The walls and floors were vibrating when Indigenous hip-hop duo, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, took the stage at the St. Catharines First Performing Arts Centre Wednesday night.

The Haisla First Nation duo hail from Kitamaat Village, B.C. and came to St. Catharines to headline a free concert for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The concert was organized by the Niagara Regional Native Centre, based in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and featured performances from local Indigenous artists as well.

Throughout their set, the Snotty Nose Rez Kids had the crowd head-banging to its biggest hits, like “Boujee Natives” and “Long Hair Don’t Care,” and some of its latest tracks.

Community member Cherie Bernard was in the corner dancing with several younger listeners.

“I’m really excited to be able to be of support and to just listen to and enjoy the entertainment,” Bernard said between acts.

“It’s about all of us gathering together and just becoming one with music,” she said.

The opening acts included Ol’ Child, Low Animal and The Pappy Johns Band.

Sean Vanderklis, an Anishinaabe man from St. Catharines and co-host of the radio show One Dish One Mic, was thrilled to see Indigenous artists represented on the stage.

“It’s one of the most important things for Indigenous peoples,” he said.

Vanderklis said celebrating and supporting Indigenous culture “started as an act of resistance” against the attempts of settler colonialists to erase their culture throughout history.

By continuing to celebrate their culture in public, they are “creating space for (their) children,” in the future, he added.

After the opening acts warmed up the hall, Snotty Nose Rez Kids stepped out to an audience of about 400 to 500 people.

Darren “Young D” Metz and Quinton “Yung Trybez” Nyce, who both front the band, have carved their name into the rap scene over the course of five albums.

Back-to-back releases “Trapline” and “Life After” were both nominated for the Polaris Music Award in 2019 and 2022 respectively.

The band was also nominated for Indigenous Artist of the Year at the 2018 Western Canadian Music Awards.

“They use a lot of Anishinaabe words,” Vanderklis said of the rappers, which he said makes him feel seen, and is “good for my kids” to hear.

Vanderklis was not the only one to bring kids to the show. 

After playing a couple of crowd favourites, the band invited the youth of the crowd on stage to dance to the sound of “Boujee Natives.”

There were about 25 to 30 kids on stage with the rap duo by the end of the song.

Later, As Vanderklis was filming the hip-hop duo from the front row, community member Cherie Bernard was off in a corner dancing with the younger listeners.

“I’m really excited to be able to be of support and to just listen to and enjoy the entertainment,” Bernard said between acts.

“It’s about all of us gathering together and just becoming one with music,” she said.

Her Mi’kmaw friend Venette Gerden, Bernard’s friend who is Mi’kmaw, agreed with the sentiment that the experience was about becoming one with music.

“It all goes back to that heartbeat,” Gerden said, describing music.

“Music sings to everybody,” she added, whether you listen to opera, death metal or hip-hop. 

“What better way to celebrate culture than through music?” 

UPSTATE NEW YORK

Beatriz Cortez: The Volcano That Left
Until 13 November at Storm King Art Center, 1 Museum Road, New Windsor, New York
This new outdoor installation features three recent large-scale sculptures by El Salvador-born, Los Angeles-based artist Beatriz Cortez, a multidisciplinary maker best known for her sculptural reflections on the immigrant experience. The Volcano That Left, organised by Storm King associate curator Eric Booker and curatorial assistant Adela Goldsmith, takes on the simultaneous terror and freedom of contemporary futurity, grounding big questions about geologic ontology, history and the human condition in the language of improvisational steel construction.

The exhibition’s central thread relates to Ilopango, the Volcano that Left (2023), the artist’s “speculative reconstruction” of an ancient volcano that erupted 1,500 years ago in current-day El Salvador. The eruption, known as the Tierra Blanca Joven disaster, is considered one of the largest volcanic events in recorded history. Cortez frames the ash distribution from the eruption as a testament to Mayan spiritual and religious practices. “Lava flows under the volcanic range that unites my two homes,” Cortez has said, “Los Angeles and San Salvador. The underworld is not divided by these borders.” This non-linear, de-colonised relationship with time courses throughout Cortez’s practice; in November, her installation will travel by boat to Troy, New York for a show at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center titled Shifting Center. T.A.

Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969
Until 26 November at the the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, 33 Garden Road, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
This exhibition, the first large-scale show foregrounding the importance of performance and theatre in Indigenous art, takes 1969 as its origin point. That was the year the New Native Theater movement launched in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the exhibition features archival materials and documentation related to that movement. It was also the year the group Indians of All Tribes began their 19-month-long occupation of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, which brought new visibility to contemporary Indigenous issues in the Americas.

The exhibition, curated by Candice Hopkins—a member of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation and the executive director of Forge Project—features more than 100 works by artists including Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee), Kay WalkingStick (Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Anglo), Marie Watt (Seneca and German-Scot), Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota) and Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc), among others. Many of the featured works employ humour as a form of critique, depict Indigenous bodies (and their absences) as a means of undermining stereotypes about Native identity or reinterpret traditional art forms to address contemporary issues. B.S.

Ellsworth Kelly: States of The River
29 June-29 October at the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, 82 North Broadway, Nyack, New York
The Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center in Nyack, New York, has joined forces with the Ellsworth Kelly Studio and other organisations to launch States of The River, an exhibition focused on Kelly’s lithographs named for major waterways around the world, including the Hudson (which the Hopper House Museum overlooks), the Amazon and the Nile. Held at Hopper’s birthplace and childhood home, the exhibit will bring together nine lithographs Kelly created between 2004 and 2005 and coincides with the centenary of his birth. Kelly and Hopper were “equally captivated by rivers and the interaction of light on the water’s surface”, museum director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz said in a statement. C.P.

Rita McBride: Momentum
1 July 2023-January 2025 at Dia Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York
Rita McBride’s well known Arena (1997) will be installed at the Dia Art Foundation’s Beacon location this summer in an exhibition that explores how architecture and design is incorporated in day-to-day life within the public sphere. The artist’s modular Twaron and wood Arena seating area will be activated throughout the presentation with performances by artists, writers, musicians and dancers, according to Dia. A section of McBride’s work involving public infrastructure from the previous two decades will be presented alongside Arena. C.P.

Welcome to New York!
Until June 2024 at Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, New York
To mark Magazzino Italian Art’s sixth anniversary, the museum dedicated to post-war and contemporary Italian art is showing new work by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. A mixed media sculpture, Welcome to New York! draws inspiration from the Statue of Liberty and features colourful, cascading rags tied to a metal crown. Seven of Pistoletto’s mirrored sculptures will be displayed alongside Welcome to New York!. Magazzino will also unveil a permanent installation by Pistoletto, Terzo paradiso, on the museum’s grounds. The project was completed with 46 stones excavated during the construction of a new pavilion. Magazzino will also host the official Upstate Art Weekend kickoff party on 21 July. C.P.

Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow & Her Circle
Until 29 October 29, Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 218 Spring Street, Catskill, New York
The Thomas Cole National Historic Site is restoring a lost name to her proper place in the canon this summer. Women Reframe American Landscape is the first retrospective of artist Susie Barstow (1836-1925), well-respected in her time but forgotten in the century since her death. The exhibition seeks to retroactively “reinsert” Barstow into the legacy of the Hudson River School, America’s landmark artistic “fraternity” founded by the institution’s namesake, Thomas Cole. As the Hudson Valley continues to grow in popularity, the legacy of its art historical tradition is being updated for a contemporary audience.

Women Reframe American Landscape also features work by contemporary artists in conversation with Bartstow’s, reflecting subsequent approaches to the landscape. This portion of the show features a new work by the Guerrilla Girls, an outdoor sculpture by Jean Shin, an interactive library installation by Mary Mattingly and works on canvas by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick. “This exhibition represents the growing interest in, and need for, greater inclusivity and diverse voices when telling the story of the American landscape movement,” Nancy Siegel, professor of art history at Towson University and exhibition co-curator, said in a statement. (After its run at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the exhibition will go on view at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, 16 November 2023-31 March 2024.) T.A.

LONG ISLAND

Artists Choose Parrish Part 1 A
Until 6 August, Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, New York
The Parrish Art Museum is celebrating its 125th anniversary with a conceptual retrospective of sorts—41 renowned artists with ties to the east end of Long Island have selected work from the museum’s collection to show alongside their own. Artists Choose Parrish, organised by Corinne Erni, the museum’s deputy director of curatorial affairs, is unfolding in three parts. Part I, split into A and B rotation, pairs the work of contemporary artists who have spent time in and around the Hamptons like Mary Heilmann, Cindy Sherman, Eric Fischl and Ross Bleckner with pieces by art historical figures like William Merritt Chase and Jackson Pollock, juxtaposing cultural, visual and creative narratives across time, movements and genres. The exhibition is also an opportunity to delve into into PAM’s 3,600-piece online and in-person collection, affording opportunities to see rarely-exhibited gems and discover new connections between contemporary and historical works. T.A.

