Nicholas Galanin Aims to Change How Indigenous Art Is Understood,” Artnews, February 13, 2020

Nicholas Galanin PETER BLUM GALLERY

NICHOLAS GALANIN

Born 1979 in Sitka, Alaska Lives and works in Sitka, Alaska

EDUCATION 2007 Masters of Indigenous Visual Arts, Massey University, New Zealand 2003 B.A. Silversmithing and Jewelry Design with honors, London Guildhall University, London, United Kingdom 1999 Associate of Arts, University of Alaska Southeast, Sitka, AK 1997-2006 Traditional Master Apprenticeship with Carvers Will Burkhart, Louis Minard, Jay Miller, Wayne Price, Dave Galanin

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2021 Nicholas Galanin: Dreaming in English, Van Every Gallery, Davidson College, Davidson, NC Nicholas Galanin: White Noise, ONE/Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA Nicholas Galanin: I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), Montclair Art Museum, NJ Nicholas Galanin: I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, MT 2020 Created to Hold Power (Intellectual Property), Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK [online] Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY 2019 Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We are Right Now, Law Warschaw Gallery, Saint Paul, MN They’re Threatened by your Survival, Art Mur, Montreal, QC, Canada The Value of Sharpness: When it Falls, Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2018 Dear Listener: Works by Nicholas Galanin, The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ The Imaginary Indian, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK 2017 Indian Water: The Native American Pavilion, Venice, Italy We Dreamt Deaf, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA I Think It Goes Like This, Peters Project, Santa Fe, NM 2016 Kill The Indian, Save The Man. Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK 2015 e.g. Nicholas Galanin: We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, UT 2014 Home, Memory of Land & Space, Trench Contemporary, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2013 Ever Shoot an Indian?, The Audain Gallery, Victoria, BC, Canada The State of Being, Displaced, Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK When the Land Forgets You, How Will You Carry On?, ANAF, Anchorage, AK 2012 I Looooove Your Culture, Trench Contemporary, Vancouver BC, Canada Things Are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter, Bunnell St. Gallery, Homer, AK The Tlingit Experience, The Mckenna Museum of African American Art, New Orleans, LA 2011 Nicholas Galanin's First Law of Motion, Toronto Free Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada New Culture, Trench Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2010 Raven and the First Immigrant, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC, Canada Oblique Drift, Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Sante Fe, NM 2009 Oblique Drift, Grunt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada

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Native Preference, ANAF Gallery, Anchorage, AK 2006 What Have We Become?, Takatake Gallery, Whakatane, New Zealand

SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2021 Friction, Fabulation, Futurity: Contending with Environmental Degradation, Racial Injustice, and Pandemics, Joseloff Gallery, University of Hartford, Hartford, CT You Are Here: Bearings for Unsettled Grounds, The Donald H. Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA An Immeasurable Melody, Medicine for a Nightmare, GoMA Museum, Glasgow, Scotland Desert X 2021, Coachella Valley, CA Art and the Enviornmental Struggle, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Shifting Horizons, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Speculations on the Infrared, EFA Project Space, New York, NY 2020 World Peace, MoCA Westport, Westport, CT Living Just Enough, Goodman Gallery, London, United Kingdom We Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, The Jewish Musuem, New York, NY Democracy 2020: Craft in America, Craft in America Center, Los Angeles, CA [online] Unwrapped! 125 years of history in the Museum Natur und Mensch, Museum Natur und Mensch, Breisgau, Germany Listen Up: Northern Soundscapes, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Adapt And Pivot, Patel Gallery, Toronto, Canada Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Sanctuary, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada 2020 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past, Present, Future, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM Native Voices, 1950s to Now: Art for a New Understanding, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN 2019 Survivance And Sovereignty On Turtle Island: Engaging With Contemporary Native American Art, Kupferberg Holocaust Center, New York, NY The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY The Value of Sanctuary, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, NY Unraveling: Reimagining Colonization in the Americas, Sun Valley Center for Arts, Ketchum, ID Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS The Honolulu Biennial: To Make Wrong / Right / Now, Honolulu Museum, Honolulu, HI Aiviq and Nanuq: Sea horse and sea bear of the arctic, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK 2018 Unsettled, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, FL Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now, Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR Conflicting Heroes, Native Art Biennial, Berlin, Germany The Condor and the Eagle: Moving Forward After Standing Rock, Elisabeth Jones Art Center, Portland, OR

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

I Continue to Shape, Art Museum, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Believe, MOCA, Toronto, ON, Canada Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It, Mainsite Contemporary, Norman, OK The Abundant North: Alaska Native Films of Influence, MOCNA, Sante Fe, NM Between Beauty and Decay, Artspace New Haven, CT Monarchs Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, Bemis Center, Omaha, NE Kabul 2018: Art in Embassies Exhibition, United States Embassy Kabul, Washington, D.C. 2017 Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY We The Hell Am I, Lightyear, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY Out Of Sight, Seattle, WA Sanctuary, Fort-Site Foundation, San Francisco, CA Monarchs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE Broken Boxes, Form & Concept, Sante Fe, NM American Domain, Museum of Capitalism, Los Angeles, CA Waterline, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO Single Channel Video Installation, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. Standing Rock: Art & Solidarity, The Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA Songs From The Extraction Zones, Sante Fe Art Institute, Sante Fe, NM Converge, Reed College, Portland, OR Resistance: Art After Nature, Haverford College, Haverford, PA Native Fashion Now, National Museum of The American Indian, New York, NY Decolonizing Alaska, Corcoran School of The Arts & Design, Washington, D.C. Decolonizing Alaska, Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK This Is A Creation Story, California State University, Fresno, CA Unsettled, Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV Connective Tissue: New Approaches to Fiber in Contemporary Art, MOCNA, Sante Fe, NM My Country Tis of Thy People, You’re Dying, Radiator Arts, New York, NY View From Up Here, Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø, Norway 2016 Latitude 64, Kajaani Art Museum, Kajaani, Finland Life Size, Art Mur, Montreal, QC, Canada It’s in the Making, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada Without Boundaries: Visual Conversations, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Race and Revolution, Nolan Park, New York, NY Out of Sight, King Station, Seattle, WA What You See is What You Sweat, CoCA, Seattle, WA Light Year 16, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY From Generation to Generation: Inherited Memory and Contemporary Art, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA Indian Acts: Truths in the Age of Reconciliation, Katzman Contemporary, Toronto, Canada Kingdom, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK, Canada Contemporary Native Art Biennial, Stuart Hall Art Gallery, Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada View from Up Here, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Native Fashion Now, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR Native Fashion Now, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

