The Sheldon Museum of Art features "MIGRATIONS"

Written by Marjorie Devon Thursday, 18 February 2010 20:35

Lincoln, NE - Organized by the University of New Mexico Art Museum and Tamarind Institute, includes works from six Native American artists who have completed residencies at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton, Oregon The artists are: Steven Deo (Creek), Tom Jones (Ho Chunk), Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisgaa), Ryan Lee Smith (Cherokee), Star Wallowing Bull (Chippewa, White Earth Reservation) and Marie Watt (Seneca). On exhibition through 25 April, 2010.

According to Marjorie Devon, Director of Tamarind Institute, each of the artists has experienced fluid boundaries of culture and their work embraces both the traditional and the modern. The title MIGRATIONS was chosen because of “its diverse implications of movement: between one time and another, between cultures, between places, between artistic mediums, between obscurity and limelight.”

The Museum will present two programs in conjunction with the exhibition. On Saturday, February 27, the Standing Eagle Drum Group will give a performance in the Great Hall beginning at 2 p.m. A book by the same title will accompany the exhibition. It includes essays by Lucy R. Lippard, Gerald McMaster, Kathleen Stewart Howe and Jo Ortel. Marjorie Devon edited it.

The Migrations project, partially funded by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, was developed to identify and showcase emerging Native American artists who are working with a contemporary vocabulary. The Nebraska Arts Council and the Sheldon Art Association have provided additional support.

The Sheldon Museum of Art houses both the Sheldon Art Association collection founded in 1888, and the University of Nebraska collection, initiated in 1929. Together they comprise more than 12,000 works of art in all media. This comprehensive collection of American art includes prominent holdings of 19th-century landscape and still life, American Impressionism, early Modernism, geometric abstraction, Abstract Expressionism, pop, minimalism and contemporary art.

To view images of artworks included in the exhibition visit http://www.sheldonartmuseum.org/