BMA Debuts New Narratives of American Art with Arctic Artistry and American Modernism

From July 13 through September 2024, two thematic galleries in the BMA’s Dorothy McIlvain Scott American Wing will examine anew what it meant to be “American” and “modern” during the cultural and social upheavals that occurred between 1900 and 1950. The new American Modernism galleries will feature approximately 60 objects, emphasizing the voices, experiences, and artistic contributions of Native American, immigrant, and historically underrepresented artists. Among the objects are new acquisitions, treasured works that have not been on view in recent years, and a rotating selection of rarely displayed works on paper.

The thematic groupings allow visitors to draw connections among the objects and to relate the works to contemporary issues and everyday life. In the “Identities” gallery, works by artists and designers such as Richmond Barthé, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Elsa Tennhardt illuminate changing ideas around race, gender, and economic status through subjects like performance and leisure. The ‘Technologies” gallery brings together works by Greta Grossman, Louisa Keyser, Maurice Martiné, Isamu Noguchi, Horace Pippin, and Joseph Stella, among others, to focus on the rapid societal changes of this period—urbanization, world war, industry, and migration. Two cases adjacent to the galleries will highlight the influence of towering skyscrapers and high-speed transportation, as well as material innovation, in household objects designed for machine-age living.

The American Modernism installation is curated by Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art, and Brittany Luberda, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts.

This installation is generously supported by the Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Fund for American Art.

From July 17, 2022, through May 14, 2023, Arctic Artistry will explore the evolving roles of Indigenous artists of the North American Arctic through 20 rarely shown objects from the BMA’s collection. Artists are esteemed among the Yup’ik, Iñupiaq, and Inuit people, and their work has continually responded to and reflected the needs of their changing communities. Historically, Indigenous artists who lived in the Arctic lands created ritualistic and utilitarian objects whose beauty was meant to honor the beings that sustained life in the harsh climate. As an influx of explorers, missionaries, whalers, and gold prospectors arrived to their lands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indigenous artists became vital economic forces that sustained their communities by producing art, including model kayaks and cribbage boards made for sale to non-Native markets.

By the mid-20th century, Canadian Inuit artists began carving animal sculptures and producing prints in collaborative workshop settings, such as Summer Caribou Hunt (1960) by Kiakshuk and Searching for Seal Holes (1960) by Innukjuakju Pudlat, which the BMA acquired from the esteemed Kinngait Co-operative (also known as the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative) in 1961. Later artworks spoke to both internal and external audiences, dancing between the traditional, the functional, and the commercial. Examples include Judas Ullulaq’s sculpture The Caribou Hunter (c. 1970s) and Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq’s wall hanging Frightened by the Land Spirits (c. 1994). Both artists have been featured in museums and galleries far beyond the Arctic. The most contemporary work in the show is Three Thousand (2017), a loan of a 14-minute video by Canadian Inuit artist asinnajaq that weaves together archival footage from the National Film Board of Canada with original animation to reveal 100 years of colonization within the Inuit Nunangat (Inuktitut for “homeland”).

This exhibition is curated by Darienne Turner, Assistant Curator for Indigenous Art of the Americas.

This exhibition is generously supported by Kwame Webb and Kathryn Bradley and the Jean and Allan Berman Textile Endowment Fund.