Homo Faber: A Rainbow Caravan, Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan The Fifth World, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener, SK, Canada Dead Animals, or the curious occurrence of taxidermy in contemporary art, David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, RI Contemporary Native American Indian Photographers and the Legacy of Edward Curtis, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA Decolonizing Alaska, Bunnell St. Arts Center, Homer, AK 2015 Native Fashion Now, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Toioho XX, Te Manawa Museum of Art, Palmerston North, New Zealand Our Story, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK You Are On Indian Land, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ Living Alaska, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Beau Dick / Nicholas Galanin / Jeneen Frei Njootli, Macaulay Fine Art, Vancouver, BC, Canada Put A Feather On It!, Red Dot Gallery, Sante Fe, NM 60 Americans, Elga Wimmer PCC, New York, NY You Are On Indian Land, Radiator Arts, New York, NY The Fifth World, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK, Canada Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA Personalities: Fantasy and Identity Photography and New Media, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA 2014 Native Art Now, NONAM, Zürich, Switzerland Late Harvest, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Wendy Red Star’s Wild West And Congress of Rough Riders of The World, Bumbershoot, Seattle, WA Your Fest Has Ended, The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA Le Symposium International d’art-nature multidisciplinaire, de Val-David, QC, Canada Storytelling: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial, 2nd edition, ArtMur, Montreal, QC, Canada Storytelling, Ottawa School of Art, Ontario, ON, Canada Where Did It Go?, Online, www.ultraextra.org Mother/Land, Kurumaya Museum, Oyama City, Japan Twisted Path III: Questions of Balance, Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, ME This is Not a Silent Movie, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR I.M.N.D.N. - Native Arts for the 21st Century, The Art Gym, Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, OR Native American Voices, Penn Museum, Philadelphia, PA Porcelain: Breaking Tradition, Division Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada 2013 RezErect: Native Erotica, Bill Reid Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Porcelain: Breaking Tradition, Art Mur, Montreal, ON, Canada American Painting Now, WAAS Gallery, Dallas, TX RED: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Beat Nation, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada Cross Currents, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO Who Am I?, Maison des Jésuites de Sillery, QC, Canada

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

Playing with Process: Experimental Prints at the MFAH, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Sakahàn: 1st International Quinquennial of New Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada SCOPE NYC, International Contemporary Art Show, New York, NY Map(ing), Night Gallery, Phoenix, AZ This is Not a Silent Movie, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA Two Worlds Indigenous Media and Performance Festival, Royal BC Museum, Victoria, BC, Canada 2012 Process Alaska, Good Question Gallery, New York, NY Carrying on "Irregardless": Humour in Contemporary Northwest Coast Art, Bill Reid Gallery, Vancvouver, BC, Canada Indian Modernism - Art From North America, Humboldt-Forum, Berlin, Germany Beat Nation, The Power Plant, Toronto, ON, Canada Beat Nation, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada A Stake In The Ground, Art Mur, Montreal, QC, Canada Shapeshifting: Transformations In Native American Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA 2011 Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH Skin, Raw, Gallery of Architecture and Design, Winnipeg, MB, Canada KINDRED SPIRITS: Native American Influence on 20th Century Art, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY 2010 Time Based Art Festival 2010, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR It's Complicated - Art About Home, Evergreen Gallery, Olympia, WA Dry Ice, Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Sante Fe, NM 100 Records, Gallery 16, San Francisco, CA; Cinders Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, NY Thaw Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN Images Forward, Berlin Gallery, Phoenix, AZ Currents: Native American Forces In Contemporary Art, The University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO Crunchtime, York, United Kingdom Baie-Saint-Paul’s International Symposium of Contemporary Art, Baie-Saint-Paul, QC, Canada Dry Ice, Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, NJ Currents: Native American Forces In Contemporary Art, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO The Muhheakantuck in Focus, Wave Hill Gallery, New York, NY A-Y-P: Indigenous Voices Reply, Burke Museum, Seattle, WA Continuum: Vision & Creativity on the Northwest Coast, Bill Reid Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Beat Nation-Hip Hop as an Indigenous Culture, Saw Gallery/Grunt Gallery, Ottawa, ON, Canada Skabmagovat, Film Festival, Inari, Finland 2008 ImagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival, Toronto, ON, Canada Identity: Shaq'asthut Gathering Place, Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada Northern Disclosure, Bear Gallery, Fairbanks, AK (2005-2008)

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Second Lives, Museum of Art & Design, New York, NY Twisted Path, Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, ME Intersections: Native American Art in a New Light, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA 2007 Native Voices: Contemporary Indigenous Art, FiveMyles, Brooklyn, NY On The Edge, Forging New Directions In Alaska Native Art, Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK No Reservations, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT 2006 Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 2, Museum of Art & Design, New York, NY 2005 Totems To Turquoise, Natural History Museum, New York, NY 2004 Te Tataitanga Matatau, Te Manawa, Palmerston North, New Zealand He Rere Kee, Tinakori Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand 2003 Summer Show, Sir John Cass, London, United Kingdom

AWARDS 2020 2020 Soros Arts Fellowship Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award in Art 2018 Rasmuson Fellow Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellow 2017 NACF Mentor Fellow 2014 Rasmuson Fellow 2013 Eiteljorg Fellow 2012 United States Artists, USA Rasmuson Fellow Artist of the Year, Greater Sitka Arts Council 2011 Rasmuson Individual Artist Award 2008 Best Experimental Film, ImagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival, Toronto Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship 2006 1st place, Contemporary Arts, Sealaska 2003 Goldsmiths Commendation London, United Kingdom

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Art Bridges, Bentonville, AR Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE NMAI, New York, NY UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC, Canada Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Germany Musée D'Art Contemporain De Baie St-Paul, QC, Canada Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, AZ Sealaska Heritage Foundation, Juneau, AK

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Pratt Museum, Homer, AK Museum of the North, UAF, Fairbanks, AK Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK Sir John Cass, London, UK Burke Museum, Seattle, WA CN Gorman Museum, Davis, CA The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX NONAM, Zürich, Switzerland Sitka Historical Society, Sitka, AK Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Portland State University, Portland, OR LACMA, Los Angeles, CA Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ

