Student Exhibitions at the Museum

Innovation and Resilience Across Three Generations of Wabanaki Basket-Making

Curated by Amanda Cassano ’22, Sunshine Eaton ’22, and Shandiin Largo ’23, members of the Native American Students Association at Bowdoin College.

(February 1, 2022 – September 18, 2022, Markell Gallery)

The exhibition seeks to highlight the dynamic tradition of Wabanaki basket-making, reflecting Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac artists’ unique styles and designs. The exhibition brings together historical and contemporary baskets, which represent some of the finest examples of Wabanaki artistry in recent times. While the Wabanaki have been weaving baskets since time immemorial, when Wabanaki were forced off their land under European colonization, basketmaking became a means of economic independence and resistance to assimilation. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Wabanaki artists innovated traditional utilitarian forms to meet tourists’ tastes, leading to a new and vibrant style of basketmaking—fancy baskets.

While basket-making continues to be a source of economic empowerment for Wabanaki communities, basket-making remains a powerful form of individual artistic expression and vehicle for sharing generational knowledge. Over the past few generations, artists such as Molly Neptune Parker, Clara Neptune Keezer, and Fred Tomah have significantly influenced young generations of basket-makers, shaping the path of Wabanaki basket-making traditions for generations to come.

In addition to reconnecting with Indigenous forms of artistic and cultural expression, Wabanaki basket makers have partnered with natural resource managers and forestry scientists to create the Ash Task Force. In this way, community members and scholars are working to de-colonize Western academies and systems that have ignored the value of Indigenous knowledge and culture. The Ash Task Force works to combat an invasive beetle called the Emerald Ash-borer, which threatens the future of Wabanaki baskets’ primary material, brown ash. In protecting and promoting Indigenous artistry and culture, the process of de-colonizing Western and Eurocentric systems of knowledge has begun.

Explore the online version of the exhibition here:

https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/digital/innovation-resilience/index.html

Creeping Pavement: Depictions of an Urbanizing America

Creeping Pavement explores artists’ changing attitudes toward urban spaces over the course of the late nineteenth to twentieth centuries, as depicted through a variety of media. This exhibition was curated by members of the 2019–2020 Student Museum Collective—Sylvia Bosco ’21, Joseph Hilleary ’20, Cassie Jackson ’22, Sabrina Lin ’21, and Ben Wu ’18—and is supported by the Becker Fund for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

In America, cities are places of contrast and connection. They bring people together, yet often highlight the tensions that divide us. Cities are home to both the wealthy and the least privileged. Inhabitants hail from near and far, yet all see themselves as a part of the city’s identity. Thus, the art created when these urban centers developed offers a unique perspective on American life in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Tracing the evolution of the American city as it grew into its own distinct environment, this exhibition explores the many ways artists reacted to the rapid urbanization of American life. From the landscapes that foreshadow the industrialization and commercialization to come, to more recent urban views, the selected works of art interrogate the concept of the city, asking: Where did the city come from? Who was it intended for? How did it create and change the fabric of community? Artists highlight the many different facets of a perpetually developing urban landscape, investigating the ever-changing qualities that characterize the city today. The artists encourage us to look critically, quizzically, and lovingly at big cities like New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. These images inspire us to find continuity and to celebrate our shared humanity, even as we still grapple with the social, political, and environmental ramifications of urbanity. If recent events have demonstrated the vulnerability and even the fragility of cities and their inhabitants, these photographs from the past provide a powerful reminder of their resilience.

Site: https://bowdoin.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/2020/creeping-pavement.html

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