Celebrating Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month 2024
A Q&A on The Block Museum of Art’s Upcoming Exhibition
Chicagoland is known as Zhegagoynak in the Potawatomi language. The region is the traditional homeland of the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations, as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, and Fox tribes. Today the city of Chicago is home to the third-largest urban Indigenous population in the United States. Too often, these Indigenous perspectives have been absent from art narratives about the region. In a new exhibition Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland, The Block Museum of Art confronts that disparity by sharing the views of four Indigenous artists with connections to the city and surrounding area.
The Block team created the exhibition in collaboration with guest curator Jordan Poorman Cocker, curator of Native American and Indigenous art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and four Indigenous artists: Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Tribe of Pottawatomi/Ottawa), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi).
Highlighting more than 80 works by the four artists, as well as 29 primarily Indigenous artists of the region, the exhibition will be on display from January 25 through July 13, 2025. Woven Being will explore confluences that have shaped and continue to impact Indigenous creative practices in the region.
Lisa Corrin, the Ellen Philips Katz Executive Director of The Block, shared her perspective on this meaningful project.
What will excite the alumni audience about the Woven Being exhibition?
This exhibition has a unique collaborative approach. It was shaped by four Indigenous artists who worked together with The Block team and our guest curator.
Visitors will be surprised when they learn how the artists have woven together their own work with works of art by other Native American artists and non-Indigenous artists to center the Indigenous experience. Their choices have created a beautiful ensemble reflecting their collective vision of place and shared inspirations. These shared themes include kinship between natural materials, the preservation of land and language, relations across landways and waterways, and the weaving together of ancestral ties across past, present, and future.
At the heart of our work is knowledge creation. The publication for Woven Being is going to be a lasting legacy of the exhibition, the relationships, and the perspectives that have come together during development over nearly five years.
How does the exhibit build on themes or approaches that The Block has been trying to develop in recent years?
We believe we can deepen the resonance of our work by making decisions grounded in our time and place. We consider the needs of the current moment and its connections to the past. We reflect on our place in all its richness and complexity: within Northwestern and the context of our region, and as part of the global community. We think about our place on Indigenous lands. To that end, for a number of years, The Block has been developing a strong relationship with the Northwestern Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR). CNAIR has an artist-in-residence program, so we share a commitment to the role of art and artists on campus. We have also been acquiring work by contemporary Indigenous artists for the collection that is used in teaching, including exciting works by Andrea Carlson, Rosalie Favell, Tom Jones, and Cara Romero.
What have you learned while building this exhibition?
The intense collaboration between the museum staff, the artists, and our guest curator has taught us what a true partnership with shared decision-making can look like. We have learned about the region’s Indigenous history and about Indigenous working methods that prioritize collaboration, reciprocity, and sustained dialogue. We have been privileged to connect with artists who reflect Native traditions while realizing thriving Native futures. We are excited to continue building on our experience as we deepen our relationships with CNAIR and local Indigenous communities.
Visit the Woven Being exhibition at The Block, which is free and open to all, from January 25 through July 13, 2025. The museum is located at 40 Arts Circle Drive in Evanston, Illinois.
All are welcome to attend a virtual program on January 16, 2025. The Block will host a lunchtime talk on a piece from the collection, the Cherokee Burden Basket: Singing a Song for Balance (2012), created by artist Shan Goshorn. The discussion will be led by The Block’s Terra Foundation of American Art fellows, Marisa Cruz Branco (Isleta Pueblo) and Teagan Harris (Cherokee Nation). These fellows joined the team at The Block in July 2024 to work on Woven Being, which is supported by the Terra Foundation. The lunchtime talk is also part of the One Book One Northwestern community-wide reading program. Register for the virtual talk on the Zoom webinar platform.
For more information about Woven Being and the collaborating artists, visit The Block exhibition page.