Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum

The artwork, perspectives, and histories of Native artists, scholars, and community members are at the center of Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum, a major BMA initiative. The wide-reaching project seeks to begin addressing the historical erasure of Indigenous culture by arts institutions while creating new practices for museums.

The expansive Preoccupied project extends into the galleries and beyond with public programs, nine exhibitions, staff training, and new interpretive texts for artworks throughout the Museum. The curatorial team worked closely with Native artists, curators, and Baltimore-region residents on a community advisory panel to frame the questions this project would ask. In the earliest stages of the initiative, all Preoccupied project participants were invited to an “unconference,” a weekend-long retreat with the exhibitions’ curators, where they discussed Native visibility in the face of colonial oppression.

“Preoccupied radically centers Native perspectives in a space that has often overlooked or erased that community: encyclopedic museums,” shares the project’s co-curator Dare Turner (Yurok Tribe), Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum. “It challenges all museums to interrogate their colonial roots and make space for new ways of thinking, learning, and being.”

Preoccupied emphasizes that Native people have created meaningful art since time immemorial and that Native communities thrive to this day. Beyond its large-scale exhibition program, the BMA’s celebration of Native art and artists offers a framework that the Museum can carry forward for future exhibitions and community engagement.

A catalog published by the BMA and distributed by the University of Washington Press will be available in May 2024. Fifty vivid, detailed images of works from the exhibitions share pages with personal reflections, a comic featuring fictional Indigenous hero Pueblo Jones, insights from Native artists whose works are featured in the book, newly commissioned poetry, and scholarly and curatorial considerations.

The Preoccupied audio guide features stories and insight from eight Native community members on their personal connections to 14 artworks in the BMA collection. Contributors include Mark Tayac (Chief of the Piscataway Indian Nation), Ashley Minner Jones (Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina), Mario Harley (Piscataway Conoy Tribe), Allison Kelliher (Koyukon Athabascan, Dena), Elizabeth Rule (enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation), Bayley Marquez (Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians), Elise Boulanger (citizen of the Osage Nation), and Dare Turner (Yurok Tribe).

Listen to the audio guide

• Louis Campbell (Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina)
• Stephanie Cassidy (Oglala Lakota and Irish descendent)
• Keith Colston (Tuscarora and enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina)
• Allison Kelliher (Koyukon Athabascan, Dena)
• Kerry Hawk Lessard (descendant of Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes)
• Bayley Marquez (Santa Ynez Band Chumash)
• Rico Newman (Choptico Band of Indians)
• Jess McPherson
• Elizabeth Rule (enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation)
• Dennis Zotigh (Kiowa, Isanti Dakota, and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo)

Curated by Leila Grothe, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Dare Turner (Yurok Tribe), Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum, with support from Curatorial Research Assistant Elise Boulanger (Citizen of the O​sage Nation).

This project is generously supported by the Ford Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, the Estate of Carolyn Lee Smith, The Dorman/Mazaroff Art Exhibition Fund, the Hardiman Family Endowment Fund, the Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Fund for American Art, The Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal Contemporary Art Endowment Fund, and the Robert Lehman Foundation.