Join The Broad and the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art for The Un-Private Collection: Sayre Gomez + Patrick Martinez + Lynell George, the first Un-Private Collection conversation of 2024. Featuring Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) exhibition artists Sayre Gomez and Patrick Martinez, and moderated by noted author and native Angelino Lynell George. Gomez and Martinez’s paintings are emblematic of a new generation of artists using the visual language of Los Angeles as inspiration for their creative practice. Martinez’s paintings incorporate architectural elements to indicate and preserve identity and culture for the Latinx community as the landscape of the city changes. Gomez’s artworks portray the passage of time and urban decay that looms over the city through faded signage, as well as the neglected and vacant buildings he encounters. The artists and George will discuss Los Angeles as a creative landscape and how their artworks are shaped by it. Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist, and author, whose 2020 book A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler was a finalist for a Hugo Award.
The program will also be available to view on YouTube both during and after the conversation.
Saturday, March 2, 2–3:30 pm
Oculus Hall at The Broad
221 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California
Sayre Gomez
Sayre Gomez (b. 1982, Chicago, IL) works across mediums, including painting, sculpture, and video, to address themes of perception and representation. His works often deploy a range of painting techniques drawn omnivorously from Hollywood set painting, commercial sign painting, automotive airbrushing, and other traditions. The city of Los Angeles serves as a frequent setting and subject, given homage through references to roadside signage, car culture, fantastical sunsets, and other aspects of Angeleno visual culture. Recurring metaphors such as windows, doors, gates, and and walls are often used in Gomez’s work as part of an investigation into the role of context in the distribution and legibility of images in the 21st century. Gomez holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles among others. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Patrick Martinez
Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, and at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Rollins Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Museo del Barrio, among others.
Lynell George
Lynell George is an award-winning L.A.-based journalist, essayist, and author. Her work explores social issues and human behavior, as well as urban histories, visual art, music and literature. A former staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, her pieces have appeared in Sierra, Alta: A Journal of Alta California, The New York Times, Oxford American, and High Country News, among many other publications. She is the author of three books of nonfiction: No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels, After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, and A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, which was a 2021 Hugo Award Finalist.
This program is part of the Lunder Institute @ initiative and is co-presented by the Lunder Institute for American Art, a part of the Colby Museum of Art. Lunder Institute@ invites institutions to be in conversation with one another and challenges them to look critically at American art, its history, its future and its evolution.
IMAGE (from left to right): Sayre Gomez, Patrick Martinez, and Lynell George.
Meet Our 2025–26 Fellows
in NewsJoin Lunder Institute @ The Broad
in NewsA newly commissioned music, visual, and spoken word performance that invites us to consider the meaning and importance of reconciliation, featuring Indigenous musical artists Lynn Daphne Rudolph and Lazaro Arvizu, Jr.
Drawing upon The Broad’s reforestation project, Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Joseph Beuys’s social sculptures in post-World War II Germany, Tongva educator and musician Lazaro Arvizu, Jr. (Los Angeles) and Khoi Khoi violist Lynn Daphne Rudolph (Johannesburg) will perform a new work that will bring us closer to the land and the practices of its original caretakers as they reveal how their creative practices empower them to reanimate their respective Indigenous cultures.
As part of the performance, followed by a more engaged discussion, Arvizu and Rudolph will invite the audience into a creative call-and-response and a dialogue that focuses on what reconciliation means today in Tovaangar—or what we now call Los Angeles. This work speaks to the practice and understanding of art making in Indigenous and Native cultures.
This Lunder Institute @ program is co-presented and co-commissioned by Lunder Institute and The Broad. Unsettled Voices continues The Broad’s partnership with the Lunder Institute, which will host its annual summer think tank series in 2025, centering performance art in American Art. One think tank will be curated by The Broad’s Director of Audience Engagement Edward Patuto. Unsettled Voices is also part of the Los Angeles residency of The Centre for The Less Good Idea hosted by The Broad, The Nimoy at CAP, UCLA, and The Wallis.
Performance: Unsettled Voices
Sunday, February 2, 2025
1 pm—3 pm
Oculus Hall at The Broad
Get Tickets
Lazaro Arvizu, Jr.
