India has a reason to celebrate this year as Shankar Mahadevan and Zakir Hussain made the country proud by bagging awards at the 66th Grammys this year. Before them, several other Indian singers have made India shine on the global stage. Let’s take a look at the list of artists from India who have bagged awards in previous years. 

1. Ravi Shankar

Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury who is popularly known as Ravi Shankar was an Indian artist and composer. The legendary artist won not one but five Grammy awards. In 1967, West Meets East in the category of Best Chamber Music Performance. In 1973, The Concert for Bangladesh was in the category of Album of the Year. In 2002, The Living Room Session Pt 1. At the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award. 

2. Zakir Hussain

The table maestro Zakir Hussain has captivated the audience and continues to do so. In 1991, T.H. Vinaykram and Zakir Hussain won a Grammy in the category of Best World Music Album. In 2008, Zakir bagged an award in the category of Best Contemporary World Music Album. 

3. Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta, the Bombay-based musician bagged several awards including, Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist Or Soloists (With Orchestra) and Best Engineered Recording, Classical in 1981, Best Classical Vocal Soloist Performance in 1982, Best Classical Album in 1983, Best Classical Performance, Instrumental Soloist (With Orchestra), Best Classical Vocal Performance and Best Classical Album in 1990. 

4. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt

Vishwa Mohan Bhatt won in 1992 for Best World Music Album category. 

5. AR Rahman

In 2008, A. R. Rahman, H. Sridhar, and P. A. Deepak bagged Best Compilation Soundtrack Album and Best Song Written for Visual Media for Slumdog Millionaire. 

6. Neela Vaswani

In 2015, Neela Vaswani won Best Children’s Album for I Am Malala. 

7. Ricky Kej

In 2015, Ricky Kej won his first Grammy for his album Winds of Samara in the Best New Album category, and in 2022 for Divine Tides in collaboration with Stewart Copeland in the Best New Age Album category. In 2023, he won for his album Divine Tides in the Best Immersive Audio Album category. 

8. Falguni Shah

In 2022, Falguni Shah won Best Children’s Music Album for A Colorful World. 

Also Read: Beyonce’s husband Jay Z calls out Grammys for not giving her Album of the Year award, video goes viral

Also Read: India wins big at 66th Grammys as Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan bag awards for Best Global Music Album

This year’s Venice Biennale is divided into two sections: Nucleo Contemporaneo, spotlighting contemporary foreign and indigenous artists, and Nucleo Storico, exploring global modernism.

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The Venice Biennale has announced a stacked roster of 331 artists for this year’s main exhibition, which is titled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere.”

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the director of São Paulo’s Museu de Arte, the central theme, “Stranieri Ovunque,” originates from a series of works by the Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine.

“The expression “Stranieri Ovunque” has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners— they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner,” explains Pedorasa.

Running from 20 April through to 24 November 2024, Pedrosa’s edition will be divided into two parts, Nucleo Contemporaneo and Nucleo Storico, for contemporary and historical work, respectively.

This year’s edition has taken steps to spotlight underrepresented voices, with a particular emphasis on celebrating Indigenous artists and the LGBTQ+ community. 

Here’s our guide to what’s in store and the artists you likely won’t want to miss: 

“Nucleo Contemporaneo” – Embracing diversity

The Nucleo Contemporaneo (contemporary nuclei) section of the Biennale Arte 2024 is dedicated to contemporary artists who are foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, or refugees. 

A considerable representation of Indigenous artists will be highlighted here, including Kay WalkingStick, a landscape artist of Native American descent, the Brazilian collective MAHKU, and the Māori female quartet Mataaho Collective. 

According to Pedrosa, the curator, “Indigenous artists have an emblematic presence in the International Exhibition,” with notable showcases like a monumental mural by the MAHKU collective on the Central Pavilion’s façade and a large-scale installation by the Mata Aho collective. 

This section will also feature work from several Queer artists, both contemporary and historical, including Berlin-Hong Kong artist Isaac Chong Wai, American figurative painter Louis Fratino, Canadian artist and filmmaker ​​Erica Rutherford, and Chinese abstract painter Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

In his press statement, Pedrosa added that he is the first openly Queer curator of the Biennale.

