To support the planning process of Shifting Boundaries: New Views on American Landscapes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA). Shifting Boundaries offers an important new platform for previously underrepresented constituencies to consider human relationships to the natural world using the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art collections. Shifting Boundaries uses a model of community curation to make these works of art directly relevant to contemporary audiences through the lens of the environment. After the project, NMAA, with feedback from the curatorial group, will create a resource documenting the collaborative process, which will help both the institution and the field at large reflect on what worked well and what did not. This resource, which could take the form of a website or a conference presentation, aids other institutions considering similar projects.

To support the permanent collection reinstallation at Maguire Hall, Woodmere Art Museum’s newly acquired building. The collection reinstallation focuses on Philadelphia, with an emphasis on its Black and Brown communities, which together make up the majority demographic of the city. New installations offer visitors, educators, and community members expanded opportunities to build new relationships with works of art and the collections, allowing the museum to expand its explorations of the themes and ideas that make Philadelphia distinct. A digital scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

To support Indigenous Arts of the Americas at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. The new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art includes galleries for collections transitioning from the current Snite Museum of Art, including a suite of galleries dedicated to Indigenous Arts of the Americas, beginning with the North American Art gallery, transitioning into the Mesoamerican gallery, and ending in the Central and South American gallery. The North American Art gallery celebrates contemporary Indigenous artists working in various media. Each contemporary piece is presented alongside historical works created in the same medium, showing how these artists are honoring traditional artistic practices. A collection-highlight catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

To support the American Wing Centennial Reinstallation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met celebrates its 100th anniversary with its first major reinstallation since 2012, reflecting new and evolving departmental leadership and staff, including Patricia Norby, associate curator of Native American art, along with an emphasis on cross-departmental collaborations. The overall reinstallation is informed by current curatorial thinking, expansive scholarship, and external community voices related to the ongoing redefinition of a broadly conceived American art, an effort in which the Wing is in the vanguard. An issue of The Met Bulletin, authored by Associate Curator Alyce Perry Englund, accompanies the exhibition.

To support Haudenosaunee Continuity, Innovation and Resilience at the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC). The exhibition explores themes of Haudenosaunee cultural continuity and change, identity, and sovereignty through featured artists and artworks, both historical and contemporary. Envisioned and curated by Jamie Jacobs (Tonawanda Seneca, Turtle Clan), Rock Foundation collections manager, the exhibition reimagines a 2,200 square foot space on the museum’s second floor, where objects were deinstalled in early 2022 for the repatriation of cultural items back to their communities of origin. The project is a collaboration between nationals from numerous sovereign nations comprising the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the RMSC, and the Rock Foundation. The exhibition includes both written and spoken text in English, with the inclusion of some Seneca and Mohawk language.

To support Out of the Archive: Works by Miné Okubo at the Riverside Community College District. Out of the Archive is a collection reinstallation project of approximately 25–30 of Okubo’s works currently in the Center’s archive, none of which have been exhibited for the general public. The collection reinstallation contributes to a new exhibition that includes 60–70 of Okubo’s works and a renewed look at her diverse body of art. Themes such as the power of documenting lived experiences; the intersection of gender, race, and labor; the politics of citizenship and belonging; and activism and social justice provide a framing for the critical (re)reading and (re)imagining of Okubo’s work.

To support About Us: Planning for A Community Reinstallation of the Collection at the Queens Museum, Local Authority (working title). The Queens Museum’s (QM) objective is to host an exhibition, designed with input from community members, to align with its vision of becoming a more accessible, equitable, and situated museum. The collection includes more than 3,000 modern and contemporary artworks. The planning and review process reconsiders the stories these artworks can tell and how one might reframe such stories as prompts for dialogue.

To support a Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ (PAFA) convening of scholars and artists for input on a permanent collection reinstallation. The symposium engages in critical dialogues, looks at the project in the context of civic and national conversations about the founding of the US, and considers PAFA’s role in crafting narratives and myths of American identity in Philadelphia for almost 250 years. The goals of the permanent collection reinstallation are to present the collection in ways that help audiences reconsider the history of American art. New understandings can be elicited via the presentation of new visual and intellectual contexts aimed at unsettling what viewers think they know about historical art, and through expansion of the canon to include art that has been overlooked due to the materials or themes the artists addressed or the marginalized background of the artists themselves.

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.

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 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.