Featuring powerful works by artists such as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Virgil Ortiz, Wendy Red Star, Sarah Sense, Hayden Haynes, Edgar Heap of Birds (see full list of included artists below), Native Now centers Indigenous perspectives and honors the past, present, and future of Native creativity.
With works ranging from painting and photography to sculpture and installation, this dynamic exhibition affirms the continued vitality of Native voices in American art today. Over the last 25 years, Indigenous artists throughout what is now known as the United States have been creating vital, compelling work that explores the environment, everyday life, and hope for the future. Working in a myriad of styles, Native American artists create visual stories that emphasize their connection to nature and their own cultures, centering an Indigenous view of the world.
Contemporary Native American art counters the historic erasure of a group of people and reasserts their creative voices through works of art that speak to everyone. Dynamic, surprising, and rich in meaning, these paintings, works on paper, and sculpture acquired by The Rockwell Museum since 2000 reflect the wide-ranging vision of artists working today.
Celebrating the Indigenous past, present, and future, the artworks on view represent connections between communities, the land, and our responsibilities to each other. Through discussions of landscape, modern life, and Indigenous Futurism, Native American artists are mining their own histories to tell new, compelling stories.
This exhibition is co-curated by independent curator Randee Spruce (Seneca Nation, Heron Clan) and Dr. Amanda Lett of The Rockwell Museum. The Museum is located on the ancestral, unceded land of the Seneca, one of the six Nations that comprise the Hodínöhšö:ni:h (Iroquois) Confederacy. We recognize the many legacies of displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here.
