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We are pleased to announce Anne Kraybill as Chief Executive Officer of Art Bridges!

Welcome Anne Kraybill, CEO

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Interested in major themes, challenges, opportunities and programming examples?

For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast such as Galanin (Tlingit and Unangax̂), the totem pole is a ceremonial object used to celebrate events, depict stories, and document family lineage. 

, a seemingly Indigenous-made totem pole is covered in gold leaf but lies dismantled on the ground. Contrary to the viewers original understanding of the object, this is not a cultural tool of memory making and community. It is a carving by an Indonesian artist created to sell as a souvenir to tourists in Alaska. 

Through his intervention of destruction and reassembly to the original carving and application of gold leaf, Galanin creates dialogue about the economy of cultural appropriation while reclaiming the work as Indigenous art.

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“A woman of sun and blood ... A woman of the eternal breath of life ... A maiden of the eternal circle ...” These words, written by Kiowa and Caddo artist T.C. Cannon, are taken from the poem that his painting illustrates. 

Cannon’s works use striking color relationships and emphasize the juxtaposition of Native culture and Anglo-American society. This image depicts the artist’s grandmother, pregnant with his father, and the Washita River in Oklahoma, near where the artist grew up. It is important to note that the Washita River was also the site of a massacre in 1868, when General Custer’s soldiers invaded a peaceful Cheyenne camp, killing women and children, yet Cannon’s painting remains a celebratory work. 

A powerful depiction of multi-generational connection, 

Grandmother, Gestating Father and the Washita River Runs Ribbon-Like

 exhibits a joyous regard for the people and places that define the artist’s family heritage.

Lake Valley

Lost at Sea

 About

Evergreen

Kay WalkingStick

Peonies

Elevating Indigenous Voices at the Missoula Art Museum

I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)

Grandmother Gestating Father and the Washita River Runs Ribbon-Like

Thinking Outside the Box at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg

In the Heart of the Black Belt

Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith

I See Red: Talking to the Ancestors

The Gallegos Twins from Belen, NM

University of Montana and Sara Urist Green

Lecture

Nicholas Galanin

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T.C. Cannon  Grandmother Gestating Father and the Washita River Runs Ribbon-Like

T.C. Cannon

 is part of a larger series of works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith addressing the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. An enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the artist portrays an intergenerational dialogue marred by noise and dissonance. Lurking in the background, the work features a collaged array of photographs, newspaper clippings, court documents, and botanical drawings. Words and images culled from the mass media echo each other in a discordant depiction of exploitation, educational disparity, reservation life, and the spread of disease. The work depicts the relationship between the two figures in the foreground as close but paradoxically distant and muted. The phrase “I See Red” recalls the common expression denoting a blinding rage.

Lost Boys: AKA BB

Re-Echo

in which he shall be

MFA St Pete  -  St. Petersburg, FL

Installation

Jacob Lawrence

Partner Story - MFA St Pete

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith  I See Red: Talking to the Ancestors

Many of Frank Blazquez’s photographic subjects were born and raised around Albuquerque, in a neighborhood known as the War Zone. Characterized by gun violence, police brutality, and drug addiction, the War Zone serves as a backdrop to the new "Wild West." After achieving sobriety from his own drug addiction, Blazquez turned to the camera to explore the stories of those around him. The resulting portraits, such as 

, examine the ways in which War Zone residents define their identities.

Unlike historical images of the Western frontier as a landscape, Blazquez's photographs focus on humans. In 

, the central visual tension emerges from the minute differences between the sisters' appearances. One sister dons baby hair edges that are popular within Black and Latine hair culture. Her counterpart sports hoop earrings, thin eyebrows, and winged eyeliner done in the Chola style. 

These visual signifiers are important modes of expressing feminine Chicane identity within the United States. In this portrait, the Gallegos sisters claim their individuality amid diverse cultural narratives that inform the new “Wild West.”

Girl with a Radish

Breathing Bars Diagonal Left

Sparking collaboration, connection, and community building at the San Antonio Museum of Art

Bronzeville at Night

Peoria Riverfront Museum  -  Peoria, IL

Alfred Conteh

Malik and Marquis

Magnitude of Regions

Sunset

Twilight in the Adirondacks

Rick Silva

Western Fronts: Cascade Siskiyou, Gold Butte, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Bears Ears

Engaging Community and Bridging Cultures

Perro aullando a la luna (Dog Howling at the Moon)

Dark Glasses

George Morrison

Collage X Landscape

Frank Blazquez (b. 1987), "The Gallegos Twins from Belen, NM", 2019, archival pigment print, 25 x 31 in. Art Bridges. Photography by Demetrius Neal.

Frank Blazquez

, 2019, wood, paint, and gold leaf, variable. Art Bridges. Photo courtesy of Jason Wyche.

Nicholas Galanin  I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)

Situated on the traditional, ancestral territories of the Séliš (Salish or “Flathead”) and Qlispé (upper Kalispel or Pend d’Oreille) peoples, the Missoula Art Museum (MAM) seeks to recognize the Indigenous stewards of the land it occupies through their collecting practices and programming.

In spring 2021, MAM borrowed Nicholas Galanin’s I 

 from the Art Bridges collection and installed it in their Lynda M. Frost gallery, an art space dedicated to the display and interpretation of contemporary American Indian art. Featuring a deconstructed non-Alaskan Native made tourist commodity totem pole covered in gold leaf, the conceptual work engages with art reclamation, while critically examines appropriation and exploitation of Indigenous culture.

Nicholas Galanin
I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)

About

Artist

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Medium

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Provenance

Availability

Artwork Gallery

Partner Story

Elevating Indigenous Voices at the Missoula Art Museum

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Nicholas GalaninI Think It Goes Like This (Gold)

About

Artist

Dimensions

Credit Line

Date

Medium

Object Number

Provenance

Availability

Artwork Gallery

Partner Story

Elevating Indigenous Voices at the Missoula Art Museum

Discover More

Nicholas Galanin
I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)