Global Conversation Hour: Viewing the Indigenous Landscape

What stories do pictures tell about the land we live on? And who tells those stories? Three answers to those questions converge in this exhibition. The 19th-century Hudson River School depicted the American landscape through the traditional conventions of European art but rarely included traces of the over 500 Indigenous tribes native to North America. In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, non-indigenous painters and photographers increasingly undertook documentation of what Edward Curtis called the “Vanishing Race.” By the mid-20th century, however, Indigenous artists—far from vanishing and often fusing their visual traditions with European aesthetic approaches—were vividly representing the world around them. Joining their perspectives to the trajectory of the American landscape is an important and welcome addition.

Presenters: Dr. Barbara McNulty, Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery Endowed Director and Dr. Kristine Larison, Gallery assistant