A traveling exhibition highlighting thousands of years of Native American art is making its way to the Town of Palm Beach, aiming to “reflect our nation's complex history,” says curator Chelsea Herr.
The timing of the Past Forward: Native American Art from Gilcrease Museum around Thanksgiving, Herr told WLRN, is no coincidence.
"From paintings that you might expect to see in a museum to beautifully beaded buckskin dresses — those can be prompts for you to really think about how much more complex, in a good way, our shared histories are,” she said.
The Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, boasts one of the country’s most extensive collections of Native American art, from southwestern pottery and abstract paintings to stone tools and clothing materials — 3,000 years worth of shared archival history.
The exhibition includes For John Ridge by Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick, an encaustic painting — paint mixed with wax — that's one of the only purely abstract pieces on display.
Herr, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said sharing Native American art serves as testament to the contributions and history of various tribes.
For many Native people, Thanksgiving is often a bleak reminder of the loss of millions of lives, of “what we have lost over the last few centuries” and the impact of living in “a settler colonial state,” she said.
“Indigenous people still exist here not just in the United States, but honestly, across the world. Even after centuries of colonization, we are not relics of the past,” she added.
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Oklahoma's Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa has made it a mission to preserve indigenous past and present — it houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Native American art in the U.S., mostly curated by businessman Thomas Gilcrease, who was of Muscogee (Creek) heritage.
Curators for the traveling exhibition in the Town of Palm Beach carefully selected 100 items of the more than 350,000 items from the Gilcrease collection.
The late Gilcrease, who took an interest in all historical pieces of indigenous life, wanted to ensure that Native American history wasn't lost and built over by industrialization.
"Every man must leave a track and it might as well be a good one," Gilcrease once said, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
While his efforts are recognized by institutions, it has also stoked controversy in recent years among protestors since Gilcrease funded archaeological digs, excavated sacred graves and ancient homes.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a federal law enacted in 1990, helps project and return culturally significant items to lineal descendants.
Herr said, today, many institutions, like the Gilcrease Museum, "recognize the harm caused to communities whose ancestors' remains and artifacts were taken without permission," she said.
“Nearly a hundred years later, we can look back and say that probably today wasn't the most ethical way to go about things.”
For now, the exhibition encourages wider audiences to celebrate indigenous culture and “partake in a sense of inquiry," she said.
IF YOU GO:
WHAT: Past Forward: Native American Art from Gilcrease Museum
WHEN: The exhibition runs November 23 through January 19th
WHERE:, 100 Four Arts Plaza, Palm Beach, FL 33480, Society of the Four Arts
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