Lazaro Arvizu, Jr. makes and plays musical instruments that are Indigenous to Coastal Southern California. The sound influences from his cultural heritage and an interrogation of important topics create a meaningful musical experience. “My music is derived from a conversation of humans and nature interrupted by the urban setting.” Arvizu, Jr. is an artist, educator, musician, and researcher dedicated to the culture of the first people of Los Angeles. Born in the Los Angeles Basin, he is knowledgeable of the landscape and cosmology of the Gabrielino culture. He has worked for over 20 years facilitating creative and meaningful cultural experiences to people of all ages and walks of life, in many venues. Lazaro has been working with The Broad on its Pacific Standard Time Project, Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar, and the accompanying education programs that teach students about Tongva knowledge, ways of living with nature, and the importance of native plants.
Lynn Daphne Rudolph
Lynn Daphne Rudolph is an award-winning violist and internationally acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist from South Africa. Daphne’s unique artistic approach examines how sound can serve as a transformative element within the context of Western art practices. Daphne is drawn to sound as protest to express and transmute the injustices of colonialism, apartheid, and imperialism. As a performer whose work is rooted in research, one of the many ways they choose to explore sound as protest, is through improvisation as a form of liberation. “To explore beyond the limitations of conditioned beliefs, is to resist colonial philosophies.” Daphne is the national title holder for the South African Strings Foundation Competition in 2022 as well as the international winner of the Mabel Quick International Competition in 2019. Most recently, Daphne has been awarded the Mail and Guardian prize as the Top 200 Young South Africans for Art and Entertainment. Recent works include Daphne’s sound-based resistance piece, “Dop is my Taal,” at William Kentridge’s “Centre for the Less Good Idea,” shedding light on the historical significance of the “dop system” (alcohol system) as a tool for colonialism and the erasure of Indigenous communities. Through this piece, Daphne is able to offer a South African audience the opportunity to explore their own means of resistance towards the apartheid system and question their individual relationship to protest. Daphne stands as a prominent figure in the world of classical music and sound art, using their art to explore, challenge, and contribute to important conversations around identity, colonialism, and social justice.
Photos courtesy of the artists.
Lunder Institute @ Colby College Museum of Art
in General NewsMeet Our 2024–25 Fellows
in General NewsWe are excited to announce that Dylan Robinson and Legacy Russell have been selected for yearlong fellowships with the Lunder Institute for American Art. Robinson and Russell are each multifaceted scholars whose practices include curatorial, scholarly, and creative aspects. Both fellowships will begin this month and span a full year, including opportunities for engagement with Colby’s campus community during the upcoming academic year.
Robinson is a Stó:lō scholar and artist, and member of the Skwah First Nation. His curatorial work includes Soundings, a touring exhibition that features an ever-growing number of art-scores by Indigenous artists. Other work includes Caring for Our Ancestors, a project that seeks to reconnect kinship with Indigenous life incarcerated in museums. His book Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies examines Indigenous and settler colonial practices of listening.
Russell is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Executive Director & Chief Curator of the experimental arts institution The Kitchen. She will utilize her fellowship to advance her research on what she calls “networked” or “memetic” Blackness—the ways in which Black visual vernacular transmits memetically through and beyond cybercultures as a form of data transfer. Rising out of the thought surrounding her new book BLACK MEME, she is keen to take a new turn in spiraling outward from that research and instead explore further how the framework of the “meme” is applied as a form of performative cultural expression.
Image: Dylan Robinson; Legacy Russell, photo by Mina Alyeshmerni.
Join the Lunder Institute @ the MFA
in General NewsJoin the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art on Thursday, on Thursday, May 23, for New Discourses for Folk and Self-Taught Art, the fifth of six Lunder Institute @ programs to be held at museums around the country. This symposium will promote discourses around new understandings and reception of folk and self-taught art for the twenty-first century.
This symposium will bring together leading art experts to explore new definitions for folk and self-taught art in the 21st century and how the equitable integration of art into museums promotes cultural competency by deepening appreciation for art and people from diverse backgrounds.
