Building Exhibitions Around Shared Ideas: An Interview With Curator Laura Allen
Institutions around the United States have, in recent years, grappled with questions about how to display Indigenous art and artifacts respectfully and with the appropriate cultural context while confronting the ways colonialism has shaped museum collections. What is often lost in discussions of, say, how to comply with the Department of the Interior’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or how to undo years of Euro-centric gatekeeping in major museums is how Indigenous people can take the lead on those and other related initiatives.
Museums and cultural organizations are navigating these issues in various ways. Earlier this year, New York’s Forge Project, which oversees one of the first lending collections of contemporary Native art, transitioned into a non-profit model guided by a seven-person Indigenous Steering Council. Last month, Denver Art Museum (one of the first institutions in the U.S. to collect Native American art) undertook a complete rehanging of its Indigenous works, planned in close collaboration with local Native communities and overseen by the museum’s Indigenous Community Advisory Council.
“Interwoven Power: Native Knowledge / Native Art,” a long-term exhibition at Montclair Art Museum, reimagines the presentation of pieces from the museum’s renowned collection more than 4,000 works of Indigenous art from North America. Right now, there are fifty historical, modern and contemporary works (including new commissions) by artists from more than forty Native nations on display in two newly restored galleries. The show, which features works by Rose B. Simpson, Nicholas Galanin, Sarah Sense and Cara Romero and includes a major site-specific installation by Holly Wilson (Delaware Nation), was curated by Laura Allen in collaboration with an advisory council of Native American artists, scholars, writers, educators and colleagues.
By presenting these works through a contemporary, Indigenous-led lens, “Interwoven Power” aims to foster a deeper understanding of and appreciation for Native art and its relevance not just in history but also in current societal conversations. Observer caught up with Allen, who is known for her work on exhibitions that bring attention to Indigenous voices and cultural narratives, to learn more about her career and inspirations and what she hopes people will take away from “Interwoven Power.”
What inspired you to focus on Native American art in your scholarship and career?
Interdisciplinarity has been a consistent thread in my professional life, and Native American art upholds that practice. My early career was spent in the sciences and design. A decade ago, while working at natural history institutions, I became interested in unpacking their complicated cultural histories, especially as repositories of Native-made objects. I shifted my focus from science to culture and quickly became excited and invested in the work and the relationships I was making.
Working for an art museum offers me a curatorial freedom I didn’t have in natural history. Furthermore, Native American art re-energized my prior practice in dress, design and design history. My current scholarship weaves all this together, focusing on the material culture of the Northwest Coast and Alaska and dress, textiles and fashion across North America from cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives.
How do you balance traditional Native American art forms with contemporary Indigenous works in your curation?
“Interwoven Power: Native Knowledge / Native Art’ integrates works from the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries around shared ideas—a deliberate curatorial approach that disturbs the urge to separate and categorize works as “traditional” or “contemporary.” Instead, I want to show continuities, be they visual or metaphorical. For any community, tradition is always changing, and all artworks are contemporary when they are made. Putting so-called “traditional” and “contemporary” Native art in opposition is untrue and unhelpful; for example, Indigenous artists can be limited by the market’s expectations of what qualities an established art form should possess.
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For Montclair Art Museum, which has stewarded a collection of historical (meaning, older) and contemporary (meaning, currently made) Indigenous art since its founding in 1914, it’s vital to show these works in relationship. These pieces have long been displayed throughout the Museum in direct juxtaposition with each other or with non-Native works to help trouble dominant narratives that can constrain Native art or, as scholar Philip Deloria writes, can frame Native people “in terms of their pastness.”
How much does your work involve collaborating directly with Indigenous artists and communities?
I work with Indigenous artists, community members and colleagues every day. For this exhibition, the process began when we convened our Native American Art Advisory Council of experienced curators and scholars to discuss the possibilities for the exhibition and best practices for the institution. I also did some travel to Native communities to meet people and better understand how to represent their priorities, as well as to curatorial workshops to get feedback on our plan. I then enlisted eight primary Native knowledge holders as exhibition collaborators and several other artists and professionals to visit the Museum for the project, where we reviewed and documented our historical collections, selected works to exhibit, collaborated on commissions, thought through the interpretation and more. This work is collective visioning; we try to co-create what we want to see at the Museum or in communities.
What steps do you take to ensure authenticity and respect when presenting Indigenous narratives?
When I’m working to present Native ideas and material production, I start by educating myself so that I can ask useful questions of knowledgeable Native colleagues when we are in dialogue. Native cultural workers typically have a huge range of demands on their time, whether it is their families, working with their communities or other cultural institutions, participating in ceremony and other cultural practices, political activism and more, so respecting their time and values is paramount. I work through trusted advisors or colleagues to meet new people who are appropriate to answer the questions I have, I ensure I have the budget to pay them equitably, I ask them to vet what comes out of our work together and I try not to make promises I can’t keep. Being proactive but also humble and patient and having real relationships versus extractive or transactional ones—this is what I value and hope I bring to collaborative museum work.
Were there particular themes or messages that informed your choices when selecting works for “Interwoven Power: Native Knowledge / Native Art”?
For this exhibition, I was motivated by the writing of scholar Sherry Farrell Racette (Métis/Algonquin/Irish) about the idea of Native-made objects—from any time period—as being containers of knowledge. I wanted to center Indigenous knowledge, relationships and cultural purpose in the gallery. I also wanted to project a positive message—one that looks unflinchingly at the traumas of history but inspires futurity. The title of the exhibition reflects these goals, highlighting the transformative power of Indigenous knowledge to address the thorny issues we face collectively in society. “Interwoven” refers to the weaving of this knowledge in the works and across the space; weaving, in fact, serves as a visual metaphor in the gallery design.
What do you hope people will take away from this exhibition?
The introductory text of the exhibition notes that everyone who walks into the galleries brings their own knowledge and background to their experience. Therefore, it’s difficult to imagine a singular takeaway I hope for. My main ambitions are twofold: that this exhibition reinforces the perspectives of Native people in positive ways and also changes perspectives held by visitors. I want people to think critically about the foundations of knowledge they grew up with. I also hope that the works and ideas on view, particularly those of Lenape, Haudenosaunee and other regional artists in the galleries, play a role in local Native cultural maintenance and revitalization. Finally, I want the exhibition to be memorable. When I see people walk in and light up when they encounter Holly Wilson’s dance-shawl fringe around a nineteenth-century marble sculpture, and beyond this, Eric-Paul Riege’s towering plush “earrings,” I know that we have made choices that will kindle our audience to take a deeper look.