Indigenous Art Exhibitions In and Out of the Americas. Are We Learning to Listen?

In 2006, Indigenous peoples occupied Rio de Janeiro’s abandoned Antigo Museu do Indio (Old Museum of the Indian) to turn it into an “aldeia” (village) where they could transmit their living cultures. In 2016, their efforts of expanding the notion of the museum resulted in eviction. Today, Indigenous artists are receiving unprecedented visibility in scholarly publications and mainstream international exhibitions, such as recent iterations of the Bienal de São Paulo, the Venice Biennale, and Whitney Biennial. The Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, among others, have also featured the work of Indigenous artists and appointed Indigenous curators in temporary and permanent positions. This panel aims to collectively assess the impact of these Indigenous-focused projects in the practice of historians of art of the Americas. We invite proposals on current and historical exhibition and collection practices that feature Indigenous art, and on Indigenous-centered museological practices. Papers in this panel should ultimately address the questions: Are these exhibitions iterations of a fashion that surfaces periodically and is destined to fade in a couple of years? Are we finally learning to listen to the anti-colonial and decolonial practices that Indigenous artists engage with in their works? How can we contextualize and trace the trajectory of this current?

Proposed topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Exhibitions and collections of Indigenous art
• Indigenous perspectives on museum, exhibition, and collection practices
• Labeling of Indigenous art (e.g. popular, folk)
• Pre-colonial art
• Indigenismo
• Commercial galleries
• Global Indigenous art