Nucleo Contemporaneo will also feature a special section in the Corderie devoted to the Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini, which has been described as a “guide to four decades of social disobedience seen through history and geography”. 

‘Nucleo Storico” – Rethinking modernism

The Nucleo Storico (historical nuclei) gathering at the International Exhibition will explore works from 20th-century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, focusing on global modernisms and challenging the boundaries of modernism definitions. 

“European modernism travelled far beyond Europe throughout the 20th century, often intertwined with colonialism, and many artists in the Global South travelled to Europe to be exposed to it. Yet modernism was appropriated, devoured and cannibalised in the Global South, repeatedly taking on radically new shapes and forms in dialogue with local and indigenous references,” stated Pedrosa earlier this year.

There will be three different rooms: Portraits, Abstractions, and a dedicated space for the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century.

The Portraits room will showcase works from 112 different artists, including one of the founding figures of Māori Modernism Selwyn Wilson, Ghanaian sculptor Grace Salome Kwami and Chilean painter Laura Rodig. 

The “Abstraction” segment will showcase works by Sandy Adsett, Fanny Sanín, Etel Adnan, Eduardo Terrazas, and Samia Halaby. The section dedicated to the Italian diaspora features 40 artists including Argentinian painter Lidy Prati, and Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi.

There will also be work by several renowned historical artists including Frida Kahlo, her life partner Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral and Carmen Herrera. 

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The Venice Biennale’s International Exhibition will be running from 20 April through to 24 November 2024.

DAG brings together modernists such as M. F. Husain, F. N. Souza, S. H. Raza and Krishen Khanna alongside Western artists who travelled to India, such as Thomas Daniell and Marius Bauer, to explore the evolution of Indian art through the 18th to 21st centuries in its exhibition, India Past & Present for the 15th edition of India Art Fair. Based on a vibrant cycle of assimilation and experimentation, India Past and Present
showcases the rich heritage and legacy of pre-modern and modern Indian art that survives into the present through previously unseen works by Western artists who travelled to India to depict its architecture and landscape, masters of the Company School, indigenous artists who developed hybrid styles, and modernists—collectively offering us subjects as varied as mythology, including Kaliya Daman, Ram Durbar,
Muharram and Buddha, architectural marvels including the Taj Mahal and Benares, natural history, and others reflecting social and political concerns.

Nurturing a range of artistic styles, mediums and contexts, India Past and Present provides a glimpse of the unfolding discoveries of Indian art that are the mainstay of DAG’s multiple exhibitions across India and the world. Familiar names alongside those with an unmatched pedagogy and lineage point to the places of emergence and convergence that have served Indian art. Taking its cue from the unmatched pedigree of Indian art through the centuries in which unidentified masters from the diverse smorgasbord of Indian art share space with Western artists who first arrived in India; this museum-quality display explores the diversity and depth with artists ranging from Thomas Daniell to Madhvi Parekh, not to mention those that fall along this continuum: Nicholas Roerich, M F Husain, Nirode Mazumdar, F N Souza, Laxman
Pai, and many more.

Some of the highlights include:

The Syncretic Strands of Mythology: A historic painting attributed to G. Reghunatha Naidu (above, left) visualizes the popular episode of Kaliya Daman uniting elements of Tanjore art with academic art in this painting that went on to become popular in modern culture; an unidentified Early Bengal artist’s rendition of Ram Durbar (above, middle) recalls the mythological episode by way of a Mughal miniature turned
into an oil painting with a Western perspective; the Company School painter Sewak Ram’s Muharram (above, right) is one of the finest renditions of people at this festival in a style that exemplified the coming together of Indian and European art practices.

Dated: 1800 AD: Probably the earliest works on display at this edition of India Art Fair, the incomparable painting of Panchganga and Durga Ghats, Benares by the British artist Thomas Daniell (above, left) provides among the earliest glimpses of this riverine landscape for an European audience—and now on view in India; while an unidentified Company School artist from Murshidabad paints The Taj Mahal (above, right) in a style unique to Indian artists of the time. Both landscapes in their distinctive styles were painted in the same year.

