In the Study: The History and Legacy of Haudenosaunee Beadwork with Gabrielle Patrone

Location: The Rockwell Museum

Free for Rockwell Members | Registration required, virtual participants will receive a Zoom link upon registration
Location: The Rockwell Museum Study Room or Online 

Join Gabrielle Patrone, 2026 Mary Spurrier Fellow in Native American Art, as she shares her recent research on The Rockwell Museum’s collection of historic and contemporary Haudenosaunee beadwork. 

Spanning the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, the Museum’s collection sheds light on a critical period of Native American artistry. For centuries, Indigenous women created elaborate beadworks to adorn themselves, their personal belongings, and their community. However, by the nineteenth century, a rapidly expanding consumer culture, economic disenfranchisement, and forced removal policies brought on by colonialism prompted many Indigenous women to make and sell beaded items in the lucrative tourist trade. Explore how beaded belongings not only became a means for survival, but also an enduring and thriving creative force of resilience, agency, and sovereignty. 

In-person participation is limited to 12 attendees and is on a first-come, first-served basis. Once we reach in-person capacity, Member participation is available via Zoom. 

About Gabrielle Patrone 

Gabrielle Patrone is a second-year Master in Art History candidate at Syracuse University and recently served as The Rockwell Museum’s Mary Spurrier Fellow of Native American Art. Prior to her graduate studies, Gabrielle completed a Fulbright Independent Research fellowship in Ottawa, Ontario, examining Métis Nation beadwork and curatorial frameworks. This foundational work shaped Gabrielle’s interest in North American Indigenous beadwork and has been the basis for her graduate thesis and research with The Rockwell’s collection of ancestral Haudenosaunee belongings. Broadly, Gabrielle’s academic work engages with painting and print culture of the long nineteenth-century, with a special focus on women and BIPOC artists, and explores themes of kinship, displacement, sovereignty, and survivance. After graduate school, she aspires to work in the museum field as a curator and educator, always making time to paint, bead, and embroider on the side!