Speakers:
Dr. Gabrielle A. Berlinger, folklorist and associate professor of American Studies and Folklore, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kinshasha Holman Conwill, deputy director emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Culture
Jori Finkel, New York Times writer and American art critic
Lonnie B. Holley, American artist
Moderated by Michael J. Bramwell, Joyce Linde Curator of Folk and Self-taught Art
Reserve your free tickets here
This program is part of Lunder Institute@, co-presented by the Lunder Institute for American Art, an initiative of the Colby Museum of Art. Lunder Institute@ brings together artists and leaders of prominent American art museums to look critically at American art, its history, its future, and its evolution, and to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art?
IMAGE: Sam Doyle, Jackie Robinson (detail), about 1983. Paint on found, weathered, corrugated roofing tin. M. Theresa B. Hopkins Fund, Harry Wallace Anderson Fund, and Robert Jordan Fund.
Watch Lunder Institute @The Addison
in General NewsLast week, the Lunder Institute joined the Addison Gallery of American Art of American Art for Defining American Art: Then and Now, the fourth Lunder Institute @ conversation of 2024.
The Addison’s founding history provided a snapshot into the state—and stakes—of American art in the 1920s and 30s. Defining American Art: Then and Now is a two-part symposium that takes the Addison’s own formation as a case study to track evolving notions of American art over the last century, with special attention to questions of citizenship and national identity as they inform the field today.
This program is part of Lunder Institute @, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art. Lunder Institute @ programs invite thought leaders at the nation’s most prominent art institutions to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art? These convenings promote discourse leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions around what American art is and what impacts its production, scholarship, and research.
Dwayne Tomah Named a 2024 Lunder Institute Fellow
in General NewsThe Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art is pleased to announce that it has selected Dwayne Tomah, a Passamaquoddy language teacher and keeper of culture, for a year-long fellowship to support his community-based practice.
As the youngest fluent speaker of the Passamaquoddy language, his life has been dedicated to language and culture preservation. Tomah has edited the Passamaquoddy dictionary and worked to help create his tribe’s Passamaquoddy language app for iOS. He is currently working with the Library of Congress on translating the Passamaquoddy Wax Cylinders. These recordings are the first recordings in the world of Native languages. They were recorded in 1890 by Jesse Walter Fewkes, who borrowed the device from the inventor Thomas Edison.
Tomah has served on the Passamaquoddy Tribal Council and has been involved in repatriation and Land Back issues. He shares historical truth regarding the Doctrine of Discovery from an Indigenous perspective, as well as Native legends through song and dance. In collaboration with Colby Arts, the Lunder Institute will organize multiple points of engagement with him over the course of his fellowship.
Join the Lunder Institute @ the Addison Gallery
in General NewsJoin the Addison Gallery of American Art of American Art and the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art for Defining American Art: Then and Now the fourth Lunder Institute @ conversation of 2024.
The Addison’s founding history provides a snapshot into the state—and stakes—of American art in the 1920s and 30s. Defining American Art: Then and Now is a two-part symposium that takes the Addison’s own formation as a case study to track evolving notions of American art over the last century, with special attention to questions of citizenship and national identity as they inform the field today.
This program is part of Lunder Institute@, co-presented by the Lunder Institute for American Art, an initiative of the Colby Museum of Art.
Lunder Institute@ brings together artists and leaders of prominent American art museums to look critically at American art, its history, its future, and its evolution, and to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art?
Read more
Watch Lunder Institute @The Broad
in General NewsThis weekend, The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, presented Making The Un-Private Collection: Sayre Gomez + Patrick Martinez + Lynell George, the second of six Lunder Institute @ programs at museums around the country.
The first Un-Private Collection conversation of 2024 features Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) exhibition artists Sayre Gomez and Patrick Martinez, moderated by noted author and native Angelino Lynell George. Gomez and Martinez’s paintings are emblematic of a new generation of artists using the visual language of Los Angeles as inspiration for their creative practice. Martinez’s paintings incorporate architectural elements to indicate and preserve identity and culture for the Latinx community as the landscape of the city changes. Gomez’s artworks portray the passage of time and urban decay that looms over the city through faded signage, as well as the neglected and vacant buildings he encounters. The artists and George discussed Los Angeles as a creative landscape and how their artworks are shaped by it. Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist, and author, whose 2020 book A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler was a finalist for a Hugo Award. Special Thanks to Leading Partner East West Bank
This program is part of Lunder Institute @, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art. Lunder Institute @ programs invite thought leaders at the nation’s most prominent art institutions to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art? These convenings promote discourse leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions around what American art is and what impacts its production, scholarship, and research.
