Centering Indigenous Voices in the Gallery 

In developing the award-winning 2019 Focus Project exhibition, The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology, the BGC Gallery was honored to collaborate with an Indigenous organization, the U’mista Cultural Centre of Alert Bay, British Columbia, to which the show travelled after its New York run. The exhibition tells the remarkable story of a foundational ethnographic book, the two men who wrote it, and the legacy of the vast archival and museum collections they assembled. Dedicated to the survival of the cultural heritage of Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw people, U’mista itself survives largely on summer tourism to this remote island community. We invite you to enjoy the exhibition’s extensive online materials and to learn more about the U’mista Cultural Centre.

In the fall of 2021, Bard Graduate Center will open a Focus Project exhibition titled Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest. Curated by Hadley Jensen, Bard Graduate Center/American Museum of Natural History Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Anthropology, this exhibition investigates the history and transformation of weaving traditions in the region through the American Museum of Natural History’s collection of Navajo textiles, by bringing into dialogue multiple aspects of craft process, including the tangible and the intangible, the visual and the tacit. See the exhibition preview  and learn more about the impact of COVID-19 on Navajo artists and arts organizations.

Bard Graduate Center respectfully acknowledges our presence in Lenapehoking—the ancestral homeland of the Lenni-Lenape—and recognizes New York City as a past, present, and future crossroads for many Indigenous people.

Please join us for Eileen Gray: New Discoveries, a members-only virtual event on May 28. Learn more about the event, and become a member today!