For more information, please contact IAIA Communications Director Jason S. Ordaz at jason.ordaz@iaia.edu.

Note: When referring to the Museum in the press, please use the full official name IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA).

Please join us on Friday, December 3, 3–7 pm for the film screening of Somebody’s Daughter (1492–Now) and Say Her Name. Directed by Rain, the two films address the critical issues of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIW&G). The purpose of these films is to alert lawmakers and the public alike that the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women crisis exists and demands urgent action.

Tune in for a panel discussion on Tuesday, December 7, 4–5 pm with Student Curator Jaime Herrell and We Went Wild Artists Chelsea Bighorn (Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux/Shoshone-Paiute), 伊藤福 (Fuku Ito) (Japanese), and Suni Sonqo Vizcarra Wood (Quechua Nation, Peru). Moderated by MoCNA Curatorial Assistant Hank Cooper (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), this panel will explore these artists’ creative processes and artistic responses to the exhibition’s thematic elements of connection, closeness, emotion, and cross-cultural expression.

On Thursday, December 16, 4–5 pm, MoCNA will host a poetry reading featuring current Exposure artists Dan Taulapapa McMullin (Samoan) and No’u Revilla (Kanaka Maoli) as well as Mā’ohi author and activist Chantal Spitz as they read selections from their own work.

For more information, please contact MoCNA Senior Manager of Museum Education Winoka Yepa (Diné) at (505) 428-5907 or winoka.yepa@iaia.edu.

Anne and Loren Kieve Gallery

August 20, 2021–July 10, 2022

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology documents international Indigenous artists’ responses to the impacts of nuclear testing, nuclear accidents, and uranium mining on Native peoples and the environment. The traveling exhibition and catalog give artists a voice to address the long-term effects of these man-made disasters on Indigenous communities in the United States and around the world. Indigenous artists from Australia, Canada, Greenland, Japan, Pacific Islands, and the United States utilize local and tribal knowledge, as well as Indigenous and contemporary art forms as visual strategies for their thought-provoking artworks.

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology is co-curated by iBiennale Director Dr. Kóan Jeff Baysa; Nuuk Art Museum Director Nivi Christensen (Inuit); Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art Chief Curator and Vice Director Satomi Igarashi; Art Gallery of New South Wales Assistant Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Erin Vink (Ngiyampaa), Independent Curator Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation), and MoCNA Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man.

The hardcover, fully illustrated catalog will be published in Fall 2021 and features artist statements, interviews and essays by co-curators, art historians, writers, scientists, and activists who will examine art practices and artists’ concerns more in depth. Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology is supported by the Ford Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Image Credit: Hilda Moodoo (Pitjantjatjara) and Kunmanara Queama (Pitjantjatjara), Destruction I, 2002, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 46.85 x 38.66 x 1.18 in. Art Gallery of South Australia, Santos Fund for Aboriginal Art 2002, 20025P24

South Gallery

November 5, 2021–January 30, 2022

We Went Wild is an exhibition of emerging students in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ (IAIA) BFA programs. Some of the participating artists are from the American Southwest, Peru, Northern Great Plains, and Japan.

This exhibition of recent work comprises various media, including sculpture, painting, and jewelry, which move as conduits for complex emotions we have all attempted to navigate during these challenging times. This distance has also challenged us to re-examine closeness and the need for connection.

IAIA Museum Studies Junior and Student-Curator Jaime Herrell explains that “We, no matter the disconnect or distance, especially in this existence, are here to create, to share, to feel—to find a peaceful moment or to just be grumpy, just as these artists do in their creative processes. Any distance between people explores the power and significance of genuine feelings, emotions, and cross-cultural expressions between each other, along with the individuality and solitude within us. This distance has also challenged us to re-examine closeness and the need for connection.”

Participating Artists

Image Credit: Suni Sonqo Vizcarra Wood (Quechua Nation), Metamorphosis of Healing, 2021, cast bronze and wood, 7’9” x 1’9” x 2’3” , photograph by the artist

Kieve Family Gallery

On view until February 20, 2022

Experimental exPRESSion: Printmaking at IAIA, 1963–1980 features fifty-one recently-acquired works on paper from the Tubis Print Collection, donated by the Nina Tubis Wooderson Trust. Notable artists in the exhibition include Peggy Deam (Suquamish), Mary Gay Osceola (Seminole), and Sandy Fife (Muskogee Creek), among other IAIA Alumni. The exhibition will be on display for two-years and closes July 2021.

