels have been translated into dozens of Native languages
Juline Chevalier
Online Gallery
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.