November 16, 2024–February 9, 2025

Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape

  • Museum Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Discovery Sundays: 11am-4pm each Sunday.

  • Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), Thom, Where Are the Pocumtucks (The Oxbow), 2020, oil on panel, 24⅛ × 48 × ⅞ in. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, London and New York

  • Thomas Cole, Kaaterskill Falls, 1826, oil on canvas, 25¼ × 35¼ in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, Bequest of Daniel Wadsworth, 1848.15

  • Truman T. Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Waterfall VIII, 2011, wood and metal fasteners, 82 × 80 × 64 in. Denver Art Museum, Native Arts acquisition fund, 2011.430A-N. © Truman T. Lowe

  • Thomas Cole, Landscape Scene from “The Last of the Mohicans,” 1827, oil on canvas, 33¼ × 43¼ in. Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, Gift of Stephen C. Clark, N0194.1961. Photograph by Richard Walker

  • Frederic E. Church, The Charter Oak at Hartford, ca. 1846, oil on canvas mounted on Masonite, 24 × 34¼ in. Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT, Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, 2002.1.29

Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape juxtaposes an Indigenous approach to the articulation of land with the American landscape paintings of Thomas Cole. The exhibition presents 19th-century paintings by Thomas Cole featuring Native figures, in context with Indigenous works of historic and cultural value, and artworks by contemporary Indigenous artists: Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan), Truman T. Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Alan Michelson (Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River) and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee).

Native Prospects is curated by Scott Manning Stevens, PhD / Karoniaktatsie (Akwesasne Mohawk), Associate Professor of Native American Studies and English at Syracuse University, where he is also Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program and Founding Director of the Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with original essays by the curator and Gabrielle Tayac, PhD, (Piscataway) and Joseph Mizhakiiyaasige Zordan (Bad River Ojibwe). Additionally, the publication will feature writing and plates by featured artists Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan), and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), as well as texts on Alan Michelson (Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River), by Clémence White, and Truman T. Lowe (Ho-Chunk), by Patricia Marroquin Norby, PhD, (Purépecha), Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This exhibition is on view at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site (May 4–October 27, 2024), and, after its display at the FloGris Museum, travels to the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME (March 7–July 6, 2025).

The exhibition, its tour and the accompanying publication are organized by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. The publication is produced in partnership with the Florence Griswold Museum.

Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Major support is provided by David Bury & The Bay and Paul Foundations and the Warner Foundation.

The exhibition and publication are also supported by The Cranshaw Corporation, National Endowment for the Arts, Wyeth Foundation for American Art and Becky Gochman.

Check back for a full roster of exhibition-related programming and events!