Join the Lunder Institute @ Crystal Bridges
in General NewsJoin Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art for Bite-Sized Conversations, the third Lunder Institute @ conversation of 2024.
American art is dynamic! Are you curious about how Crystal Bridges thinks about the pressing issues of American Art? How are new directions in American art reflected in our collection? How will multiple perspectives impact our new galleries?
Bite-Sized Conversations is an evening of short conversations that showcase the work and stories of regional artists Danielle Hatch, Linda Nguyen Lopez, and Kalyn Barnoski. Each conversation between an artist and a Crystal Bridges curator will be paired with either a beverage, tasty treat, or a craft activity. The curators leading the program include Curator of Contemporary Art Alejo Benedetti, Windgate Curator of Craft Jen Padgett, and Curator of Indigenous Art Jordan Poorman Cocker.
Tickets are $25 ($20 for members, free for students), reserve your spot online or call Crystal Bridges guest services at (479) 657-2335. Tickets include one alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage and curated hors d’oeuvre. Read more
Watch Lunder Institute @ the deYoung Museum
in General NewsThis weekend, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, in collaboration with the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, presented Making America: Conversations on Creative Work + Freedom of Expression, the first of six Lunder Institute @ programs at museums around the country.
Invited guests examined the state of American art through the lens of radical imagining and collective care in a pair of discussions featuring artists, curators, and interpretation specialists. Together, participants explored the responsibility of art workers in the face of censorship, the aftermath of the reversal of affirmative action, and ongoing assaults on education and freedom of expression. Moving beyond the buzzwords of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion, these conversations challenged both speakers and visitors to reassess the possibilities of creative work in shaping American life and discourse.
Watch below.
A conversation on interpreting American art
This conversation considers the role of art museum interpretation professionals in shaping the narrative of American art within the current socio-political climate.
Featuring Lisa Silberstein (she/her), manager of learning, experience, and programming in the area of experience development at the Oakland Museum of California and Erica Gangsei (she/they), director of interpretive media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, moderatef by Abram Jackson, director of interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
A conversation on creativity + defiance in American art
This conversation explores the role of the artist, producing creative work, and meaning-making in the face of threats to freedom of expression. Featuring American Artist, Diedrick Brackens, and Rashaad Newsome, moderated by Devin Malone, director of public programs and community engagement at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
This program is part of Lunder Institute @, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art. Lunder Institute @ programs invite thought leaders at the nation’s most prominent art institutions to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art? These convenings promote discourse leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions around what American art is and what impacts its production, scholarship, and research.
Join the Lunder Institute @ The Broad
in General NewsJoin The Broad and the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art for The Un-Private Collection: Sayre Gomez + Patrick Martinez + Lynell George, the first Un-Private Collection conversation of 2024. Featuring Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) exhibition artists Sayre Gomez and Patrick Martinez, and moderated by noted author and native Angelino Lynell George. Gomez and Martinez’s paintings are emblematic of a new generation of artists using the visual language of Los Angeles as inspiration for their creative practice. Martinez’s paintings incorporate architectural elements to indicate and preserve identity and culture for the Latinx community as the landscape of the city changes. Gomez’s artworks portray the passage of time and urban decay that looms over the city through faded signage, as well as the neglected and vacant buildings he encounters. The artists and George will discuss Los Angeles as a creative landscape and how their artworks are shaped by it. Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist, and author, whose 2020 book A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler was a finalist for a Hugo Award.
The program will also be available to view on YouTube both during and after the conversation.