“Printmaking today contains so many variables, so many possibilities exist in the uses of materials. It is unlikely that any contemporary printmaker has not experimented or thought of experimenting with the same materials and processes.”—Seymour Tubis, 1966

The Tubis Print Collection represents the experimentation that took place in the IAIA Printmaking Studio from 1963–1981, which established a standard ofmodern printmaking practice for Native artists. Printmaking students learned skills that were central to the fine art curriculum developed for young Native artists. The process introduced students to the concepts of design, layout, shape, line, texture, and color. Printmaking informed other media, such as painting and sculpture, and helped shape the Contemporary Native Arts Movement at IAIA.

Image Credit: Benjamin Harjo, (Seminole/Shawnee), Microcosms of the Everglades, woodblock print, ca. 1965. Courtesy of IAIA MoCNA Permanent Collection, SE-67

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology documents international Indigenous artists’ responses to the impacts of nuclear testing, nuclear accidents, and uranium mining on Native peoples and the environment. The traveling exhibition and catalog give artists a voice to address the long-term effects of these man-made disasters on Indigenous communities in the United States and around the world. Indigenous artists from Australia, Canada, Greenland, Japan, Pacific Islands, and the United States utilize local and tribal knowledge, as well as Indigenous and contemporary art forms as visual strategies for their thought-provoking artworks.

The exhibition size is 365–500 linear feet (3,500–4,000 square feet) and it is available for booking periods beginning January 2023. (The exhibition size is negotiable.)

To inquire further about the availability of Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology or to receive a prospectus and checklist for this traveling exhibition, contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man at manuela.well-off-man@iaia.edu.

Image Credit: Hilda Moodoo (Pitjantjatjara) and Kunmanara Queama (Pitjantjatjara), Destruction I, 2002, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 46.85 x 38.66 x 1.18 in. Art Gallery of South Australia, Santos Fund for Aboriginal Art 2002, 20025P24

Last Supper is a conceptual installation pointing to the effects of how the food we consume is making a negative impact within our communities. C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Mvscogee Nation) builds a visual narrative based on private and public memories and experiences to deal with the devastating effect of diabetes throughout native nations. The exhibition Last Supper creates a larger social awareness of the epidemic and its dilemma in all of the United States. The mixed media installation includes her family archives and testimony about the disease and its impact on traditional values and the drastic evolution of diet as well as economy. C.Maxx Stevens is an installation artist and a member of Seminole/Mvscogee Nation from Oklahoma. She has recently retired as a Professor of Art at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

The exhibition requires approximately 600 sq. ft. of space. To inquire further about the availability of Maxx Stevens: Last Supper or to receive a prospectus and checklist for this traveling exhibition, contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man at manuela.well-off-man@iaia.edu.

Image Credit: Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Mvscogee Nation), Last Supper (detail), photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA

2nd Floor North Hallway

On view until February 27, 2022

Daniel McCoy Jr.’s (Muscogee Creek/Citizen Band Potawatomi) ’17 mural outside the Kieve Family Gallery is part of the Experimental exPRESSion: Printmaking at IAIA, 1963–1980 exhibition.

McCoy who also created printmaking illustrations for the exhibition design and didactics. “The mural is influenced by powwow regalia colors, films, and comics from the late sixties and seventies. I tried to imagine what the IAIA students would have liked during this time (1963–1980). My son Noel and I first drew black and white illustrations in ink then roughly based the mural on these illustrations.”