The Progressives: Twenty-first century modernism in India was owned by the Progressives who still command the Indian market as these fine instances by M. F. Husain. The former is a self-portrait by the
artist represents the fine quality of their unique brushwork from critically important years of their
practice.

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After several U.S. museums closed displays of Indigenous objects last week, Native American groups are responding with support of the new regulations added to a federal law that require museums to receive consent to display certain cultural artifacts and human remains.

Museums, starting with the Field Museum in Chicago, began covering displays of such artifacts after new regulations went into effect January 12. The American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and the Cleveland Museum of Art followed suit several days later. 

Covering displays or taking things down isn’t the goal, according to Shannon O’Loughlin, head of the Association on American Indian Affairs. Rather, it’s part of a much larger repatriation process. 

“The new regulations are crystal clear now: institutions do not own much of their Native collections and therefore, they must ask for consent from affiliated Nations before they can do anything with these items,” she told Artnet News. “When institutions actually have a conversation with affiliated Nations, they finally learn what they have in their collections.”

O’Loughlin added that the only exception to the repatriation of Native American artifacts under the law is if a museum or institution can prove they received consent when the item was taken.

The first day of the closure of the American Museum of Natural History Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains exhibition halls on January 27, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images.

The regulations are additions to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), signed into law in 1990 by Republican President George H.W. Bush, and made by the U.S. Department of the Interior in December after a 90-day comment period with feedback from tribes and other groups. The law does not apply to the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of the American Indian, governed by its own National Museum of the American Indian Act.

The Native Governance Center, a nonprofit organization that seeks to boost the sovereignty of Native American nations, noted in a post on social media that NAGPRA was first passed more than three decades ago and that progress has been “incredibly slow” toward the restoration of about 96,000 human remains.

Nevertheless, “changes to the law this month have already created some real short-term changes across the U.S.,” the organization said.

Some museum professionals and academics have consistently voiced concerns that the new regulations will harm or limit research or censor scientific inquiry. Elizabeth Weiss, an anthropology professor at San Jose State University, authored a recent op-ed in the City Journal in which she claimed the regulations “depart completely” from the intent of the original law and may now violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

While the law has largely applied to natural history and ethnographic museums thus far, Weiss suggested that the latest NAGPRA regulations could be extended to art museums. 

“New targets are sure to include art purchased from contemporary Native American artists,” she wrote, citing a recent NAGPRA information session about the new regulations in which museum curators were told to consult with tribes over the display of objects created by contemporary Native American artists that had been recently purchased for display. “This may lead to art museum curators deciding to avoid NAGPRA hassles by ceasing to buy or display the works of Native American artists.”

Weiss has been a vehement critic of returning human remains, and her social media posts on the topic ignited a controversy last year that has resulted in her voluntary resignation from the university in May 2024, after the academic year finishes.

Many supporters of NAGPRA say the cause for alarm sounded by critics like Weiss is unfounded and have pointed out that compliance with the new regulations doesn’t mean any museum’s exhibitions dedicated to Native Americans will remain closed forever. If museums obtain consent for the items in their collections, they are free to display them. For example, though not specifically operated by Native Americans, the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff has since made it explicitly clear that every item in its gallery was chosen by tribal delegates.

“MNA works closely with tribal consultants for items displayed throughout the museum,” the museum said on social media. “Visitors to MNA can feel comfortable knowing we comply with the updated NAGPRA regulations.”

“This is not a prohibition against research or exhibits—quite the opposite,” O’Loughlin says. “Just speak with any institution that has followed NAGPRA’s requirements and repatriated. They have built long-lasting relationships with those Native Nations and have developed strong exhibitions and research based on that consultation and collaboration, which includes the expertise and knowledge of Native Nations that science has ignored.”