The Un-Private Collection: Sayre Gomez + Patrick Martinez + Lynell George
Saturday, March 2, 2–3:30 pm
Tickets: $15
Oculus Hall at The Broad
221 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California
Sayre Gomez
Sayre Gomez (b. 1982, Chicago, IL) works across mediums, including painting, sculpture, and video, to address themes of perception and representation. His works often deploy a range of painting techniques drawn omnivorously from Hollywood set painting, commercial sign painting, automotive airbrushing, and other traditions. The city of Los Angeles serves as a frequent setting and subject, given homage through references to roadside signage, car culture, fantastical sunsets, and other aspects of Angeleno visual culture. Recurring metaphors such as windows, doors, gates, and and walls are often used in Gomez’s work as part of an investigation into the role of context in the distribution and legibility of images in the 21st century. Gomez holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles among others. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Patrick Martinez
Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, and at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Rollins Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Museo del Barrio, among others.
Lynell George
Lynell George is an award-winning L.A.-based journalist, essayist, and author. Her work explores social issues and human behavior, as well as urban histories, visual art, music and literature. A former staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, her pieces have appeared in Sierra, Alta: A Journal of Alta California, The New York Times, Oxford American, and High Country News, among many other publications. She is the author of three books of nonfiction: No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels, After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, and A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, which was a 2021 Hugo Award Finalist.
This program is part of the Lunder Institute @ initiative and is co-presented by the Lunder Institute for American Art, a part of the Colby Museum of Art. Lunder Institute@ invites institutions to be in conversation with one another and challenges them to look critically at American art, its history, its future and its evolution.
IMAGE (from left to right): Sayre Gomez, Patrick Martinez, and Lynell George.
Taking off the White Gloves: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O’Grady
in General NewsThe Lunder Institute for American Art is incredibly excited to partner with the Davis Museum at Wellesley College for 𝘛𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘎𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘖𝘧𝘧: 𝘈 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘚𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘖’𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘺 ‘𝟻𝟻. This performance series features six multidisciplinary artists—Dominique Duroseau, M. Lamar, Tsedaye Makonnen, Nyugen E. Smith , Ayana Evans, and Eleanor Kipping—to accompany the Davis Museum’s exhibition 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘖’𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘺: 𝘉𝘰𝘵𝘩/𝘈𝘯𝘥.
As one of Wellesley College’s most esteemed alumnae in the arts, O’Grady will be celebrated with an opening on celebration on Thursday, February 8, featuring Dear BlaQness: emotionally nude. but BEAUTIFUL you are. [As. Is.] worthy of love, a performance by current Lunder Institute fellow Dominique Duroseau, and a symposium on Friday, February 9, featuring Funeral Doom Spiritual, a performance by M. Lamar.
Additional performances will take place throughout the spring semester, with Tsedaye Makonnen and Nyugen E. Smith appearing in separate performances on Wednesday, March 6, Ayana Evans on Thursday, March 7, and Eleanor Kipping on Saturday, May 25.
See the full performance schedule, including times and locations here.
The invited artists, who first convened as the performance art cohort at the Lunder Institute for American Art’s 2023 Summer Think Tank, will pay tribute to O’Grady’s inspiration and legacy, with performances scheduled for February, March, and May on Wellesley’s campus.
All performances will be free and open to the all.
This performance art series is organized by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College with support from the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College’s Committee on Lectures and Cultural Events, the Art Department, and the Office of the Provost. It is made possible in part through the support and partnership of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art and the Colby Arts Office.
IMAGE: (top row, left to right) Dominique Duroseau, M. Lamar, Tsedaye Makonnen; (bottom row, left to right) Nyugen E. Smith , Ayana Evans, and Eleanor Kipping
Join the Lunder Institute @ the deYoung Museum
in General NewsExamine the state of American art through the lens of radical imagining and collective care. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, in collaboration with the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, present Making America: Conversations on Creative Work + Freedom of Expression, an afternoon of discussion featuring artists, curators, and interpretation specialists. Together, participants will explore the responsibility of art workers in the face of censorship, the aftermath of the reversal of affirmative action, and ongoing assaults on education and freedom of expression. Moving beyond the buzzwords of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion, these discussions will challenge both speakers and visitors to reassess the possibilities of creative work in shaping American life and discourse.
Making America: Conversations on Creative Work + Freedom of Expression
Saturday, February 10, 11:30 am–3:15 pm
Koret Auditorium, deYoung Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, California
Schedule:
11:30 am \ A Conversation on Interpreting American Art
Livestream here.