—Daniel McCoy Jr.’s (Muscogee Creek/Citizen Band Potawatomi) ’17

Image Credit: Daniel McCoy Jr.: Experimental exPRESSion Mural (detail), photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA, 2021

Hallway Gallery and Honor Gallery

On view until July 2022

Alexander Lee’s (Hakka Chinese, Tahiti) mural The Dream of the Haere-pō is a study on time and on Indigenous transformation. It depicts in five sections, five tāpa’o (signs, markers) what Lee considers to be memory helpers and instruments for storytelling. Lee created this mural to inspire viewers to question limiting expectations of what Indigenous art is. He invites artists to redraw a narrative through reclaiming visual signs, and to write their own stories of time and space. With this mural, Lee hopes to inspire viewers to question the “Indigenous” and “Contemporary” labels as places of enclosure, and he invites them to imagine futures through an Indigenous perspective. The mural is part of Alexander Lee’s installation Te atua vahine mana ra o Pere (The Great Goddess Pere)—L’ Aube où les Fauves viennent se désaltérer.

Image Credit: Alexander Lee: The Dream of Haere-pō (detail), photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA, 2021

Allan Houser Art Park

Opening December 17, 2021

Three Sisters Collective (3SC) will paint a mural in the Allan Houser Art Park that will remind visitors and the community that Santa Fe, also known as O’Gah P’oegeh (White Shell Watering Place) is and always will be Tewa land.

Three Sisters Collective (3SC) is a Pueblo and Indigenous women-centered grassroots collective based in Santa Fe, NM, that began in the summer of 2017. The collective seeks to re-center a Pueblo and Indigenous presence through arts, education, and actions that promote positive representations of this area’s first inhabitants.

Image Credit: This is a Reminder, This is O’ga P’oegeh (detail), image courtesy Autumn Gomez (Comanche/Taos)

Helen Hardin Media Gallery

Film Screenings for Somebody’s Daughter (1492–Now) and Say Her Name

Friday, December 3, 3–7 pm

Please join us for the film screening of Somebody’s Daughter (1492–Now) and Say Her Name. Directed by Rain, the two films address the critical issues of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIW&G). The purpose of these films is to alert lawmakers and the public alike that the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women crisis exists and demands urgent action. Purchase Museum admission for the day of the event.

Somebody’s Daughter (1492–Now), 70 minutes

Somebody’s Daughter focuses on some of the highest-profile MMIW cases. With historical points of reference, the victims’ and their families’ stories are told through the lens of the legal jurisdictional maze and socio-economic bondage that constricts Indian Country. For the first time on film, tribal leaders reveal the devastating roles of drug cartels and gangs in the MMIW crisis. The purpose of Somebody’s Daughter is to alert lawmakers and the public alike that the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women crisis exists and demands urgent action.

The new version of the film, titled Somebody’s Daughter (1492–Now) features US President Joe Biden, and is thought to be the only documentary that includes a contribution from a sitting US President.

“Somebody’s Daughter is both hauntingly beautiful and emotionally devastating and should be recognized as one of the most important documentaries made on not only MMIW, but also on Indian Country in the twenty-first century.”–Native News Online

Say Her Name, 30 minutes

The film focuses on the epicenter of MMIWG in the US—Big Horn County in Montana, which is a case study for the entire crisis. Like Somebody’s Daughter, which inspired lawmakers to move two bills in the US Senate that had stalled, Say Her Name seeks to secure a DOJ investigation into the numerous law enforcement incongruities and failings in Big Horn County. If the DOJ was to launch such an investigation, it would reverberate through similar counties in the US and make a dramatic impact on the crisis.

Online Event

We Went Wild—Panel Discussion

Tuesday, December 7, 4–5 pm

Please join us for a panel discussion with Student Curator Jaime Herrell and We Went Wild Artists Chelsea Bighorn (Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux/Shoshone-Paiute), 伊藤福 (Fuku Ito) (Japanese), and Suni Sonqo Vizcarra Wood (Quechua Nation, Peru).

Moderated by MoCNA Curatorial Assistant Hank Cooper (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), this panel will explore these artists’ creative processes and artistic responses to the exhibition’s thematic elements of connection, closeness, emotion, and cross-cultural expression.

To receive the Zoom link to attend, register for the event.

Image Credit: Jazmin Novak (Diné), Be Still, 2021, Bronze, 4.5 x 4.5 x 11 in., photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA

Online Event

MoCNA Literary Session with Exposure Artists—Panel Discussion

Thursday, December 16, 4–5 pm

Please join the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) for a poetry reading featuring current Exposure artists Dan Taulapapa McMullin (Samoan) and No’u Revilla (Kanaka Maoli) as well as Mā’ohi author and activist Chantal Spitz as they read selections from their own work.