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Last week, two climate activists splashed soup on a glass-encased Mona Lisa at the Louvre, wanting to make a statement about the irrelevance of fine art at a time when the world needs a more “healthy and sustainable food system”. Closer home, some artists are using more innovative ways to raise environmental consciousness without resorting to gimmicks.From using sustainable materials to building networks with scientists and policymakers, their artworks serve to highlight the enormity of the climate crisis.
The 15th edition of the India Art Fair (IAF) is doing its bit to improve its ecological footprint, aside from making environmentalism and sustainability key themes for several of its exhibits. The IAF façade is designed by the artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra with a vision of colourful pixels. To ensure a life for the facade after the fair, the artists will collaborate with the Dalit-run Chamar Studio who will repurpose it into collectible bags.

Going green: In Sadhana Prasad’s work, one can zoom in on waste and pollution with an iPad Pro

The multidisciplinary duo has also launched Sustaina India — a climate action collective which cross-pollinates art, science and policy through annual fellowships, exhibitions and public programmes, in collaboration with think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water. The first edition of their exhibition, which opened on Feb 2 at Bikaner House, features three emerging artists working on eco-consciousness — from reimagining the potential of sea waste that washes up on Saaral Beach in Alibag to recreating ‘The Parliament of Forests’ with protagonists like herbaceous plants, mosses, algae, fungi, soil and lichen. “The policymakers work top to down whereas artistic practices are more decentralised. We are learning from each other,” says Tagra, adding that they are using a new kind of wood made of straw culture for exhibition design and avoiding the use of diesel-belching cars and bubble-wrap to pack artworks.
The Fair also features Skarma Sonam Tashi, a contemporary artist from Ladakh, who has created an immersive mountain landscape using 200 cardboard boxes, clay, papier-mâché, with maida acting as glue. In the evening, the mountain will come alive with light and sound elements. “It has been an unusually arid winter in Ladakh, with no snowfall in December and January. This is all because of climate change. The villages depend on snowfall for electricity and drinking water. Our glaciers are melting. This work is also political in the sense that it is asking for Ladakh to be brought under the sixth schedule,” says the 27-year-old who has also received the Hyundai Motor India Foundation’s Art for Hope grant.

Skarma Sonam Tashi highlights melting glaciers.

Ongoing eco-exhibits which consider sustainability as their muse are also conscious of the inexorable march of technology. Several artworks at IAF have employed advanced gadgets to create sensory experiences. In Dhruv Jani’s conceptual video game called ‘It Takes A Long Time To Grow A Mountain,’ developed in collaboration with programmer Sushant Chakraborty, the audience, armed with a joystick, enter a subterranean maze in south Gujarat in 1962. They are searching for a poem written by a poet, whose diary entries, chronicling a survey of the Sahyadri foothills as a travelogue, become the audio narration of the game. However, in a matter of minutes, the players hit a rock and turn into sediment. One can only engage with the game for a few minutes until, by the end of the day, the screen is only a mass of sediment left behind by several players. Similarly, muralist and illustrator Sadhana Prasad challenges us to face an uncertain future by creating a large mural which is seemingly a utopian island city (inspired by Mumbai) with everything chugging along in harmony. But if you pan an iPad Pro in front of it, fractures and fault lines jump out through the screen as the city teeters under the weight of its own waste and pollution.
Sashikanth Thavudoz, winner of the 2024 ‘The Future is Born of Art’ commission, led by BMW India and IAF, has been carrying a pocket-sized device called PlantWave for the last two months. It records ‘plant music’ by monitoring electric signals of plants as sound. Thavudoz has used this sonification technology in his large-scale installation of wooden poles, light boxes and music called ‘Symphony of Nature: The Harmonic Forest’ through which viewers can walk through. “Many artist-activists are using art to protest environmental degradation. But they themselves use iPhones. We are so inextricably connected to technology now. It’s very hard to avoid it,” says Thavudoz.

Eco flex: Bags made with flex material used in the IAF facade made by Thukral and Tagra.