ABBREVIATED BOOKS 2021 Nicholas Galanin: Never Forget, Minor Matters Books, Seattle, WA; Peter Blum Edition, New York, NY 2020 Revised 2nd Edition NICHOLAS GALANIN: Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces, Minor Matters Books, Seattle, WA; Peter Blum Edition, New York, NY 2018 NICHOLAS GALANIN: Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces, Minor Matters Books, Seattle, WA Kabul 2018: Art in Embassies Exhibition, Art in Embassies, U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C. 2017 Unsettled, Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV Ice Bear, The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA 2016 Without Boundaries, Visual Conversations, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Creative Alaska, University of Alaska Press, Anchorage, AK From Generation to Generation, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA Sanders, Terrance. 60 Americans, ArtVoices, Los Angeles, CA Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporay Art of Circumpolar North, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK Aichi Triennale 2016, Nagoya, Japan (catalog) 2015 Urban Tribes, Annick Press, Toronto, ON, Canada 2014 Late Harvest, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV 2013 RED: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN 2012 Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art, Yale University Press, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada The Landscape of Being, AGENCY - Art, Life and Society production e-book BLIZZARD: Emerging Northern Artists, Grunt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Mithlo, Nancy. Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Sante Fe, NM Carrying on “Irregardless”: Humour in Contemporary Northwest Coast Art, Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancvouver BC, Canada, Harbour Publishing 2011 KINDRED SPIRITS: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art, New York: Peter Blum Edition Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Hood/UPNE Book Art: Iconic Sculptures and Installations Made from Books, Published by Gestalten 2008 Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY 2007 No Reservations: Native American History and Culture in Contemporary Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT 2006 What Have We Become?, Self-Published 2005 Totems to Turquoise, The Natural History Museum, New York, NY McFadden, David Revere. Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 2 (Contemporary Native North American Art From West, Northwest & Pacific ), New York : Museum of Arts & Design, 2005.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 2021 Kenney, Nancy “Revising a mostly white ‘greatest hits’ narrative, Seattle Art Museum will overhaul its American art galleries” The Art Newspaper, June 16, 2021 Schulman, Sandra Hale “Art Installation Calls for Return of Native Lands” Indian Country Today, May 24, 2021 Keats, Jonathan. “In The Southern California Desert, An Artist Has Transformed The Iconic Hollywood Sign Into An Icon For Land Repatriation,” Forbes, March 31, 2021 Finkel, Jori. “Desert X Artists Dig Beneath the Sandy Surface,” The New York Times, March 12, 2021. 2020 Selvin, Claire. “The Defining Public Artworks of 2020, from Toppled Monuments to Messages in the Sky,” ARTnews, December 28, 2020. Devi, Reena. “2020 Wrapped: Five Works of Art that Resonated Deeply with the Year,” CoBo, December 23, 2020. Widwalls Editoral. “The Most Beautiful Murals of 2020,” Widewalls, December 22, 2020. Adamson, Glenn. “Making the Nation,” Smithsonian Magazine, Vol. 51, No.09, January/February 2021, pgs. 96-97. The Editors of ARTnews. “The Defining Art Events of 2020,” ARTnews, December 9, 2020. Cotter, Holland, Roberta Smith and Jason Farago. “The Most Important Moments in Art in 2020,” The New York Times, December 4, 2020. Artsy Editorial, Brooke Andrew. “The Best Public Art of 2020,” Artsy, December 2, 2020. Olsen, Carlene. “’World Peace’ Exhibition Opens at MoCA Westport in Connecticut,” Interior Design, November 28, 2020. Kai, Maiysha. “For the Culture: Spend This Long Weekend With Some of Our Greatest Authors and Artists,” The Root, November 27, 2020.

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

PBS Craft In America: STORYTELLERS, December 11, 2020. [television episode] Galanin, Nicholas. “23 Leading Figures in the Art World Share What They’re Grateful for This Thanksgiving, From the US Constitution to Public Art,” Artnet news, November 25, 2020. Simon Krichewsky , Laureline. “When Will We Return What We Took From Indigenous People?,” One Resilient Earth, November 21, 2020. Williams, Gisela. “An Homage to the Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Change-Makers of Today's America,” Departures Magazine, October 14, 2020. Lee, Shannon. “Prints Are a Way to Collect Otherwise Impossible-to-Get Artists,” Artsy, October 7, 2020. Wagley, Catherine. “Where is Our Reckoning?,” Contemporary Art Review LA, September 29, 2020. Biennial of Sydney. “NIRIN'S Cinematic Worlds,” Google Arts & Culture, September 24, 2020. “University of Houston School of Art Spotlights Bold Voices in Contemporary Art, Design, and Criticism,” Hyperallergic, September 10, 2020. Ozerkevich, Rachel. “Seeking Sanctuary at the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art,” Art&Object, September 1, 2020. “NEFES ALAMIYORM…,” Art Unlimited, Summer 2020. Cotter, Holland. “As Galleries Reopen, Two Critics Find Rewards Eclipse the Angst,” The New York Times, July 17, 2020. Jones, Brendan. “14 Miles: Alaska artists consider distance and the role of the arts in a time of pandemic,” FORUM, Summer 2020. Abeo, Mariangela. “Nicholas Galanin, Episode 27,” Faces to Faces, Podcast, July 21, 2020. Angeleti, Gabriella, Gareth Harris and José da Silva. “Three exhibitions to see in New York, London and online this weekend,” The Art Newspaper, July 17, 2020. Browning, Daniel. “Burying the colonial past,” AWAYE! for Alaska Public Media, July 11, 2020 [recorded interview]. ABC Australia. “The Mix,” Saturday, July 4, 2020 [recorded interview]. Grove, Casey. “LISTEN: This Alaska Native artist dug a grave for Capt. Cook’s statue,” Alaska Public Media, June 26, 2020 [recorded interview]. Crouse, Tripp. “Statues spark discussion about colonialism in Alaska,” KNBA Grove for Alaska Public Media, June 25, 2020 [recorded interview]. Rami. Trupti. “It’s Funeral Time for Colonial Monuments,” Vulture, June 19, 2020 Ebony, David. “TOP 10 NEW YORK GALLERY EXHIBITIONS CAUGHT IN THE COVID-19 SHUTDOWN,” SNAP Editions, May 20, 2020. Lichter-Marck, Rose. “Ring the Alarm: Artists Respond to Climate Change,” Garage Magazine, Issue 18, April 22, 2020. Ferrey, Jenna. “Reviewing Carry a Song – Disrupt an Anthem, Nicholas Galanin solo exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery, New York,” eazel, March 23, 2020. Cruz, Cristina. “Editors’ Picks: 10 Things Not to Miss in the Virtual Art World This Week,” artnet news, March 23, 2020. Weber, Jasmine. “In the Time of Social Distance, Galleries Go Digital,” Hyperallergic, March 20, 2020. Devi, Nirmala. “The shows must go on,” ArtReview, March 13, 2020.

