Community and Continuity: Native American Art of New York

Curated by John Hart and Gwendolyn Saul

August 29 – December 9, 2018
Sara Bedrick Gallery

In 1996, the New York State Museum (NYSM) began an initiative to build a collection of contemporary artworks produced by Native American artists whose ancestry, heritage, and identity is affiliated with lands that now comprise New York. Over the past 22 years the collection has expanded with artwork reflective of the rich histories, ingenuity, and traditions of creating, central to Native American communities. On view will be artwork rooted in Haudenosaunee histories of beadwork and basket-making, art that incorporates subject matter based on the epic narrative of the Creation Story, Algonquian histories, and commentary on what it means to be Indigenous today, expressed through a variety of mediums including photography, painting, and sculpture. Over thirty contemporary pieces of art, most collected during the past five years, will be on display introducing visitors to the diversity of Native American art in New York that exemplifies a thriving, vibrant and continuous Indigenous presence. Complementing the contemporary artworks and building on the theme of continuity, is a selection of archaeological artifacts of fired clay, bone, and shell from the NYSM collection and from Historic Huguenot Street that provide a glimpse into the prolific artistic traditions of indigenous peoples from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries AD.