ArtNet News

As a tidal wave of racial reckoning has forced the museum industry to confront its dismal record on diversity, curators of American art are beginning to reassess galleries devoted almost exclusively to Hudson Valley landscapes and Rococo portraits by dead white men.

With the aid of curators and artists from Native American backgrounds, curators across the U.S. are broadening narratives, questioning stereotypes, and collapsing categories.

Inside the Delaware Art Museum, conversations about a gradual reboot of the American galleries began in 2017, according to Heather Coyle, the institution’s chief curator and curator of American art.