The travelling exhibition, ‘Critical Zones. In Search of a Common Ground’, co-produced by the ZKM Karlsruhe and Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai features multidisciplinary artist Sonia Mehra Chawla who has collaborated with scientists from a Chennai-based research institute which studies mangrove forests. Her project ‘Critical Membrane’ goes on to drive home the fragility of our depleting mangrove ecosystems by blowing up images of its microbial biomass in petri dishes and inviting the viewer to experience an artistic, scientific and philosophical simulation of its depths, in an almost planetarium-like setting. “The role of scientists is not just delivering data to artists or for artists to simply illustrate scientific research. That’s not true collaboration. ‘Critical Zones’ allows for more long-term engagement between artists and the scientific community to develop a shared language,” says Mira Hirtz, co-curator of the exhibition.

George Morrison had been away from Minnesota for several years when he and his wife, fellow painter Hazel Belvo, moved back in 1970.

Inside her light filled painting studio near Minneapolis, Belvo recalls memories of artist Morrison with a gentle smile. 

“I think that in his heart, George never left Minnesota,” said Belvo. “I think he never left the big lake, in his heart.” 

The “big lake” is Gichigami, or Lake Superior, and is prominently featured in much of Morrison’s artwork. Morrison’s work and legacy are now being honored at the University of Minnesota.

The Department of American Indian Studies and the Department of Art have created the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts, which now serves an “interdepartmental study center to support the creation, presentation and interpretation of Indigenous art in all its forms.” 

Morrison was part of a leading generation of American artists working as abstract expressionists.

A central artistic element in Morrison’s work is the horizon, inspired by Lake Superior. Many attribute Morrison’s use of the horizon line to his upbringing along the North Shore.

Before returning home to Minnesota, Belvo and Morrison had been living and working in Providence, Rhode Island, where Morrison taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Belvo remembers the commitment Morrison made to his students at the prestigious art school. She recalls Morrison and another professor worked to innovate a scholarship program to support Native students, many of whom were far from home.

“Instead of giving a scholarship every year or two scholarships a year, they gave, I think it was eight students, eight Native students, scholarships for four years,” said Belvo. “And they all stayed, because they had a community.” 

Morrison brought back that community insight to the University of Minnesota, according to Belvo.

Morrison, Belvo and their young son moved Minnesota when Morrison accepted a teaching position at the university in Studio Arts and American Indian Studies. 

Novelist Gerald Vizenor was a print reporter in the early 1970s when he interviewed Morrison in St. Paul. They spoke inside the large church Morrison and Belvo had converted into a studio and a home. 

“These large canvases and the scent of paint created this incredible kind of quiet or silence of imagination and motion,” said Vizenor.

“Because of the way he painted abstract images, and the colors he used, created in my perception, a sense of motion. I further interpreted that as a natural motion, or an abstract natural motion that comes out of his experience.” 

Vizenor himself would later join the American Indian Studies department at the University of Minnesota.

Artist Wendy Savage has worked as an independent curator specializing in American Indian Art for the past several decades. Savage credits Morrison with fostering a vibrant community of Native American artists in Minnesota beginning in the 1970s.  

Savage says as a painter and as an arts professor, Morrison helped create the Ojibwe Arts Expo, a traveling exhibit of works by Ojibwe artists from across the state.  

“We encouraged a lot of young people to also become artists and work in the Native arts,” Savage said. “This show went on every year, and people started getting the following. And so, it also exposed a lot of the public that generally wouldn’t see Native American artwork anywhere.” 

Savage has archived her copies of several Ojibwe Arts Expo catalogues. She flips to a small black and white photo of artists and curators, which includes Morrison.  

“I look at that crew, and I look at a bunch of dedicated people that for years and years were dedicated to Native American art at a very difficult time back in the early 70s.” 

Savage points out that many of the artists whose work was exhibited in the art expos were students of Morrison’s. 

“Painters that he assisted like Jeffrey Chapman, Steve Premo, Frank Big Bear. I mean, these are big, top-notch people now.” said Savage. “Getting into galleries was different. [It was] difficult back then. But he would [assist] his young students and say, ‘You really need to start looking at this artist’s work.’”

Morrison moved back to Grand Portage toward the end of his life. Savage would drive up the North Shore to visit him at his studio. 