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

Cascone, Sarah. “Editors’ Picks: 17 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week,” Artnet news, March 2, 2020. Battaglia, Andy. “Ancient to the Future: Nicholas Galanin Aims to Change How Indigenous Art Is Understood,” ARTnews, February 13, 2020. Gauss, Daniel. “Carry a Song, Disrupt an Anthem: Nicholas Galanin at Peter Blum Gallery, Manhattan,” Wall Street International, February 10, 2020. Bahadur, Tulika. “Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem: Nicholas Galanin On Indigenous Identities and Contemporary Conditions,” OnArtandAesthetics.com, February 7, 2020. Gallaher, Rachel. “Voice of Resistance,” Gray Magazine, Issue 50, February/March 2020. Gaskin, Sam. “Biennale of Sydney to Tackle Race and Colonialism,” OCULA, February 4, 2020. Schneider, Tim. “Editors Picks: 11 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week,” Artnet news, February 3, 2020. FAAZINE. “First American Art Magazine’s Top Ten Native Art Events of 2019,” First American Art Magazine, January 3, 2020. Schmid, Christina. “Nicholas Galanin | LAW WARSCHAW GALLERY, MACALESTER COLLEGE,” Artforum, January 2020. 2019 Eler, Alicia. “The year's best Twin Cities art exhibitions were diverse and international,” StarTribune, December 20, 2019. Kroik, Jenny. “Living with Art,” The New Yorker, November 28, 2019. The Editors of ARTnews. “The Most Important Works of the 2010s: Favorite Artworks That Didn’t Make the List,” ARTnews, November 28, 2019. The Editors of ARTnews. “ARTnews in Brief: Liverpool Biennial Names Artists—and More from November 6, 2019,” ARTnews, November 4, 2019. Greenberger, Alex. “Biennale of Sydney Releases Artist List for 2020 Edition With Focus on Indigenous Artists,” ARTnews, September 12, 2019. Galanin, Nicholas. “Standing Together: Whitney Biennial Artist Nicholas Galanin on His Decision in July to Pull Work from the Show,” ARTnews, September 11, 2019 Mitter, Siddhartha. “The Whitney Biennial Called. How Will They Answer?,” The New York Times, May 9, 2019 Green, Christopher. “Nicholas Galanin: The Value of Sharpness: When It Falls,” The Brooklyn Rail, March, 2019 Galanin, Nicholas. “Out of Line: Nicholas Galanin Rejects the Traditional/Contemporary Binary,” Walker Reader (Primer), March 26, 2019 2018 Steinhauer Jillian. “Nicholas Galanin remixes Native American identity at Phoenix’s Heard Museum,” The Art Newspaper, August 6, 2018 Green, Christopher. “Break Open This Container,” Art In America, January 1, 2018 2015 Smith, Matthew Ryan. “Tlingit-Unangax Interdisciplinary Artist Nicholas Galanin,” First American Art Magazine, Issue No. 7, (Summer 2015) 2014 Temenos Academy Review 2014 Smith, Matthew Ryan. “Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan, by Nicholas Galanin,” First American Art Magazine, Issue No. 4, Fall 2012 Walker, Ellyn. “Nicholas Galanin: First Law of Motion,” C Magazine, Issue 113 2008 Jonaitis, Aldona. “A generation of innovators in southeast Alaska: Nicholas Galanin, Stephen Jackson, Da-ka-xeen Mehner and Donald Varnell,” American Indian Art Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 4 (autumn 2008).

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY

2007 Nadelman, Cynthia. “Tribal Hybrids,” ARTnews, Vol 106, No. 6, June 2007 Wallin, Rose. “Painted Bravery: Contemporary Native Artwork Redefines Tradition,” The Anchorage Press, Vol. 16, Ed. 28, July 12, 2007 2006 Genocchio, Ben. “Visions of Native Americans in Today’s World,” The New York Times, September 17, 2006

AFFILIATIONS 2016- Present CERF+ Artist Advisory Committee 2016-present 2013- Present USArtists Fellows Alumni Council First Light Alaska Board Member 2010-19 Sealaska Heritage Artist Advisory Committee

PROFESSORSHIPS 2017 University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau 2016 Adjunct professor, Arts department, University of Alaska Southeast, Sitka, AK 2012 Audain guest professor, 2012 -2013, University of Victoria, BC, Canada

SELECTED LECTURES 2020 We Fight to Build a Free World: Contested Monuments, Youtube, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, November 19, 2020. Like a Wrecking Ball: Using Art and Humor to Confront Racist Statues in Australia and the USA, Co-presented by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection and The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, [webinar], November 19, 2020. Dep. of History of Art and Architecture New Directions Lecture Series: Casting Shadows: Speculative Impressions of a Captain Cook Memorial, by Julia Lum, Harverd University [online]. MCA Talk: To Commune, Between Choice And Care, MCA Chicago, IL, panel webinar, October 22, 2020 Nicholas Galanin: Haa Aaní (Our Land), Cornell University, NY, virtual lecture, October 21, 2020 UH School of Art 2020 Speaker Series: Nicholas Galanin, University of Houston School of Art, TX, via Zoom, October 15, 2020 Nicholas Galanin - Architecture of Return, Escape, Sealaska Heritage, Juneau, Alaska, viw Zoom, October 13, 2020 Shadow On The Land, part of Intra-Disciplinary Seminar series and Cooper Union x Climate Week, The Cooper Union, New York, NY As the Statues Fall: A Conversation about Monuments and the Power of Memory, Webinar Discussion, Anthropology Magazine, July 23, 2020 Art History From Home: Art and Technology Online, via Zoom, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, May 26, 2020 2018 Oklahoma University, Norman, OK Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI 2017 UBC MOA, Vancouver, BC, Canada WWU, Bellingham, WA 2016 Brown University, Providence, RI

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American Craft Council, Omaha, NB 2015 University of Washington, Seattle, WA USA Artists Gathering, Chicago, IL 2014 University of Washington, Seattle, WA Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, OR Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA 2013 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, QC, Canada 2012 Anchorage Art Museum, Anchorage, AK Ethnology Museum, Berlin, Germany Capilano University, Vancouver, BC, Canada Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA 2011 Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY Humboldt-Forum, Berlin, Germany Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, New York, NY 2010 Emily Carr, Vancouver, BC, Canada University of Washington, Seattle, WA Institute of American Indian Arts, Sante Fe, NM MOCA, Sante Fe, NM 2009 Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO Bill Reid Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR

