Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences

Thinking, Making, Writing: A Mini-Symposium on Indigenous Studies and Art History in the Museum, Classroom, and Community 

In the United States and Canada, artists, scholars and curators are holding necessary conversations about Indigenous art, such as how we categorize, teach, display, and interpret Indigenous art and how scholars and curators collaborate with Indigenous communities. This mini-symposium brings the discussion to a public audience. Based on their own processes and practices in museum exhibitions, university classrooms, and communities, the speakers will reflect on interdisciplinary approaches to Indigenous art. 

Following a keynote lecture by Philip J. Deloria, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University, the roundtable brings together artist Dyani White Hawk, curators Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, and scholars Amy Lonetree and Sascha Scott to address the ways in which the disciplines of Indigenous Studies and Art History can influence and reshape one another. 

Some questions and topics the panel will cover include: 

 _How do scholars, curators, and artists interweave approaches to these subjects, and what tools are most appropriate to approach them? 

_If art history contributed to decolonization and becomes Indigenized, how might that alter, dismantle, or enhance interpretive approaches guiding art history today? 

_ In what ways are issues of access, power, relationality, equity, and sovereignty presented in thinking, making, and writing about Indigenous studies and art history?   

_Roundtable participants:

– Philip J. Deloria (Standing Rock Sioux), Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University 

– Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota), artist

– Wanda Nanibush (Anishinaabe-kwe), Curator of Indigenous Art, Art Gallery of Ontario 

– Georgiana Uhlyarik, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Ontario

– Amy Lonetree (Ho-Chunk), Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz 

– Sascha Scott, Associate Professor of Art History, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Syracuse University

– Moderated by: Ashley Holland (Cherokee), Associate Curator, Art Bridges Foundation

Co-organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the University of Arkansas School of Art, Department of Art History.

Sponsored by McIlroy Family Visiting Professorship in the Visual and Performing Arts.