Curators on Curating: “A Map is Not the Territory”: Unsettling the Curatorial Voice in Shaped by the Loom
Hadley Jensen with Rapheal Begay and Juliana Fagua-Arias
Thursday, May 13, 2021
12 pm
Pay What You Wish*

Curators on Curating goes behind the scenes of upcoming BGC exhibitions to give a window into the curatorial process. We invite you to think with us about exhibition making, material histories, and storytelling.

Join Hadley Jensen, Rapheal Begay, and Juliana Fagua-Arias as they consider the dynamic opportunities and unique challenges of curating for a digital platform. Their discussion will provide a window into the curatorial process that underpins Bard Graduate Center’s upcoming online exhibition, Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest, the first virtual exhibition to showcase the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)’s collection of Indigenous textiles from the greater American Southwest, set to launch in spring 2022. By focusing on creating a collaborative exhibition, produced with students, scholars, artists, and descendent communities, Jensen is both enabling new forms of curatorial scholarship and centering Indigenous perspectives and storytelling in exhibition interpretation. Shaped by the Loom places Indigenous aesthetics and ways of knowing at the center of Navajo textile production, highlighting the localized and land-based knowledge systems that guide the process behind the finished product. Rather than reifying the object, this perspective foregrounds the active and generative practices that shape and animate this art form. Striving to bring specificity to the documentation and interpretation of AMNH’s historic collection, this innovative digital project elevates the voices of contemporary Native artists and makers to express the cultural legacy and continued vibrancy of weaving traditions in the American Southwest.

*Any donation of $1 or more gratefully accepted!