Renée Cox: A Proof of Being
2 July-4 September at Guild Hall, 158 Main Street, East Hampton, New York
The centrepiece of Guild Hall’s reopening following a $25m renovation is a thoroughly overdue 30-year survey of Renée Cox’s photographic work, which often involves elaborate self-portraiture in which she assumes various guises—from supermodels and superheroes to historical figures and artistic tropes—to unsettle conventions of gender, race and beauty. In addition to a recent video installation, Soul Culture (2022), the show (organised by independent curator Monique Long) brings together earlier series like her rumination on motherhood, Yo Mama (1992-94), and other iconic images from the 1990s and early 2000s. Also featured is her 12ft-wide photograph The Signing (2017), which reimagines Howard Chandler Christy’s 1940 painting Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States but replaces all the historical figures with people of colour. B.S.

CONNECTICUT

Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers
Until 7 January 2024 at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, Connecticut
In her bravura earthenware sculptures the artist Raven Halfmoon, who is a member of the Caddo Nation, transforms the iconography of historical statues and sculptural portraits. She brings in influences from Caddo tattooing to Land art and Moai sculpture to create pieces that are often monumental in scale yet also intensely personal and richly tactile. Her heavily worked sculptures, which can rise as tall as nine feet and weigh more than 800 pounds, feature impressions of her fingers and expressively dripping glazes. The pieces here span the past five years and include brand new works; the show, which was co-curated by Amy Smith-Stewart of the Aldrich and Rachel Adams of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, will travel there following its run in Connecticut. B.S.

In a New Light: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art
Until 3 December at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut
Visitors to In a New Light: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art can see more than 50 paintings from the Yale Center for British Art’s (YCBA) collection at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven while the YCBA is closed for a conservation project. The exhibition covers 400 years of British painting with works from artists like Mary Beale, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth and JMW Turner. Highlights include an 1818 seascape by Turner and Constable’s Hampstead Heath (around 1825). The display occupies a section of the fourth floor of the Yale University Art Gallery’s Kahn building, which was designed by Louis I. Kahn and was the first modernist structure on the university’s campus. The YCBA is home to the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. C.P.

NEW JERSEY

Adama Delphine Fawundu: In the Spirit of Àṣẹ
Until 10 March 2024 at the Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington Street, Newark, New Jersey
An exhibition at the Newark Museum of Art pairs 17 new works by Sierra Leonean-American photographer and visual artist Adama Delphine Fawundu with objects from the museum’s collection of global African art to explore ancestral memory and liberation. Much of Fawundu’s work includes images of herself at historic sites related to Black resistance in Africa and the Americas. For this exhibition, Farundu chose to include three works by Sierra Leonean artist Olayinka Miranda Burney-Nicol, a pioneer of modern African art. Fuwundu approached the work from the Newark Museum of Art’s collection as connected and intertwined with what the Yorùbá people in West Africa call “Àṣẹ”, a life force that causes things to happen and change, the museum said. C.P.

Meryl McMaster: Chronologies
Until 15 October at Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey
Though most concisely described as a photographer, Québec-based artist Meryl McMaster, who is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation and the Siksika Nation, works across disciplines, incorporating elements of sculpture and performance to create powerful and enigmatic images. She fashions elaborate costumes and sculptural props, often augmented with dramatic makeup, which then form the basis for self-portraits and tableaux she shoots at sites that hold significance for her family and community. For instance, in her recent series Stories of my Grandmothers | nōhkominak ācimowina (2022)—showing in the US for the first time—she re-creates family stories using objects, images and accounts of events from her Plains Cree and Métis grandmothers. B.S.

Spiral Q: The Parade
Until 7 January 2024 at Grounds for Sculpture, 80 Sculptors Way, Hamilton, New Jersey
Spiral Q is a Philadelphia-based non-profit known for their creative protests and direct action campaigns, which typically incorporate elements of large-scale puppetry, elaborate costumes and props. Since 1996, the group has animated street festivals and celebrations, as well as bringing powerful imagery and pageantry to protests against police brutality and violence against transgender people, in support of greater environmental regulation and more. This exhibition brings together materials from past actions and protests, plus new images of footage of their performances and portraits of Spiral Q members. B.S.

