The Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was founded to support the creation, documentation and preservation of a legacy of culturally diverse American art and ensuring the participation of multi-ethnic artists in the field of fine art printmaking and related media technologies. The organization recently donated a collection of works by Indigenous artists to the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Natives Arts National Collection upholding the vision to establish satellite collections at public institutions across the country for preservation and exhibition. Image:…

Alaskan artist Da-ka-xeen Mehner celebrates the lasting and profound relationship between Tlingit language and song in the exhibition Saligaaw (it is loud-voiced). Like many Native American families, Mehner’s grandmother and grandfather were from a generation who were punished for speaking their language. Inspired by a collective tenacity of maintaining traditional language and song, Mehner’s installation combines hand-stretched drums and video projection as a means to keep tradition vitally intact. About the Artist Da-ka-xeen Mehner(Tlingit/N’ishga) uses the tools of family ancestry…

This exhibition, a mix of new and recent works, includes drawings and paintings in Chris Pappan’s signature style of contemporary ledger art. The mid 1800s saw the unprecedented expansion of the American empire, and with it, catastrophic changes for Indigenous people. Beginning in the 1860s, paper was introduced to the plains via ledger books and was quickly adapted for the visual recording of the tumultuous times of the people of the plains.  Pappan continues the tradition by portraying a skewed…

The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts is proud to present the IAIA annual BFA graduating student exhibition. The exhibition celebrates the class of 2014–2015 and showcases a diversity of styles that combine traditional skill with contemporary vision. The artists represent the future of Native art, charting a path for others to follow. Like all BFA exhibitions, there is a wealth of style and media on view. The wide-range of works selected by an esteemed jury include photography, painting, sculpture,…

This exhibition is a collection of recent works on paper by Minneapolis-based artist Julie Buffalohead. Known for her deft use of allegory and archetype, Buffalohead’s narrative drawings are dreamscapes consisting of a rich cast of characters, trickster coyotes and rabbits as well as turtles, deer, birds, and rodents. In her works animals often take the form of humans and vice-versa. This fictional world is a means to engage with the very real ills of contemporary society such as the rise…

Meryl McMaster’s work demonstrates a continually evolving exploration of the artist’s own relationship to cultural and familial heritage within the larger framework of historical and contemporary Indigenous identities. As a person with both Indigenous and European familial lineages, McMaster treats identity subjectively, as something that is never complete, always in process, but invariably shaped by both internal and external factors and actions. Wanderings, a new body of photo-based work, represents a new progression in her photo-based practice. While previous bodies…

Loosely translated, the Inuktitut word Akunnittinni means “between us.” This exhibition chronicles a visual dialogue between an Inuk grandmother, mother, and daughter—Pitseolak Ashoona (1904-1983), Napachie Pootoogook (1938-2002), and Annie Pootoogook (1969- ). Their artworks provide a personal and cultural history of three generations of Inuit women whose art practices included autobiographic narratives and have chronicled intimate and sometimes harsh memories and historically resonant moments. The prints and drawings on view also include sardonic references to pop culture that now infuses…

The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) is proud to present the IAIA annual BFA graduating student exhibition. This year’s exhibition celebrates the class of 2015–2016 and showcases a diversity of styles that combine traditional skill with contemporary vision. These artists represent the future of Native art, charting a path for others to follow. Like all BFA exhibitions, there is a wealth of style and media on view. The wide-range of works selected by an esteemed jury include photography,…

This solo exhibition showcases recent drawings and paintings by artist Athena LaTocha (Hunkpapa Lakota and Ojibwe) based on her recent experiences in Santa Fe. Her contemporary landscape paintings focus on the dynamic gesture and atmosphere that recall nature’s powerful forces. LaTocha’s unorthodox approach to the subject ‘landscape’ involves personal memories and the use of unusual tools, techniques, and materials, resulting in intense, haunting images of nature scenes on a monumental scale. Her working method is based on indigenous perceptions of…

The Institute of America Indian Arts’s 2018 BFA thesis exhibition at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts showcases the diversity of work created by the artists trained at IAIA.

Holly Wilson (Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma/Cherokee) presents her new narrative works created in a variety of media including bronze, wood, and encaustic. Her figures serve as her storytellers to the world. They often resemble stick figures or animals with human characteristics.

Through video and installation art, this exhibition creates a narrative of visual sovereignty and cultural and intellectual connections with contemporary Sámi, who are Indigenous peoples from parts of Norway, Sweden, and northern Finland.

The exhibition tackles a wide variety of topics ranging from the revitalization of tribal regalia and mask making to healing from traumatic events that happened as a result of European colonization.

Strong Unrelenting Spirits features new works from Tom Jones’ series of portraits that are rooted in his Ho-Chunk identity.

Manifesting Our Destinies highlights artwork that reflects the diverse backgrounds of this year’s IAIA graduating BFA students.

We Went Wild is an exhibition of emerging students in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ (IAIA) BFA programs.

Awakened Dreamscapes is an exhibition of emerging students in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ (IAIA) BFA programs.

Athena LaTocha (Lakota and Ojibwe) created the works in her Mesabi series on-site at iron deposits in the Mesabi Mountain Range of northern Minnesota, which is known to the local Ojibwe as Misaabe-wajiw.”

The Stories We Carry features contemporary jewelry created by more than 100 Indigenous artists across decades stewarded by the MoCNA permanent collection.

Inherent Memory features contemporary Indigenous basketry-related art created by Indigenous women and nonbinary artists from California and the Great Basin, including painting, sculpture, multimedia, basketry, poetry, video, and photography.

Our Stories is a companion to The Stories We Carry exhibition, located adjacent to the Kieve Family Gallery.

Womb of the Earth: Cosmovision of the Rainforest gives Brazilian Indigenous female artists an opportunity to share their art with a wider audience and to voice their concern about challenges their communities face.