October 25, 2024 – January 12, 2025 | Huth, Boeing, Salmon & Haws Galleries
Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass is a first-of-its-kind, groundbreaking exhibition giving broader and overdue recognition to a wide range of contemporary Native American and indigenous, Pacific Rim artists working in glass.
The stunning art in the exhibition embodies the intellectual content of Native traditions, newly illuminated by the unique properties that can only be achieved by working with glass. Whether reinterpreting traditional stories and designs in the medium of glass, or expressing contemporary issues affecting tribal societies, Native glass artists have created a content-laden body of work. These artists have melded the aesthetics and properties inherent in glass art with their cultural ways of knowing.
A secondary focus of the exhibition—a historical perspective—presents the fascinating story of how glass art came to Indian country, mainly through the pioneering work of Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee), a founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and of Dale Chihuly, who taught the first Native artists to work in glass. While Chihuly is not Native, he has long wielded a major influence on American Indian glass artists, and his own art has (in turn) taken inspiration from the designs and shapes of Native basketry and textiles. This comprehensive exhibition is the first of its kind to salute and document the sublime flowering of Native glass art.
Dr. Letitia Chambers
Visit: hsvmuseum.org/clearly-indigenous-native-visions-reimagined-in-glass-october-25-2024-january-12-2025/
Dr. Letitia Chambers, former CEO of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, curated the exhibition together with artist and museum consultant Cathy Short (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which originated this seminal exhibition.
The studio glass art movement began in the 1960’s and has developed into a significant genre of fine art. The contemporary Native American arts movement also began in the 1960s with the founding of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. The book, Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass, tells the story of how these two movements came together in the 1970’s when Dale Chihuly, perhaps the best-known American glass artist and an innovator in the field, set up a glass art teaching program at IAIA. Over the nearly 50 years since, American Indian artists have created an extraordinary body of glass art. The Clearly Indigenous exhibit showcases the works of the leading Native glass artists.
Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass was originated by The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The traveling exhibition was curated by Dr. Letitia Chambers, and is toured by International Arts & Artists.
Organized by International Arts & Artists
