Lindner Lecture Series
Nancy Marie Mithlo, Professor Departments of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies University of California Los Angeles
Elisabetta Frasca, independent curator, Rome, Italy
The "place" of contemporary Native arts in broader discourses of art history, visual culture and American Indian Studies remains contested, even twenty years after the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. While Indigenous arts receive more attention in the press than twenty years ago due to recent curatorial efforts, how sustainable is this inclusion given the lack of mainstream academic research needed to guide conversations? Anthropologists Elisabetta Frasca (independent curator) and Nancy Marie Mithlo (UCLA) discuss the emergence of Indigenous arts in global contexts from 1997-2017 drawing from their work together curating exhibits at the Venice Biennale.
IMAGE CREDIT: Shelley Niro, The Show Off, from the series Toys Are Not Us, 2017