To support Framing Freedom: The Harriet Hayden Albums at the Boston Athenaeum. This exhibition—organized by guest curator Makeda Best, the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums—explores how albums documented and performed Black identity while also symbolically constructing and reinforcing community through representation, networks, and exchange. Installed less than one mile from the Haydens’ historic home, this is the first major original exhibition to examine Black abolitionists’ public identities, private lives, visual and material culture, and social activism through the lens of a Black woman’s photograph albums. A publication that includes a variety of thematic essays and transcripts accompanies the exhibition.

To support American Art at the Brooklyn Museum (working title) at the Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition is a critical reinstallation of the American galleries at the Brooklyn Museum. The reinstallation works to disrupt traditional approaches to collection display while charting a new landscape of possibility for collections of American art in the future. Managed by Stephanie Sparling Williams, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, this project foregrounds Black Feminist approaches to institutional critique and inclusive space-making. A collection catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

To support IDENTITY REIMAGINED: Reframing La Colección at El Museo del Barrio. The year-long temporary exhibition focuses on El Museo del Barrio’s permanent collection. The exhibition’s narrative follows six main thematic groupings: Urban Experiences, Expanded Graphics, Indigenous and African Heritages, Crafts Intersection, Women Artists, and Representing Latinx. Such groupings were the subject of a series of interdisciplinary discussions held in the spring of 2022 with the support of the Terra Foundation. A publication accompanies the exhibition.

To support The Center for Object Research and Engagement (The CORE): Rethinking Global Entanglements in American Art at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. The exhibition serves as the inaugural installation of the new Center for Object Research and Engagement at the museum. The Center for Object Research and Engagement fulfills the Broad’s institutional goal of connecting people with the art of our time—grounded in the historical—in order to envision better, more equitable futures. In presenting the collection, which consists primarily of American art, emphases have been placed on groups who have been historically excluded: Black and Indigenous artists, artists of color, and women. Interactive kiosks and interpretive materials are available throughout the exhibition that help unpack the histories and narratives of the collection.

To support Creating Together: A Collaboration to Renovate the Indigenous Plateau at the High Desert Museum. Creating Together is a collaborative conversation that allows Native knowledge holders and other experts to reimagine how Indigenous Plateau artwork and cultural items are contextualized in the High Desert Museum’s permanent exhibition. Launched in 2019, this renovation uses a shared exhibition development process to arrive at new ways of interpreting the art and material culture of the Plateau (a region defined by the Columbia River and its tributaries). Content in the permanent exhibition serves as a cornerstone for associated programming, ranging from a series of exhibitions and community programs to K–12 resources and digital content.

To support Cloth as Land: Hmong Indigeneity at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC). Cloth as Land is a multi-pronged project that includes an exhibition and a convening of Hmong artists, scholars, and community members. The exhibition—part of “Making Kin,” the 2023 programming theme of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center—is guest curated by Pachia Lucy Vang, a leader in the Hmong arts community and an emerging curator based in California. This project is part of JMKAC’s longstanding commitment to the local Hmong community in the Sheboygan area (over 10% of the city’s current residents are of Hmong descent), which first took root in the 1980s. Through this exhibition, Vang presents how a sense of loss and longing for “teb chaws”—earth, country, and land—is embedded within traditions of textile arts that have been passed from generation to generation. An audio guide, along with video interviews in Hmong and English, accompanies the exhibition.

To support the reinstallation of Joslyn Art Museum’s American wing. Rooted in the concept of homeland, the newly configured displays traverse colonial borders and frame America as an international crossroads where many nations and traditions merge and collide. For the first time in the museum’s history, the American Wing centers Native American voices in the story of American art history. The reinstallation of the American Wing is occasioning new research and an innovative interpretation of the museum’s wide-ranging collection of paintings, sculptures, bead and quill embroidery, textiles, prints, and photographs. The reinstallation is accompanied by “The Natural Face of North America,” a digital platform developed in collaboration with Creighton University and the Nebraska Indian Community College and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

To support Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The exhibition draws aesthetic connections between Black artists working around the world today, aiming to expand ideas about American art by featuring artists who are examining their origins and exploring shared heritage. Imagining Black Diasporas encourages viewers to embrace several interpretations of Black Diaspora, with emphases on migration and exchange, shared Black consciousness, and worldwide solidarity networks. A scholarly publication accompanies the exhibition.

To support the first phase of a three-year project to update the permanent exhibition at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian (MCI).  Because self-representation is an essential component of this project’s research goals, MCI’s research process devoted to guiding the initial development of the permanent exhibition began with the creation of a community committee, made up of approximately 35 Eastern Band Cherokee citizens from various backgrounds. The information from the community committee meetings informed the project’s research priorities. 

To support Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The exhibition traces Indigenous narrative art from historic hides, muslins, and ledger books to new works commissioned by the National Museum of the American Indian. Organized by curator Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota), the exhibition is an example of the cultural value and importance found within NMAI’s permanent collection. Unbound provides in-depth interactive opportunities for visitors to explore individual artworks and artists. To encourage even greater audience engagement, the exhibition features a robust schedule of public programs and an audio tour featuring Native artists’ perspectives in English, Spanish, and Indigenous languages. A companion exhibition catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

To support The Wider World and Scrimshaw at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. This temporary traveling exhibition examines the global traditions of nineteenth-century carving that emerged alongside traditional maritime whaling routes connecting New England, Oceania, the Pacific Northwest, and the Arctic. Carvings from these regions are placed in conversation with “traditional” Yankee whaling scrimshaw to demonstrate cultural influence and to highlight hybrid objects and forms, as well as the global circulation of material, goods, and people along nineteenth-century whaling routes. A scholarly exhibition catalogue accompanies the exhibition.