Art review: Range of Indigenous art on display at Maine colleges

Jorge S. Arango, Portland Press Herald, December 3, 2023

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, art institutions embarked on a long overdue effort to amp up representation of people of color in the shows they curated and the art they acquired. While this was undeniably a positive development, many critics also noted that they had almost stumbled into it, giving imprimatur to artists they treated as fresh new talents, as if those artists hadn’t been there all along – for centuries, in fact – creating vital work in the shadow of what is still a predominantly white, male art canon.

There followed a more generalized expansion of artists of color throughout disciplines, particularly Asian artists when anti-Asian sentiments tied to COVID spread through their communities. But dedicated exhibitions of work by Indigenous artists – either solo or group shows – were slower to arrive. Many museums unearthed a few Wabanaki baskets or beaded objects from their storerooms, presenting them alongside Anglo-European works to make the point that Indigenous cultures were producing concurrently with white artists.

Two current shows, thankfully, go much further. In May, Colby College Museum of Art opened “Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village” (through July 28) which juxtaposes art of the Taos Pueblo (both old and new) with that of the Taos Society of Artists, a coterie of Anglo-American painters that formed in 1915. Two exhibitions at the Museum of Art at Bates College – “Brad Kahlhamer: Nomadic Studio, Maine Camp” and “+Exploding Native Inevitable+” (both through Mar. 4) – concentrate on contemporary work of Indigenous American artists from across the U.S.

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