“I was bringing a little gift and he always enjoyed maple syrup. And partridge-wild rice soup,” remembers Savage. “Yep. It’s like chicken noodle soup only made with wild rice and partridge. And he liked homemade bread. He liked that.”

The inaugural exhibit at the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts is on display in the University of Minnesota’s Katherine Nash Gallery. The exhibit runs through March 16.

MISSOULA – Ever since he was a kid, Lyle Omeasoo has been a doodler. Mostly pencil on paper, and always during class.

Omeasoo, from Browning and an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation (Piikani) and Cree tribes, now has his artwork on sweatshirts and T-shirts.

That’s because the Blackfoot artist was selected to create a Native American logo for the University of Montana’s participation in Nike’s 7 program, or N7.

The Nike retail initiative encourages Indigenous youth to participate in sports and recreational activities.

Omeasoo’s logo also will appear on the basketball teams’ shooting shirts at UM’s N7 games in the Adams Center. The Griz and Lady Griz uniforms are custom turquoise, a color of great meaning and significance for many Indigenous cultures.

When asked what it feels like to see his art represent Native culture and basketball in Montana, Omeasoo said, “It feels like a dream. To see young people wearing the design with pride means something.”

Omeasoo, a descendant of artists and medicine people, said that art and culture go hand-in-hand when it comes to the roots of Indian culture. That’s why he said his art has been nurtured over the years by teachers and family members, who spotted his talent early on.

“I had great teachers at every grade level that showed me things,” he said, recounting his teachers by name, like Bill Hannah, Omeasoo’s high school art teacher, who taught him how to work with charcoal, acrylic and oil paints and silk screen printing. Later on, friends like renowned Native artist David Dragonfly mentored Omeasoo in ways to present at Native art shows.

“At the time, I didn’t even have a blanket or a chair for these art shows,” he said.

Omeasoo, now a staple in the Native art market, represents the Blackfeet tribe in acrylic works depicting landscapes and portraits. He has connections to regional museums, including current work like a life-sized acrylic of the late Earl Old Person on display in the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls.

When asked to be the N7 artist this year, Omeasoo did what came naturally: doodling.

“I thought about it for a long time,” he said. “It took awhile and I kind of got stuck there, so I kept thinking about it, jotted things on paper and little doodles here and there.”

The result is a circular design that Omeasoo said represents the circle of life. The circle includes four distinct sections, representing the four directions and seasons. The design also resembles a medicine wheel, used in many traditional ceremonies.

The four feathers are significant, too.

“No matter what kind of Indian you are, you’re always going to understand the representation of a feather,” he said. “Feathers were given out after war parties. If you were successful, the elders would honor you with a feather.”

Omeasoo said the porcupine quill in the center of the feather, evident in the logo, is unique to most Plains Indian tribes.

“Many tribes dye them different colors, and they were always present in our bundles and pipes,” he said.

Omeasoo’s reverence for tribal ceremony inspires all of his artwork. His mother was full blood and descendant of the Kickingwoman family, who are medicine people.

“My parents, Molly and George, were our community’s bundle holders for ceremony, so I’ve been around them my whole life,” he said.

His connection to UM might even go deeper. After all, three of his children are UM graduates, the most recent being Mariah Omeasoo, Omeasoo’s daughter. Marcus and Brandon are UM alumni and son Vince received his bachelor’s degree and MBA from UM, too. His youngest son, LeBron, is in his first year at UM. 

“The University has been good to us,” he said. “We’re very proud of our children.”

Omeasoo also understands the deep tradition of basketball across Indian Country — which is at the heart of the N7 mission.

“Basketball on the reservation is crazy,” Omeasoo said. “Everybody looks forward to games in these communities. It doesn’t even matter if teams win, the community is always going to support their youth.”

Every one of Omeasoo’s sons played high school basketball, and he lists a long line of cousins and family members who ran cross-country and played basketball, many of them setting state high school records and earning championships.

“Running and basketball come naturally to the Blackfeet,” Omeasoo said. “So, it’s kind of full circle to me to get to the be the artist for the N7.”

More than 300 prospective students will attend UM’s N7 games, and UM is busing attendees and students from Missoula County Public Schools, Browning, Pablo, Polson and Arlee. 