Elevate Well STL is a cannabis friendly yoga studio.  
BRADEN MCMAKIN” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

BRADEN MCMAKIN

Elevate Well STL is a cannabis friendly yoga studio.

Yoga can be a fine time in and of itself. Bending your horrible body into whimsical shapes is apparently a health-conscious thing to do, and it can prevent said horrible body from betraying you in increasingly painful ways as the ceaseless march of time degrades your overall structural integrity.

But you know what would make it even more fun? Weed, pizza and black lights, of course. Enter the Glow Yoga Pizza Party, coming this Friday, June 30, to Elevate Well STL (3206 South Grand Boulevard), St. Louis’ premier cannabis-friendly health club.

Dubbed “Glowga,” the event kicks off as you slather neon body paint on yourself before the blacklights kick on and the Glow Yoga Rave begins. After the workout, replenish those spent calories by indulging in some eats from Pizza Head and some cannabis-infused beverages from WYNK Seltzer.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their own weed from home, and the party starts at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $15 to $25 and include food and drink as well as mat and towel rental. Purchase them through Eventbrite.

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Local artists are remembering a “monumental” educator this week, recalling Al Beyer for his decades of influence at USC Aiken and beyond, following the native New Yorker’s death of a heart attack Saturday in Florida.

“Al will always be the teacher and I will always be the student,” said professional artist Robert Campbell, who recalled getting tips and lessons, until about a week ago, from the longtime educator who had moved to Jacksonville to live with one of his daughters in recent years.  

“I met Al when I was 18 years old. He was the most influential person in my life,” said Campbell, who chose the word “monumental” in describing his mentor. Campbell now teaches at the Aiken Center for the Arts, among other locales. 

Another of Beyer’s USCA students, writing anonymously, noted, “Great guy! Taught me how to see things differently.” 

The word “encourager” came to mind for artist and former Aiken resident Deb Holtzscheiter, who now lives in St. Augustine, Florida. “It didn’t matter how good … or maybe how not-so-good you were. He would work with you just the same, and he just really encouraged people and helped them to enjoy art, for art’s sake,” she said. 

Professional artist Sally Donovan expressed particular gratitude for Beyer’s ability to work with “his senior population” — students with several decades of life behind them – and his encouragement for them to “explore, expand and love the world of art.”

She added, “I have never produced such terrific work as I have under this person who guided me, and I have won many prizes and curated shows, and it was just because of his strong belief and also his teaching ability. I mean, he was so skilled in bringing out the very best in me.”

Campbell recalled having Beyer as a professor prior to the existence of the Etherredge Center, which now plays host to offices and other facilities in USCA’s fine and performing arts program. 

“Before the Etherredge Center, we had classes at Rose Hill … He was the only art professor at the University of South Carolina at Aiken at that time.” 

Artists are remembering a “monumental” educator this week, recalling Al Beyer for his decades of influence at USC Aiken and beyond, following the native New Yorker’s death of a heart attack Saturday in Florida.

“Al will always be the teacher and I will always be the student,” said professional artist Robert Campbell, who recalled getting tips and lessons, until about a week ago, from the longtime educator who had moved to Jacksonville to live with one of his daughters in recent years.  

“I met Al when I was 18 years old. He was the most influential person in my life,” said Campbell, who chose the word “monumental” in describing his mentor. Campbell now teaches at the Aiken Center for the Arts, among other locales. 

Another of Beyer’s USCA students, writing anonymously, noted, “Great guy! Taught me how to see things differently.” 

The word “encourager” came to mind for artist and former Aiken resident Deb Holtzscheiter, who now lives in St. Augustine, Florida. “It didn’t matter how good … or maybe how not-so-good you were. He would work with you just the same, and he just really encouraged people and helped them to enjoy art, for art’s sake,” she said. 

Professional artist Sally Donovan expressed particular gratitude for Beyer’s ability to work with “his senior population” — students with several decades of life behind them — and his encouragement for them to “explore, expand and love the world of art.”

She added, “I have never produced such terrific work as I have under this person who guided me, and I have won many prizes and curated shows, and it was just because of his strong belief and also his teaching ability. I mean, he was so skilled in bringing out the very best in me.”

