Virtual Talk
Artists from Lenape (Delaware), Haudenosaunee, and other regional Indigenous nations create works with visual and political power, often grounded in relationships to place. Laura J. Allen, Curator of Native American Art at Montclair Art Museum (MAM), will discuss how the institution is engaging with regional and diasporic Native art. She will emphasize MAM’s exhibition and collecting work with artist and performer Thomas J. Dorsey (1920–1993, Lenape, adopted Onondaga), who lived in New Jersey in the 1950s, as well as with contemporary artist Holly Wilson (Delaware Nation). Wilson, who lives in Oklahoma, will discuss her wide-ranging practice in sculpture, photography, ceramics, and glass and how she integrates her research on generations of family who were displaced from this land, Lenapehoking.
This event will take place on Zoom, register online here.
Multi-media artist Holly Wilson (Delaware Nation) creates figures as her storytellers, conveying stories of the sacred and the precious, capturing moments of our day, vulnerabilities, and strengths. She has exhibited her work since the early 1990s in group and solo exhibitions and has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships. Wilson's work is part of national and international collections such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the C.N. Gorman Museum, and The Eiteljorg Museum. She holds an MFA in sculpture and an MA in ceramics from Stephen F. Austin State University and as well as a BFA in ceramics from Kansas City Art Institute and a teaching certification in K-12 education from Cameron University.
Contemporary Artist Holly Wilson (Delaware Nation)
Laura J. Allen is an interdisciplinary scholar and the Curator of Native American Art at the Montclair Art Museum. Her museum practice focuses on critical and collaborative museology and historical, modern, and contemporary Native art. Her research and publications examine visual and material culture of the Northwest Coast as well as Indigenous and intercultural dress, fashion, and textile history in the Americas.
Curator of Native American Art at Montclair Art Museum Laura J. Allen