The officially licensed Nike Griz gear featuring Omeasoo’s logo is already for sale. The gear can be found online and in UM’s Go Griz Store (formally the Bookstore), The M Store, Scheels, Universal Athletics and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Licensing proceeds from this year’s Nike N7 products benefit the Chief Earl Old Person Kyiyo Pow Wow fund, which supports the historic Kyiyo Pow Wow Celebration.  

UM will host N7 basketball games over the next two years. Upcoming games will be an opportunity for the university to celebrate the contributions of its Native American students, employees and student athletes. The games will feature a display of Montana’s tribal flags and a halftime Indigenous dance performance.

This year’s Venice Biennale is divided into two sections: Nucleo Contemporaneo, spotlighting contemporary foreign and indigenous artists, and Nucleo Storico, exploring global modernism.

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The Venice Biennale has announced a stacked roster of 331 artists for this year’s main exhibition, which is titled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere.”

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the director of São Paulo’s Museu de Arte, the central theme, “Stranieri Ovunque,” originates from a series of works by the Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine.

“The expression “Stranieri Ovunque” has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners— they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner,” explains Pedorasa.

Running from 20 April through to 24 November 2024, Pedrosa’s edition will be divided into two parts, Nucleo Contemporaneo and Nucleo Storico, for contemporary and historical work, respectively.

This year’s edition has taken steps to spotlight underrepresented voices, with a particular emphasis on celebrating Indigenous artists and the LGBTQ+ community. 

Here’s our guide to what’s in store and the artists you likely won’t want to miss: 

“Nucleo Contemporaneo” – Embracing diversity

The Nucleo Contemporaneo (contemporary nuclei) section of the Biennale Arte 2024 is dedicated to contemporary artists who are foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, or refugees. 

A considerable representation of Indigenous artists will be highlighted here, including Kay WalkingStick, a landscape artist of Native American descent, the Brazilian collective MAHKU, and the Māori female quartet Mataaho Collective. 

According to Pedrosa, the curator, “Indigenous artists have an emblematic presence in the International Exhibition,” with notable showcases like a monumental mural by the MAHKU collective on the Central Pavilion’s façade and a large-scale installation by the Mata Aho collective. 

This section will also feature work from several Queer artists, both contemporary and historical, including Berlin-Hong Kong artist Isaac Chong Wai, American figurative painter Louis Fratino, Canadian artist and filmmaker ​​Erica Rutherford, and Chinese abstract painter Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

In his press statement, Pedrosa added that he is the first openly Queer curator of the Biennale.

Nucleo Contemporaneo will also feature a special section in the Corderie devoted to the Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini, which has been described as a “guide to four decades of social disobedience seen through history and geography”. 

‘Nucleo Storico” – Rethinking modernism

The Nucleo Storico (historical nuclei) gathering at the International Exhibition will explore works from 20th-century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, focusing on global modernisms and challenging the boundaries of modernism definitions. 

“European modernism travelled far beyond Europe throughout the 20th century, often intertwined with colonialism, and many artists in the Global South travelled to Europe to be exposed to it. Yet modernism was appropriated, devoured and cannibalised in the Global South, repeatedly taking on radically new shapes and forms in dialogue with local and indigenous references,” stated Pedrosa earlier this year.

There will be three different rooms: Portraits, Abstractions, and a dedicated space for the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century.

The Portraits room will showcase works from 112 different artists, including one of the founding figures of Māori Modernism Selwyn Wilson, Ghanaian sculptor Grace Salome Kwami and Chilean painter Laura Rodig. 

The “Abstraction” segment will showcase works by Sandy Adsett, Fanny Sanín, Etel Adnan, Eduardo Terrazas, and Samia Halaby. The section dedicated to the Italian diaspora features 40 artists including Argentinian painter Lidy Prati, and Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi.

There will also be work by several renowned historical artists including Frida Kahlo, her life partner Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral and Carmen Herrera. 

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The Venice Biennale’s International Exhibition will be running from 20 April through to 24 November 2024.