Community Conversation: Speaking of Revolution from Indigenous Perspectives

Location: The Rockwell Museum

Free and open to the public | Advance registration required

Join The Rockwell Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, and Humanities New York for Community Conversation: Speaking of Revolution from Indigenous Perspectives, a facilitated dialogue centered on Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Harm (2021) and Albert Bierstadt’s Mount Whitney (1877).

As part of Humanities New York’s Speaking of Revolution initiative, developed in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s By the People: Conversations Beyond 250, this program approaches revolution not as a fixed historical event, but as an ongoing process of rupture, renewal, and reimagining.

Held in the Museum’s Visions of America gallery, the conversation will invite participants to spend time with the works of art and consider how Luger’s sculpture intervenes in the gallery space presented with Bierstadt’s monumental landscape. The works open questions about Indigenous presence, displacement, and what we collectively carry forward into the future.

The program will begin with opening remarks from Erin M. Coe, Rockwell Museum Executive Director and reflections from Hayden Haynes (Seneca Nation of Indians, Deer Clan), with facilitation by Rachel Pitkin of Humanities New York. Rather than a lecture or debate, this Community Conversation is a participatory program grounded in shared observation and dialogue. Participants should expect to actively contribute and engage with perspectives that may differ from their own.

Space is limited to the first 25 registrants and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Image: Cannupa Hanska Luger (Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, Lakhóta (Lakota), b. 1979), Harm, 2021, ceramic and mixed media, 19 x 53 x 21 in., Art Bridges.