Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Artists and Knowledge Keepers Exhibition Opening Reception
Feb 3, 2024
Katherine E. Nash Gallery
Tickets: Free
Celebrate the opening of The Katherine E. Nash Gallery’s exhibition Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Artists and Knowledge Keepers, presented during The Great Northern 2024. The group exhibition will feature work in a wide variety of visual media and aesthetic approaches by 29 Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ artists.
Featured exhibition artists include Frank Big Bear, David Bradley, Awanigiizhik Bruce, Andrea Carlson, Avis Charley, Fern Cloud, Michelle Defoe, Jim Denomie, Patrick DesJarlait, Sam English, Carl Gawboy, Joe Geshick, Sylvia Houle, Oscar Howe, Waŋblí Mayášleča (Francis J. Yellow, Jr.), George Morrison, Steven Premo, Rabbett Before Horses Strickland, Cole Redhorse Taylor, Roy Thomas, Jonathan Thunder, Thomasina TopBear, Moira Villiard, Kathleen Wall, Star WallowingBull, Dyani White Hawk, Bobby Dues Wilson, Leah H. Yellowbird, and Holly Young.
4–6 pm: Exhibition Conversation with Louise Erdrich and Diane Wilson
6–8 pm: Gallery Reception
Please note: Seating is first-come, first-served. Photographs and video footage may be taken throughout this event. These will be used by The Great Northern and its partners for marketing and publicity, our archives, on our website and in social media.
More About the Exhibition:
The history of visual art and design by Native Americans predates the arrival of Europeans by thousands of years. Seven thousand years ago, in southern Minnesota, Native people created the treasure trove of 5,000 images now known as the Jeffers Petroglyphs. Some of the designs appear in Dakota hide paintings. Included in the National Register of Historic Places and managed by the Minnesota Historical Society, the site is revered by Arapaho, Cheyenne, Dakota, Iowa, and Ojibwe people. In our time, contemporary American Indian artists are creating work in every known painting medium, from oil on canvas to street murals made with aerosol spray paints. Their choice of subjects and content is equally diverse, drawing on a wide variety of sources including traditional, historical, contemporary, and conceptual genres.
Dreaming Our Futures will be seen across the state of Minnesota throughout the year 2024. The exhibition premiers at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (January–March), then travels to the Rochester Art Center (April–July) and continues to the Tweed Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota, Duluth (September–December). The Katherine E. Nash Gallery will publish a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue with critical essays by several prominent Native American scholars. The catalogue will be distributed worldwide by University of Minnesota Press.
Dreaming Our Futures is curated by Brenda J. Child, Northrop Professor of American Studies and Howard Oransky, Director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, with Christopher Pexa. Dreaming Our Futures is co-sponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Department of American Indian Studies, the Department of Art History, the Office for Public Engagement, the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities, the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and the Senior Advisor to the President for Native American Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Support has been provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, and the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts.