Heard Museum offers collaboration from indigenous art from Canada
Staff Reports | Digital Free Press
The Heard Museum is partnering with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection on its upcoming exhibition, Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael, which is the first large-scale survey of Indigenous art from Canada to be presented internationally.
Organized by the McMichael in collaboration with indigenous stakeholders — scholars, writers, knowledge keepers, and contemporary artists — the exhibition explores the powerful tensions and continuities that exist between the present and the past, and relationships to the land, to ancestors, and to each other.
This exhibition will be on view at the Heard Museum from Sept. 1 through Jan. 2, 2024, and is made possible at the Heard Museum by signature sponsor EPCOR and sponsor Lili Chester. Additional support is provided by donors to the Grand Gallery Exhibition Fund.
“We are honored to be the first stop on this world tour,” said David M. Roche, Heard Museum, Dickey Family director and CEO. “The exhibition allows us to share the magnificence of indigenous art from coast-to-coast-to-coast in Canada with the people of Arizona.”
Showcasing the diversity and vitality of indigenous art in Canada, Early Days features objects ranging from eighteenth-century ceremonial regalia to the work of the vanguard artists of the ’60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, such as Norval Morrisseau, Carl Beam and Alex Janvier, and leading contemporary indigenous artists like Kent Monkman, Meryl McMaster and Rebecca Belmore.
This will be the first time that many of the living artists in the exhibition have had their work shown in Arizona and invites a deep connection with the issues at the heart of the indigenous experience, revealing vibrant and transforming cultures in the twenty-first century. The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is the only museum in Canada devoted exclusively to Canadian art.
Its mission is to develop insightful and accessible exhibitions that explore Canada’s artistic past while also breaking new trails on the art of our time. As an institution, the McMichael was at the forefront of collecting indigenous art as fine art beginning in the 1970s and continues to champion the work of leading indigenous artists today, Heard Museum officials say.