SERVICE/COMMUNITY PROJECTS 2020 CHAPTER AND VERSE: THE GOSPEL OF JAMES BALDWIN, ritual toolkit for justice created by Meshell Ndegeocello and Charlotte Brathwaite. Artists: Staceyann Chin, Suné Woods, Nicholas Galanin, Charlotte Brathwaite, and Ndegeocello. Organized by Tara Aisha Willis and Laura Paige Kyber. Coproduction of Bismillah, LLC and Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and co-commissioned by Fisher Center at Bard, UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, MCA Chicago, and the Festival de Marseille. thegospelofjamesbaldwin.com Dates: Sep 15, Oct 20, Nov 17, Dec 15, 2020 2018 42 foot Healing Pole carved for Tlingit T’aaku Kwaan Family, funded by Goldbelt Heritage, to be installed in Juneau, AK Eternal Flame Fire Dish burial ground monument, Sayeik Gastineau Community School, Juneau, AK 2016 28 foot Northern Style Dugout Cedar Canoe, funded through National Park Service, Alaska State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts 2015 Glass Clan House Screen, Walter Sobeleff Center, Sealaska Heritage Juneau AK, created with Preston Singletary 1999 Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahadi Tribal Community House Screen, Sitka, AK, created with Will Burkhart

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Determined to recast a staid narrative, the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) announced today that it plans to transform its American art galleries with the aid of three hand-picked US artists and ten experts from the local community in a two-year project.

Relying on $1m from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $75,000 from the Terra Foundation of American Art and other support, the museum will embrace a “shared authorship model” that incorporates people of colour and other underrepresented voices, from Native Americans to African Americans to Asian Americans to regional artists in the US Northwest, in a reframing of national and local art history.

Theresa Papanikolas, SAM’s curator of American art, is working with the museum’s curator of Native American art, Barbara Brotherton, to drum up ideas and generate enlightening connections between the two collections they oversee, for joint displays as well as exhibitions. The museum has a rich collection of Northwest Coast Native American art.

“We’re trying to decentre whiteness and show something that more truly reflects America and its history,” Papanikolas says. “The way the [American] galleries are organised now is a greatest-hits presentation very much focused on masterworks” by white artists from the 1600s to 2000s, she notes, including oil paintings, works on paper, sculptures and the decorative arts. “It’s very traditional and focused on a march through history that is ahistorical.”

Largely left out of this “very canon-focused presentation,” she says, are African Americans, the reality of slavery, the history of labour and the extraction of resources in the US. “We want to tell the stories of the hidden histories,” the curator says.

This summer, Papanikolas will begin dissecting the stories told in the museum’s galleries and through the breadth of its collection with Nicholas Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist and musician from Sitka, Alaska; the multimedia artist Wendy Red Star, a member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe based in Portland, Oregon; and Inye Wokoma, a Seattle visual artist, filmmaker and community artist who is a founder of Wa Na Wari, a local centre for Black art and culture.

“We’re just getting started,” the curator says. “They will be full participants in how we decide to display most of the collection. We’ll walk through the galleries with them, take them into storage [areas], and see where we go.” SAM’s American collection numbers over 2,500 objects, of which a minute fraction are on display. Its galleries were last reinstalled in 2007.

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Art installation calls for return of Native lands

Artist Nicholas Galanin uses his work in the Desert X 2021 exhibition to draw attention to lands once home to the Cahuilla people

Sandra Hay Shulman May 24, 2021

Artist Nicholas Galanin’s latest work, “Never Forget,” draws attention to lands that once were home to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. The work is one of 13 pieces from an array of artists commissioned for the Desert X 2021 exhibition, which debuted March 12 and is set to run through July 6, 2021 in southern California. Galanin is Tlingit and Unangax̂ . (Photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X)

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COACHELLA VALLEY, California — The letters tower 45 feet above a picturesque swath of desert on the edge of mountains in southern California, defiantly sending out a message for the world.

INDIAN LAND.

It’s a subtle reference to the HOLLYWOOD sign just two hours away — a sign that once spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND to promote a development for whites only. But it carries a not-so-subtle message, too: Stolen lands should be returned. The installation, entitled “Never Forget,” by artist Nicholas Galanin, is one of 13 pieces from an array of artists commissioned for the Desert X 2021 exhibition, which debuted March 12 and is set to run through July 6. It is produced by The Desert Biennial, a nonprofit group that installs recurring international art exhibitions based on the principles of the Land Art movement that emerged in the 1960s.

Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist and musician, goes beyond sending a message of land repatriation, however. He is working to raise funds to acquire titles to transfer lands to local Indigenous communities, and has set up a GoFundMe account to help purchase the land near “Never Forget” so it can be returned to the local Cahuilla tribe.

“Over the years I have worked with land issues, and this was an ideal subject to pair with place, as it is close to Hollywood, California, and I could make a statement of that,” Galanin said, from his home studio in Sitka, Alaska.

“The entertainment industry is here from the other Hollywoodland, so I was allowed to pick the place, and challenge land ownership,” he said. “This is a brand new piece; it was constructed on site in the desert. I hope it will travel to other locations after this that need attention, as it will have a different meaning in different spaces. I invite the viewer to participate in what this means.”

Desert X paid tribute to the tribe in a recent statement on its website and on the GoFundMe site.

“We acknowledge the Cahuilla People as the original stewards of the land on which Desert X takes place,” the organization said. “We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with the Indigenous people in this place. We pay our respect to the Cahuilla People, past, present and emerging, who have been here since time immemorial.”

Ancestral lands

With balmy weather, picturesque mountains and hot springs, the valley had been the longtime home to the Cahuilla and Morongo Indians when the HOLLYWOODLAND sign went up in the early 1920s.

By then, Palm Springs was becoming a vacation spot for the film industry, since studio contracts limited actors’ travel.

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The location for “Never Forget” is tied to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, whose current land ownership is a complicated checkerboard pattern scattered across Palm Springs. The artwork sits at an entrance to the Cahuilla reservation.

The region is heavily invested in tourism, hot springs resorts, golf and the arts, and home to two large, annual concerts, Coachella and Stagecoach. The fundraiser so far has raised about $18,000 of the $300,000 it hopes to reach. Officials with the Cahuilla tribe, after several requests, said they were reserving comment.

The Cahuilla tribal citizens have lived in the Palm Springs area for thousands of years, calling it Sec-he, for boiling water, for the hot mineral springs. The Spaniards called it agua caliente, which means hot water.