This conversation considers the role of art museum interpretation professionals in shaping the narrative of American art within the current socio-political climate.
Featured speakers:
Moderator:
Abram Jackson, director of interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
2 pm \ A Conversation on Creativity and Defiance in American Art
Livestream here.
This conversation explores the role of the artist, producing creative work, and meaning-making in the face of threats to freedom of expression.
Featured speakers:
Moderator:
Devin Malone, director of public programs and community engagement at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
This program is part of Lunder Institute @, an initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art. Lunder Institute @ programs invite thought leaders at the nation’s most prominent art institutions to engage publicly with a single question: What is the state of American art? These convenings promote discourse leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions around what American art is and what impacts its production, scholarship, and research.
This event is free and open to all. Seating is limited and unassigned. Tickets will be distributed in front of the Koret Auditorium starting one hour before the program begins. Program admission does not include admission to the museum.
IMAGE: Rashaad Newsome, Thirst Trap (detail), 2020. Collage on paper in custom mahogany and resin artist frame with automotive paint, 45 1/4 x 43 11/16 x 4 1/2 in. (114.935 x 110.966 x 11.43 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, a gift from the Svane Family Foundation, 2022.26.24a-b. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photograph by Randy Dodson
Jessa Rae Growing Thunder Named a 2024 Lunder Institute Ossorio Fellow
in General NewsThe Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art is pleased to announce that artist Jessa Rae Growing Thunder (Dakoda/Nakoda) is the recipient of the 2024 Alfonso Ossorio Creative Production Grant and will serve as a Lunder Institute fellow for the coming year.
Established in 2019 supported by the Ossorio Foundation, the Alfonso Ossorio Creative Production Grant provides financial support to artists affiliated with the Colby Museum and its Lunder Institute to further their intellectual pursuits, research, and the creation of new artworks that expand the boundaries of American art.
Growing Thunder is a third-generation beadwork and quillwork artist from the Fort Peck Assiniboine/Sioux tribes and a Great Plains tribal art historian raised by strong matriarchs. Following the path of her ancestors, she practices beadwork and quillwork as a way of life—one that is deeply connected to cultural knowledge, worldviews, and past, present, and future generations of Dakoda/Nakoda people.
In addition to her creative practice, she has consulted for numerous institutions, including the Autry Museum of the American West, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Baltimore Art Museum. She contributed research and didactics to the Colby Museum’s recent exhibition, Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village, for which she wrote interpretive labels on several pieces of historic beadwork featured in the galleries. In 2022, the Colby Museum acquired her piece, Assiniboine Pipe Bag, an acquisition that represented the museum’s first purchase of contemporary beadwork.
Drawing on her experience as a mother of two young daughters, Growing Thunder will utilize her fellowship to explore the impact of motherhood on her practice, and the connection between beadwork, quillwork, and expressions of mothering, love, and kinship. She will reflect on her own transition into motherhood through experimentation with color, texture, design, and multi-sensory elements within her work. Growing Thunder’s scholarly research practice will also contribute to these lines of inquiry by engaging historical Dakoda/Nakoda objects and ways of making to unpack how the functionality and designs of beadwork and quillwork contribute to the confidence and success of Dakoda/Nakoda children.
Her work has been shown in multiple museums, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Heard Museum, and the Joslyn Art Museum, and she has previously been an educator for the University of California-Davis, University of New Mexico, and Central New Mexico Community College. Growing Thunder was the cofounder of the Native American and Indigenous Advisory Committee to the University of California-Davis Chancellor, as well as the Save Wiyabi Project, which conducts community-based advocacy focusing on sexual/domestic violence against Indigenous women. She holds a doctorate in Native American studies from the University of California-Davis and was a 2022 Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow, working on a project that promoted traditional materials used in quillwork through community-based oral histories, land-based knowledge, and Indigenous sciences.
Growing Thunder is a member of the Growing Thunder Collective, an artist collective comprised of Joyce, Juanita, Jessa Rae, Camryn, and numerous Growing Thunder grandchildren who uphold traditional Dakoda/Nakoda art forms, just as their grandmothers did before them. The Growing Thunder Collective recently received the 2023 SHIFT Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts Award.