Campbell recalled having Beyer as a professor prior to the existence of the Etherredge Center, which now plays host to offices and other facilities in USCA’s fine and performing arts program. 

“Before the Etherredge Center, we had classes at Rose Hill. … He was the only art professor at the University of South Carolina at Aiken at that time.” 

The Royal Canadian Mint is honouring National Indigenous People’s Day with a $2 commemorative circulation coin.

For the first time on a Canadian circulation coin, three different artists have collaborated on a single reverse design. Together, they have fused personal visions of their respective cultures to create a unique perspective of First Nations, Inuit and Métis heritage that all people living in Canada can honour and celebrate on National Indigenous Peoples Day.

This inspiring coin will entered circulation on June 21.

“Since 1996, National Indigenous Peoples Day has been an opportunity to celebrate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people,” said Honourable Chrystia Freeland, deputy prime minister and minister of finance. “Our government is proud to honour the history, art, traditions, and cultures of Indigenous Peoples as we continue walking the path of reconciliation together.”

“Creating coins that tell diverse and inclusive stories is a priority for the Royal Canadian Mint the sharing of Indigenous stories is key to that effort,” said Marie Lemay, President and CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint. “We are delighted that we could collaborate with First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists on a single circulation coin that will inspire millions to discover the wonderful knowledge and experiences that National Indigenous Peoples Day is meant to celebrate.”

The artwork appearing on the coin’s reverse is the creation of three women artists, each one representing the First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities residing in Canada.

They are Megan Currie, English River First Nation, Myrna Pokiak (Agnaviak), Inuvialuit Settlement Region and Jennine Krauchi, Red River Métis. It is the first time that multiple artists have collaborated on the design of a single Canadian coin. The creative intent behind each artist’s personal choice of symbolism is explained in their own words at www.mint.ca/nipd.

“Though each two-dollar coin is only 28 millimetres in diameter, this coin will have an immeasurable impact on Indigenous Peoples and other Canadians today and beyond. Congratulations to Myrna, Megan, and Jennine on making their indelible marks on Canadian history,” said Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. “At Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, unity is the foundation of our work, and we hope that all Canadians can feel united with us on National Indigenous Peoples Day in celebrating these artists, our distinct cultures and histories, and our efforts in building better futures for our children.”

Limited to a mintage of three million coins, of which two million will be coloured.

The coloured and uncoloured circulation coins are also available as collectibles in a six-piece collector keepsake coin set.

Fans enjoy a rare film at Arkadin Cinema.  
Photo courtesy of St. Louis’ Don’t Push Pause Podcast” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

Fans enjoy a rare film at Arkadin Cinema.

If you’re down to roll the dice on your evening entertainment, drop into Mystery VHS Night at Arkadin Cinema & Bar (5228 Gravois Avenue, 314-221-2173) this Thursday, June 29.

Here’s how it works: You bring any random VHS tape, and it gets you in for free. That tape could contain your home movies, a quality classic film, a bargain-bin horror flick, whatever.

Then the organizers play a bit of the tapes that everybody brought in for the crowd and they choose which VHS tape gets picked to be the entertainment that night. Best of all, if your tape is the chosen one, you get free drinks and concessions all night.

The show starts at 7:15 p.m., and they collect tapes right up until 7 p.m., so stop in after work for some (likely hilarious but also possibly terrifying) weeknight fun. Visit arkadincinema.com for more information.

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Beneath threatening storm clouds, 13 people carried long, silver wind chimes up the tallest hill in Benton Park one April morning. They took turns climbing an aluminum ladder and hanging the chimes onto a cord tied between two trees.

As they completed the piece, an installation by musician Raven Chacon, onlookers applauded.

“This is from a series of works that are meant to bring the public out into the streets,” Chacon said.

His work is part of Counterpublic, a massive exhibition of public art meant to do just that. The works are placed at locations throughout the city of St. Louis, mainly along Jefferson Avenue. It runs through July 16.

Artists explored social issues relevant to each location.

The siting of Chacon’s piece — a park named for Thomas Hart Benton, 19th century champion of westward expansion — is key to its meaning. It’s a temporary anti-monument, hanging in opposition to the spirit of the Gateway Arch, which celebrates that expansion.

“To be able to put this musical instrument here in the park as a kind of counter to that history — I’m happy that I can contribute to that discussion,” said Chacon, a member of Navajo Nation who last year became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize. He’ll present another piece in July as part of the exhibition’s closing weekend.