In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant set aside lands for the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, which was expanded by President Rutherford B. Hayes to more than 30,000 acres. Allotments of land to members was finalized in 1959. All combined, the tribe remains the largest single land owner in Palm Springs, according to the tribal website.

An art installation by Nicholas Galanin sits at the entrance to the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation in southern California. The installation is part of 13 pieces as part of Desert X 2021 in Coachella Valley, and is set to remain in place until July 6, 2021. (Photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X)

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The Agua Caliente Band, a federally recognized tribe, operates two 18-hole golf courses and casinos in Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage.

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians, also a federally recognized tribe, make their home on the 35,000-acre Morongo Indian Reservation, which sits closer to Los Angeles in the Morongo Valley at the feet of the San Gorgonio and San Jacinto mountains.

The Morongo reservation was also created by order of Grant in 1876. The tribe is now the largest private sector employer in the region, operating non-gaming businesses and the $250-million Morongo Casino, Resort and Spa, which is considered one of the largest tribal gaming facilities in the country, according to the tribe’s website.

Decades of protest

Galanin says that the “Never Forget” installation, in word and location, “refuses to legitimize the settler occupation.” Though the installation is sanctioned, well-funded and curated, the words INDIAN LAND have a storied history.

The use of the words dates back to at least the occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971, when the beginnings of the American Indian Movement took over the abandoned federal prison on an island near San Francisco. They painted INDIAN LAND in red paint on the outer walls of the prison to proclaim the takeover.

In 2016, Native artist Jaque Fragua, on a dare and as homage, painted over a temporary white-paneled construction wall at the corner of South Eighth and Main streets in Los Angeles with eight-foot-tall red letters, “This Is Indian Land.”

“It was just a clear-sighted statement,” he has said of the street art, “but people thought it was a threat. It was pretty abrasive and aggressive and raw. It had this edgy feel to it, so people thought it was violent. I didn’t think anything of it, besides, ‘I did a civic duty.'” The words surfaced again in 2016 in protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Randall Akee, associate professor of public policy and American Indian Studies at the University of California, teaches that reparations can begin by ceding the land back to those who were thrown off of it.

"The origin of being Indigenous,” he says, “is location and ties to the land. The theft of land has immediate consequences for communities and individuals. It means eviction and removal.”

The Land Back movement — which attempts to acquire title to land and return it to communities — has been surging in recent years, with courts increasingly recognizing tribal claims to lands unfairly taken.

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The Land Back movement, though, is not about removing people who live there but about recognizing and respecting Indigenous sovereignty, organizers said.

In a statement on his GoFundMe page, Galanin calls for collective action.

“As Indigenous people we are responsible to the land we come from, to care for and protect it — for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, and for all life who would call this land home,” he said.

Galanin has a forthcoming artist's book dedicated to “Never Forget,” that has been in development over the past three years, with photographs by Lance Gerber. A portion of the sales will go toward Galanin's campaign.

‘To be alive’

Galanin works in various media, from sculpture and video to engraving and taxidermy. He is a carver and educator, making canoes rooted in tradition and passing the knowledge and craft along.

He is also a musician, whose band, Ya-Tseen, released its debut album, “Indian Yard,” on April 30 on the SubPop label. “Close the Distance” is the first single off the album, the latest project from Otis Calvin III, Zak D. Wass and Galanin.

Ya-Tseen is a nod to Galanin’s heritage.

“The Tlingit title, Ya Tseen, means to be alive,” Galanin said. “Using language … it's such a core of our ways of being and thinking. I am always trying to implement or engage in language when I can even though I'm not really the speaker of the language. But I'm always a student.”

He can also be seen in the new documentary film, “Love and Fury,” by Seminole/Creek filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. The film follows Galanin around his hometown as he makes wooden canoe carvings, engraves metal, and in a striking segment, hunts a seal in the harbor and butchers it in his garage.

His works are in more than 20 museum collections.

He has exhibited at the Sydney Biennale, 2020, in Australia; the Whitney Biennial, 2019, New York; and a 2020 solo show at Peter Blum Gallery in New York. In 2018, his work was included in “Unsettled: Art on the New Frontier” at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Sending a message

During a recent day in early May at the "Never Forget" installation, the white lettering stood in the blazing sun in startling, stark relief against the brown landscape.

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A band of jet-black crows had taken up residence on the support scaffolding, cawing and flitting around the art.

For many Native people, the crow is considered a symbol of rebirth and change, with a message for the future — a message that is not lost on Galanin.

“'Never Forget' marks what it is,” he says, on his fundraising page. “It is also a beacon for the future.”

IF YOU GO...

The “Never Forget” art installation, part of Desert X 2021, will remain in place through at least July 6, 2021, at 2901 N. Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, north of the Palm Springs Visitors Center at Tramway Road.

Other Desert X installations are based at locations throughout Coachella Valley. They can be seen from sunrise to sunset, and admission is free.

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In The Southern California Desert, An Artist Has Transformed The Iconic Hollywood Sign Into An Icon For Land Repatriation

By Jonathan Keats, Arts critic-at-large March 31, 2021

Back in 1923, some Los Angeles real estate developers erected a billboard in the hills above Hollywood to advertise a new neighborhood. They dubbed their development Hollywoodland, heralding their geographic conquest with forty-three-foot-tall letters. Held in place with telephone poles, the illuminated white sign was bold enough for people to read on Wilshire Boulevard.

What the sign did not say, but the real estate deeds made clear, was that Hollywoodland was restricted territory. Only Caucasians were allowed to buy the ersatz Tudor and Spanish Colonial houses, and buyers promised not to sell their homes to non-white customers for the next half century.

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Abandoned and later reassembled in abbreviated form, the Hollywood sign is now one of the signal landmarks of Los Angeles. Few recall the legacy of racism. Fewer still remember the Indigenous tribes that lived on the land prior to white colonization. In the hills where the Hollywoodland sign was erected – and throughout the surrounding region now known as LA – the Tongva people maintained hunting grounds and villages. And the Cahuilla lived a hundred miles inland, in the region now called Palm Springs.

For the first time in memory, the Cahuilla ancestral territory is marked. With deliberate irony, the land is signposted with letters resembling the iconic Hollywood typography. The monumental white sign reads Indianland.

Although officially sanctioned and permitted, the Indianland billboard is not a conventional real estate ad. It’s an artwork by the Tlingit/Unangax̂ artist Nicholas Galanin, commissioned for the 2021 edition of Desert X, and aptly titled Never Forget.

