Meaning, Memory & Mystery: Curating Historical Native American Art

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Join Gaylord Torrence for his lecture, “Meaning, Memory, and Mystery: Curating Historical Native American Art.” Torrence examines the distinct, fundamental challenges that underlie the creation of exhibitions, permanent galleries, and publications — not only for the curator, but also the communities, tribal groups, and nations whose ancestral works are being presented to the greater public.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Gaylord Torrence is Emeritus founding Fred and Virginia Merrill Curator of Native American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts, Drake University. He is a specialist in Plains Indian visual culture and widely recognized for fostering new perspectives in historical Native American art and the recognition of contemporary indigenous artists. In 2018, Torrence guest curated the inaugural permanent installation of Native North American art in the American Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His publications include Continuum: Native North American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (with Marjorie Alexander, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2020), Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky (Musée du Quai Branly, 2014), “The Raven Belt Ornaments of Lewis and Clark,” in Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis and Clark’s Indian Collection, ed. Castle McLaughlin (Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2003), The American Indian Parfleche: A Tradition of Abstract Painting, (University of Washington Press, 1994), and Art of the Red Earth People: The Mesquakie of Iowa (with Robert Hobbs, University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1989).