In new exhibition at Colby, Pueblo people tell their own story

Megan Gray, Portland Press Herald, July 30, 2023

The walls of the Lunder Wing are covered in art. Yes, these walls are located in the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, so it isn’t surprising to see paintings hanging from them. But right now, the art is also all around the paintings, on the walls themselves, which artist Virgil Ortiz covered with traditional motifs from Pueblo pottery.

This departure from usual blank gallery walls was fitting for this exhibition. “Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village” started with a body of paintings by the Taos Society of Artists, a group of Anglo-American painters who depicted their impressions of Pueblo culture in the early 1900s New Mexico. Those works are housed in the expansive Lunder Collection at the museum. But the curators decided this exhibition should focus not on those artists but rather on the perspectives of Pueblo people.

“These paintings by the TSA painters traveled throughout the country,” said Siera Hyte, manager of programs and fellowships at the Lunder Institute of American Art. “The fact that they are in a Maine museum shows that they had a much bigger life than just this regional specific context, and American art institutions historically have not exhibited these works in a way that either foregrounds Pueblo perspectives or even gives visitors the tools to fully understand the social, political, cultural background of how these paintings were created and constructed. What are the ways in which these paintings have become a stand-in in other American art museums for a broader idea of Native peoples?”