As in previous years, Desert X is a vast outdoor exhibition featuring site-specific sculpture and painting set against a spectacular desert backdrop. Works include a monumental segment of wall erected in Desert Hot Springs by the Saudi artist Zahrah Alghamdi, and a series of mural-scale abstract paintings on the side of a Palm Springs building composed by the Swiss-Argentine artist Vivian Suter. And the Southern California artist Kim Stringfellow has recreated one of the “jackrabbit homesteads” that settlers cobbled together in the ‘30s, evoking life on the frontier by furnishing the dwelling as she imagined the original owner would have done.

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In comparison to these works, Galanin’s billboard stands out as radical, and not only as a political statement. Although allusions to Pop Art are inevitable – especially given Ed Ruscha’s many paintings of the Hollywood lettering – Galanin’s sign is a work of land art that works with the land on levels ranging from the historical to the financial.

As it turns out, the advertisement is serious – and it significantly inverts the racist policies of Hollywoodland. Galanin has set up a GoFundMe campaign where people can contribute money to acquire legal title to a nearby swathe of land for return to the Cahuilla people. “Reparations for what has been forcibly taken from Indigenous Nations must be grounded in ceding land,” reads the GoFundMe webpage. Never Forget “is a monumental invitation to landowners: to seek out in Indigenous leadership for land relationships, to center Indigenous knowledge in creating sustainable practices, to contribute to real rent initiatives, and to transfer land titles and rights to Indigenous nations and communities”.

The practical goals of Galanin’s work are laudable, even if the challenges faced by the Land Back initiative are evident in the fact that his GoFundMe has raised less than ten percent of the $300,000 asking price despite favorable coverage in the New York Times. While repatriation needs also to be addressed directly by the federal government, Land Back is a worthy means of transferring land in private hands, and it effectively circumvents governmental machinations that have prevented Natives from fully possessing the Reservation land guaranteed by treaties.

However Never Forget deserves also to be admired as art, a point that might be overlooked in the charged political context. Galanin has succeeded in creating land art that is as physically grounded and as conceptually abstract as the definition of land itself. In that respect, it is a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, more encompassing in its way than the Romantic operas to which the fancy German word was once applied.

Land art has a long history of proffering encompassing environments, from Robert Smithson’s 1970 Spiral Jetty to James Turrell’s ongoing Roden Crater. And some site- specific artists including Gordon Matta-Clark have seamlessly combined physical and legal structures in the creation of monumental sculpture. Galanin is a worthy heir to these traditions because he brings something new and important through his connection of contemporary practice to a far older heritage.

Whether practiced by the Cahuilla of Southern California or by the Tlingit of Alaska, stewardship of the land was an all-encompassing art long before art became a means of fostering appreciation for ‘natural’ landscapes. Never Forget should therefore perhaps be seen less as an artwork in its own right than as an advertisement signposting a Gesamtkunstwerk-in-progress, commenced long before American was colonized and to be continued for generations ahead.

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Desert X Artists Dig Beneath the Sandy Surface

Artworks in this year’s biennial, scattered around the Palm Springs area, explore issues of land rights, water supply and more.

By Jori Finkel, March 12, 2021

Nicholas Galanin’s “Indian Land,” part of the Desert X biennial, greets visitors to Palm Springs near its welcome center and tramway. Credit: Jim Mangan for The New York Times

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — The odds were fully stacked against the Desert X biennial taking place this year. Bigger and better-organized destination exhibitions have punted on their plans since the pandemic struck, and even in the best of years, Desert X, which commissions site-specific public art in and around Palm Springs, has a hard time raising money to realize its projects. Its decision two years ago to accept funding from the Saudi Arabian government for a spinoff event caused prominent board members to resign and artists to speak out in protest.

And the guest curator chosen for the 2021 edition, César García-Alvarez, fell ill with Covid- 19 last year, just as he began working with artists to develop their projects. “I was very sick

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Neville Wakefield, who is Desert X’s artistic director and co-curator of its third edition, agreed. “We never considered canceling it,” he said of the show, which opens on Friday. “Just the opposite. The fact that we’re outdoors and free to the public made our purpose more urgent in some respects. While museums in L.A. have been closed for a year, we felt a responsibility to do what our walled institutions couldn’t and nourish the need for culture.”

The biennial is smaller than usual, featuring the work of 13 artists compared with as many as 19 in years past, with a more compact footprint. “We weren’t sure if hotels would be open, so we organized a show that someone from L.A. or San Diego could drive in to see in a day,” said García-Alvarez. (They are installing hand-sanitizing stations at some artworks and “health ambassadors” at others to distribute masks and ensure social distancing.)

Nicholas Galanin’s ‘Never Forget’

Nodding to the history of terrorism against Native Americans more than 9/11, Galanin’s “Never Forget” turns the standard acknowledgment of Indigenous land rights into a monumental admission of wrongdoing. Near the Palm Springs Visitor Center and Aerial Tramway, long considered the gateway to the city, Galanin’s message looms large: a 44-foot- tall sign that says “Indian Land” in white lettering styled like the Hollywood sign, which spelled Hollywoodland when it was first erected in 1923. “The original Hollywoodland sign was an advertisement for a real estate development for white- only land purchases,” said Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax artist who lives in Sitka, Alaska. “This work is essentially the opposite: a call to landowners and others to invite them to join the landback movement.” He has identified a plot of land near the sign that is for sale and started a GoFundMe campaign to try to purchase it and return it to the Cahuilla peoples.

Credit: Jim Mangan for The New York Times

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The Defining Public Artworks of 2020, from Toppled Monuments to Messages in the Sky By Claire Selvin | December 28, 2020

©ARTNEWS; PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRÉ BERGAMIN

In a year that left institutions around the world shuttered for months on end, public art took on a new resonance in many cities and provided safe experiences for those seeking a bit of visual relief from quarantine. Public artworks created in 2020 often took up urgent political and social issues, and the very notion of monuments—of which figures were being elevated and how they were rendered— figured in protest movements, opinion pages, and beyond. The guide below represents a survey of some of the year’s most notable projects, controversies, and events involving public art, many of which have already changed the ways we view and think about our histories and environments.

Artists created powerful site-specific works utilizing spaces in the land and sky. Some of the year’s key public artworks made inventive uses of outdoor spaces to address histories of oppression. “In Plain Sight,” a skywriting campaign that took place over the July 4th weekend and featured contributions by 80 artists, situated written messages above 80 ICE detention facilities, immigration courthouses, processing centers, and former internment camps in the U.S. Organized by artist rafa esparza and performance artist and activist Cassils, the project included words by Dread Scott, Hank Willis Thomas, Emory Douglas, Titus

Photo: Courtesy of the artist Kaphar, and others.