A growing effort

This is the second iteration of Counterpublic, which organizers intend to prese. This year’s version greatly expands on the inaugural show in 2019, organized by the Luminary. Organizers say the show cost several million dollars to mount but declined to give a precise amount. A nonprofit foundation, led by the Luminary’s co-founder James McAnally, split off from the Cherokee Street arts center in 2021 to focus exclusively on Counterpublic.

The curators of Counterpublic 2023 are Allison Glenn, Diya Vij, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Risa Puleo and New Red Order, a collective of Native filmmakers.

Beyond their general intent to expand the scope of traditional public art and include viewpoints that previously have been excluded, curators identified three specific goals. They aim to help return control of Sugarloaf Mound to the Osage Nation, memorialize Mill Creek Valley and grow the capacity of the Griot Museum of Black History.

Toward those ends, Counterpublic 2023 includes an installation by Osage artists Anita and Nokosee Fields adjacent to Sugarloaf Mound. Counterpublic leaders are readying a campaign to purchase the land and return it to the Osage people. St. Louis-based artist Damon Davis created a permanent monument outside CityPark that remembers the predominantly Black neighborhood Mill Creek Valley, which sat there before it was demolished in the 1950s and ’60s. Architect David Adjaye, whose firm designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and Culture, is contributing his first piece of public art, next to the Griot: earthworks made of local soil, packed tightly with a traditional Ghanaian method.

“Our ethos is to go beyond art and the art world and understand: Where does that actually connect with change? I think that’s such a big question for St. Louis,” McAnally said after Counterpublic announced this year’s exhibition lineup in March.

Sole surviving landmark

Anita Fields designed 40 platforms, based on the type often used during Osage gatherings. They are brightly colored, adorned with ribbons and ceramic tiles that reference elements of Osage culture and history: beadwork patterns, corn, bits of the Osage language.

The installation sits next to Sugarloaf Mound, the only remaining earthwork in St. Louis created by Native inhabitants before the arrival of white settlers. Although St. Louis is still sometimes known as Mound City, developers destroyed the other mounds, in many cases to build homes for prominent citizens. Some mounds were cleared for the 1904 World’s Fair.

“When people sit on these platforms, they can think about the history that happened here. I would encourage them to look it up — especially if you’re from here — to understand whose land you’re on, the history that happened here, the original stories,” Fields said.

Osage Nation owns the very top of Sugarloaf Mound but not the lower portions, where houses are built onto it. Counterpublic leaders plan to mount a fundraising campaign to purchase the rest of the land there and turn it back to the Osage.

“The land holds a memory of the civilizations and the people who were there before,” Fields said while putting finishing touches on her platforms. “This land that we’re on, this is one of the links to our past, our future and to now.”

Her son, musician Nokosee Fields, composed an accompanying audio collage. It includes sounds from ceremonial dances and a recording of his great-aunt speaking in the Osage language.

Closing with a flourish

Counterpublic winds up in mid-July with a closing weekend of events.

They include a program by Sugarloaf Mound with a water ceremony led by Anita Fields, a performance by the Wah.zha.zhe Puppet Theatre and a conversation between Fields and Dr. Andrea Hunter, also of Osage Nation.

Adjaye’s earthen sculpture will be unveiled July 15 at the Griot, with a block party to follow. White Mountain Apache musician Laura Ortman will perform a solo set that afternoon at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, inspired by the work of Blackfoot artist Faye Heavyshield, which is now on view there.

Counterpublic co-curators New Red Order also will team with Cahokia Intertribal Noise Symposium to present a two-night event at the Greenfinch Theater and Dive featuring the work of more than 30 artists and performers.

Curators aim to suggest ways forward for St. Louis that include reckoning with its past.

“An undercurrent that runs throughout a lot of our projects is really telling history in public, in a way that we can remember and not repeat what happened, McAnally said. “Any kind of envisioning of a future for this region is rooted in really accounting for and marking what has happened here over its history.”

click to enlarge

• Courtesy Of Andy Duback
• Attributed to Monica Silva [Kewa (Santo Domingo Pueblo)], Dough Bowl, ca. 1920, Collection of Shelburne Museum, Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection of Native American Art.