To receive a Zoom link to attend the event, register for the event.

Dan Taulapapa McMullin (Samoan) is an Indigenous fa’afafine artist from Sāmoa i Sasa’e, living in Muhheahconneock (Hudson, NY) and Hopoghan Hackingh (Hoboken, NJ). Their 2013 collection of poetry Coconut Milk was in the top ten books of the American Library Association’s Rainbow List. McMullin’s work is currently on exhibition in Exposure at MoCNA. Their new work will be in the upcoming 2022 Hawai’i Triennial.

Noʻu Revilla (Kanaka Maoli) is an ʻŌiwi (Hawaiian) poet, performer, and educator. Born on the island of Maui, she currently lives and loves on Oʻahu. Her debut book of poems Ask the Brindled won the 2021 National Poetry Series and will be published by Milkweed Editions in the fall of 2022. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry, Lit Hub, ANMLY, Beloit, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress. She has performed throughout Hawaiʻi as well as in Canada, Papua New Guinea, and the United Nations. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa, where she teaches creative writing with an emphasis on ʻŌiwi literature, spoken word, and decolonial poetics. In the summer of 2019, she had the privilege of teaching a poetry workshop on the first day of classes at Puʻuhuluhulu University while standing with her lāhui to protect Maunakea. She is also a lifetime student of Haunani-Kay Trask. Her work can be read on her website www.nourevilla.com.

Chantal Spitz (Te Ao Mā’ohi) was born in 1954 in Pape’ete. After studying abroad, she returned to Tahiti. She worked first as a secretary and then as a teacher. She has been highly critical of French neo-colonialism. She has been involved in the Polynesian literary magazine Littérama’ohi.

Image Credit: Noʻu Revilla and Dan Taulapapa McMullin, photographs courtesy the artists

MoCNA Insta “Residency”

For Native American Heritage Month, MoCNA will host four Indigenous artists on MoCNA Instagram. Each artist will be given one week out of the month to share daily posts of their work, impromptu Q&A sessions, studio tours, and more. The purpose of the digital residency is to bring more visibility of contemporary Indigenous art through the realm of social media. The chosen group of Instagram artist residents will be announced on November 1. Please follow MoCNA’s Instagram for more updates.

Image Credit: David Neel (Kwakwaka’wakw, Canada, British Columbia), Chernobyl Mask (Allusion to Bakwas/Nuclear Disaster Mask), 1993, cedar wood, cedar bark, acrylic paint, 28 x 14 x 8 in., Seattle Art Museum, Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund, 97.55, photograph by Brad Trone

Beginning in November, MoCNA will have weekly walk-in tours every Wednesday of each week. Walk-in tours are limited to six per group and is on a first come first served basis. MoCNA will also continue special group tours for school, travel, non-profit, and corporate groups. Group tours must be arranged one month prior to arrival. We are currently scheduling group tours for 20 or less. Please email groups@iaia.edu to schedule a tour.

Also, please visit our virtual museum online or download our mobile app for a self-guided tour option when visiting the museum.

Programs are subject to change, please visit our website for the most up to date programming calendar or visit our Facebook page.

The Museum Store offers a unique shopping experience, featuring a collection of high-quality, Native-made, and Native-designed products including one of the most extensive collections of books on Native-related topics. The inspiring collection of items also includes prints, textiles, paintings, jewelry, pottery, sculpture, various home goods, and children's products. We are pleased to offer Native brands like Eighth Generation, The NTVS, Trickster Company, Bison Star Naturals, and more.

Over 40 titles coming soon to the Museum Store. Featuring an updated and expanded Pueblo History section, and newly added LGBT2SQ+ texts, including children, and teen books.

Interested in browsing our selection of products not currently featured on our website? Email us at store@iaia.edu or call (505) 428-5912 to inquire about specific artists or merchandise. Phone and email orders are welcome!

The mission of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) is to advance contemporary Native art through exhibitions, collections, public programs, and scholarship. MoCNA's outreach through local and national collaborations allows us to continue to present the most progressive Native arts and public programming. MoCNA's exhibitions and programs continue the narrative of contemporary Native arts and cultures.