This season, Shelburne Museum is displaying 23 handmade, hand-painted clay vessels by Native Americans in a way that could make the typical museumgoer gulp. “Built From the Earth: Pueblo Pottery From the Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection,” at the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, has no glass display cases. Instead, these masterworks — some large, all breakable — sit on pedestals elevated by low platforms that put just a couple of feet between visitor and vessel.

That’s because a team of Native American consultants from the tribes who created the pottery advised that the bowls and jars “are living beings that need to be able to breathe,” Victoria Sunnergren, the museum’s associate curator of Native American art, said during a press opening last week. While she talked, museum preparators painted metal mounts that hold the vessels securely in place, making the hardware nearly invisible.

click to enlarge

• Courtesy
• Victoria Sunnergren

The consultants also advised that the exhibit’s labels identify the anonymous artists who created these vessels between 1840 and 1950 as “makers formerly known.” “Makers” acknowledges the everyday uses of the pots rather than their production as art, Sunnergren explained. “Formerly known” indicates that, while the makers’ names may have been lost, they were well known to their communities.

Sunnergren has shaped the exhibition well beyond the consultants’ input, identifying a unifying visual theme of a spiral that echoes both Pueblo concepts of migration and the act of making the vessels from coiled clay. But her collaborative approach is emblematic of the care the museum is taking as it launches its new Native American Initiative.

This major undertaking includes both Sunnergren’s hiring last October as the museum’s first Native American art curator and the construction of a new $12.6 million building to be funded mainly through foundation grants.

The Perry Center for Native American Art belatedly gratifies the wishes of the museum’s founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, who always intended to have a dedicated building for displaying her Native American collection. Scheduled to open in spring 2026, the center will showcase a significant collection of Indigenous art — 250 items from the archives of late Vermont restaurateur Anthony Perry combined with an existing collection of 300 items. Together these works represent 80 tribes across the U.S.

click to enlarge

• Courtesy Of Andy Duback
• Maker formerly known [Haak’u (Acoma Pueblo)], Acomita Polychrome Jar, ca. 1840, Collection of Shelburne Museum, Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection of Native American Art

Throughout the planning process, which began with Perry’s death in 2017 and his wife’s subsequent gift of their collection, the museum has consulted Native American representatives, including scholars, artists and curators, who are helping to vet the combined holdings and provide guidance on ways to show their material culture.

Even the choice of architect for the building, the celebrated David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates, signals the museum’s dedication to cultural competency. Adjaye, whose firm has locations in London, New York and Accra, Ghana, “specializes in border-crossing projects,” museum director Tom Denenberg said.

Adjaye was lauded for his tiered, crown-like design for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. Current projects include the Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City, Nigeria — where, in 1897, the British military plundered the Benin Bronzes. Museums around the world are finally beginning to return those thousands of elaborate sculptures and plaques from the ancient Kingdom of Benin.

For the Shelburne Museum project, still in its conceptual stage, Adjaye Associates will work closely with the Indigenous Canadian architectural firm Two Row Architect, based in Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in southern Ontario. Two Row incorporates Indigenous symbolism and ways of thinking into its projects after consultation with Native groups. Its projects include the A•wit•gati Longhouse & Cultural Centre in New Brunswick and an award-winning multiresidential development for the Fort Severn First Nation in Ontario. Two Row is already collaborating with Adjaye Associates on Quayside, a large zero-carbon community development in downtown Toronto.

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• Courtesy Of Andy Duback
• Maker formerly known [Haak’u (Acoma Pueblo)], Polychrome Water Jar, 1890s, Collection of Shelburne Museum, Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection of Native American Art

Jami Powell, curator of Indigenous art at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and a citizen of the Osage Nation, applauded Shelburne Museum’s efforts. Shelburne has “contracted with well-respected representatives in the field — people who are familiar with museums and Native American art,” she told Seven Days.

“I think the collection and the founding of a center is important nationally, but it’s particularly significant for what we now call ‘New England’ to have another institution that is paying close attention to Native American art besides the Hood and the Peabody,” Powell added, referring to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. Other northeastern institutions with significant Native American holdings include Colby College, the Abbe Museum and the Portland Museum of Art, all in Maine.

Museum displays of Native American art and material culture have long been problematic. Not until 1990 did Congress pass a law requiring that museums alert Native tribes to their sacred, ceremonial and funereal holdings and return them when requested. Centuries of grave looting, exploitation and violence make it as difficult as it is necessary to establish the provenance of displayed items.

Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which first displayed its Charles and Valerie Diker Native American collection in 2018, was found to have adequately documented the provenance of only 15 percent of the collection’s items, according to a recent ProPublica investigation.

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• Courtesy Of Andy Duback
• Maker formerly known [Ts’iya (Zia Pueblo)], Dough Bowl, Collection of Shelburne Museum, Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection of Native American Art

“The Met moved quickly seven years ago,” Denenberg said during a recent conversation in his office. “I want to move methodically. This is very new and different to all of us.” Perry and Charles Diker, he added, were friends who had acquired pieces from each other’s collections.

As for museum founder Webb, her Native American collection included baskets made by Pacific Northwest tribes that famed stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany used for design inspiration. Webb acquired them from the Tiffany estate sale in 1946, the year before Shelburne Museum opened. According to Webb’s early hand-drawn map, Sunnergren said, she had hoped to build an “Indian Village” at the museum’s southwest corner — roughly the spot where the Perry Center will rise.

In the 1960s, Webb’s Native American collection went on view at the Beach Lodge, a log building on the museum grounds designed to resemble a hunting camp. But by the 1990s, the exhibit was deemed outdated and dismantled, apart from a few decorative items that remained until 2007. None of the collection has been displayed since.

Sunnergren and Denenberg are in the process of reassessing each item in the Perry and museum collections according to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, with the help of Kory Rogers, curator of design arts and senior curator of American art; Nancie Ravenel, director of collections; and Alex Kikutis, collections manager.

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• Courtesy Of Andy Duback
• Maker formerly known [Halona:wa (Zuni Pueblo)], Polychrome Jar, ca. 1865, Collection of Shelburne Museum, Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection of Native American Art

The 1990 law, Sunnergren said during an interview in her office, “requires us to alert tribes to what we have” in certain categories “and give back what they want to keep.” The rule doesn’t apply to “promised gifts,” a category that includes most of the Perry collection — namely, objects that don’t yet have museum ownership paperwork. But the museum has decided to pursue the same course for everything, she said.

According to Sonja Lunde, director of the Fleming Museum of Art at the University of Vermont, Shelburne Museum’s effort is part of a larger trend.

“Museums are changing — and urgently so,” Lunde wrote in an email. She added that her own institution is up for a revamping: “The Fleming’s current gallery installation of Native American art and artifacts, which dates to 2006, largely omits the voices of Indigenous peoples from the Museum’s displays and interpretations of their own cultural heritage.”

Sunnergren describes the Perry collection as “very secular,” as well as heavy on moccasins, clothing and dolls. (Only 40 items are pottery.) The museum’s own collection contains very little from Abenaki tribes, but the Abenaki land the museum occupies is honored by a birch-bark canoe currently on display in the Pizzagalli Center. A married couple from the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, Al and Mariette Grayhawk, made the canoe in 2018 using traditional methods.

Sunnergren, whose desk plate says, “Ask me about my cats,” was born in Hertfordshire, England, and grew up in south Florida. She is pragmatic about her work as a white curator. “These are not my cultural items. I need to respond to what the people they belong to want,” she said.

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• Courtesy Of Andy Duback
• Maker formerly known [Kewa (Santo Domingo Pueblo)], Storage Jar, 1880–90s, Collection of Shelburne Museum, Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection of Native American Art

She was first drawn to the beauty of Native American pottery the summer after her first year of high school, when a local philanthropic organization sponsored her to assist with an art and music camp at a Navajo Nation festival organized by the Museum of Northern Arizona. She spent every summer at the festival while studying at Florida State University and was running the event by the time she graduated, with a double major in art history and religion and a minor in museum studies.

Sunnergren went on to the University of Delaware, where she focused on Pueblo pottery for her master’s degree and won an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship as a doctoral student. In September, she will defend her dissertation on the gender fluidity of certain historical and contemporary pottery makers.

In her office, Sunnergren spun her laptop around to show an image of one of the Zuni jars in “Built From the Earth.”

“These are water birds on a water jar,” she said, pointing to the painted figures positioned on the crest of a spiral. “It’s a very playful design” — the kind of detail that might have influenced Tiffany or John Sloan, cofounder of Ashcan School of visual art, who sponsored an exhibition of Native American painters in New York in 1922.

Sunnergren added, “People are starting to realize that you can’t understand [American] art and decorative arts without understanding Native American art.” For the Shelburne’s many visitors, the Perry Center will help make those influences more visible.