At the Biennale of Sydney in Australia, Nicholas Galanin took up the history of violence against the country’s Aboriginal peoples with Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial, which

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY figured in ARTnews‘s list of important artworks this year. A timely ode to ongoing debates about statues of historical figures, the work depicts the dug up outline of a monument to 18th-century British Royal Navy captain James Cook.

Augmented reality artist Nancy Baker Cahill, meanwhile, made her newest animation, titled Liberty Bell, available for viewing in locations across the United States. The digital work, which can be experienced through smart devices, features a swaying, abstracted bell accompanied by increasingly cacophonous ringing sounds. Debuting in a U.S. presidential election year, the work considers how notions of freedom and access have impacted America’s past and present. The artist, who was included on ARTnews‘s most recent Deciders list, said that the project’s sprawling nature was timed auspiciously, if inadvertently, for the pandemic. “In a moment of social distancing, it can be experienced by most people if they have access to a phone or aren’t putting themselves at risk by being outside,” she told ARTnews this year.

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2020 Wrapped: Five Works of Art that Resonated Deeply with the Year December 23, 2020 | By Reena Devi

After the challenging year we have just seen unfold, the future, for all intents and purposes, does seem rather dismal and bleak—almost to the point of dystopian. And yet, even now as we stand on the cusp of wholly unknown realities, there is a sense of hope that is neither fragile nor ephemeral but rather concrete.

This hope stems from at least a few sources but it is definitely inspired by the diverse communities and individuals across the globe, especially those vulnerable and marginalised, stepping forward, speaking up, staking their space and claiming their power all throughout this year.

It is a thing of beauty to live during a time in history when we can witness for ourselves how archaic, established spheres of power and privilege tremble beneath the onslaught of human dignity and truth. Art that encapsulates this kind of moral courage and authenticity tells us a lot about ourselves and the future we are creating on a daily basis. The best part, since it’s art, even with such lofty ambitions, the works can be purposeful or incendiary—or just downright weird and ridiculous. Here are five artworks that are exactly that and much more.

Nicholas Galanin Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial (2020)

No list of astounding, breathtaking art works for this year can be complete without mentioning Nicholas Galanin’s public art installation at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney in Australia. The Tlingit/Unangax̂ artist, who was born in Sitka, in southeastern Alaska, and earned his BFA at London Guildhall University, may have produced the most seminal work of the year.

The site-specific artwork on Cocktaoo Island, Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial (2020) comes across at first as a crime scene of sorts, with yellow barricades around a sizeable area of grass unearthed in the shape of a statue, specifically the statue of 18th century British Royal Navy captain James Cook, which stands at Hyde Park in central Sydney. The statue of Cook, a controversial national symbol in Australia with an equally contentious 250th anniversary this year, stands on “the Aboriginal lands of the Gadigal”. It is inscribed with the giant slogan “Discovered this territory” and has been the site of many protests and counter-inscriptions, even a spray-painted “No pride in genocide”.

Best described as a “powerfully disquieting gesture”, Galanin’s public artwork promises to stay on people’s minds long after they have seen it, raising necessary and lasting questions about exigent issues regarding power, land and indigenous societies.

This intriguing mural called Shadow on the land, an excavation and bush burial is more of a site-specific made by Nicholas Galanin in Sydney’s Hyde Park. This intervention is the excavation for the hated statue of Captain James Cook, the 18th-century British Royal Navy captain who landed on the territory now known as Australia.

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The Most Beautiful Murals of 2020 December 22, 2020 | Widewalls Editorial

What a year! No one could have predicted 2020: to call it challenging would simply be an understatement. The whole world was brought to a halt and this also applied to street art, unfortunately: many festivals, exhibitions and events were canceled or postponed, as lockdowns and travel bans were imposed.

But if the art world machine stopped, art itself didn't! Many individuals did many great things in quarantine: there was the Home Mural Fest, Pejac (whose project ranks quite high on our list, hint- hint) invited people to create and share their quarantine art, and numerous artists had Instagram lives in which they shared details about their life and creativity.

Many couldn't keep away from the streets either: with the eruption of the Black Lives Matter Protests earlier this year, street artists went out and joined by their communities they painted murals in support of the ongoing fight against racial injustice. Artists also expressed their solidarity with all the front-line workers, still fighting for everybody's lives as we speak, by painting beautiful tributes in so many ways. Many aspects of the ongoing pandemic are (being) immortalized in so many works of art, creating a unique visual history of one of the most unprecedented moments of our lives.

During grim days such as these, art remains a great solace and consolation. Here's hoping for a better 2021 and many more great murals and street art pieces for us to enjoy!

In the meantime, below is our selection of 55 most beautiful murals and street art pieces of 2020, voted by our own Instagram followers and Street Update readers!

Featured images courtesy the artists

35. Nicholas Galanin in Sydney

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Making the Nation by Glenn Adamson January/February 2021, Vol. 51, No.9

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The Defining Artworks of 2020 By The Editors of ARTnews | December 3, 2020

For much of this year, galleries, museums, and art spaces across the world were shuttered by Covid-19. Although art remained locked away from public view, that didn’t mean artists weren’t busy at work, crafting paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, videos, and more that spoke to the mood of 2020. Whether in the form of film anthologies released digitally or protest-minded projects that took place outside the walls of art spaces entirely, artists continued to mine new territory and, in the process, redefine what art could be.

This list below surveys the 20 works that came to define this year. Included in it are new works responding directly to the pandemic and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd at the end of May. Some works created to address such topics were fleeting and glimpsed only for a short period of time; others are permanent and will likely be seen by many in the years to come. By tackling collective fears and structural change, these pieces made us hopeful for a world that could look very different in 2021.

Also included on this list are a few works made well before 2020 that were seen anew. Viewed in light of Covid-19 and calls for accountability, these works may signify something entirely different than they once did, but they are no less meaningful than they were before.

Photo: Courtesy of the artist To look back on the past 12 months in art-making, below is a survey of some of the most important artworks made or presented in a new light in 2020.

Nicholas Galanin, Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush 6 burial (2020) Nicholas Galanin has held up and stared down issues related to Indigenous culture from his home base in Alaska, and he made a monumental move across the globe with a sculpture (or whatever might be the opposite of sculpture) at the Biennale of Sydney in Australia. Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial suggests a kind of crime scene, with a fenced-off area of grass dug up in the shape of a grave lying in wait for a statue of 18th-century British Royal Navy captain James Cook, who has long been a national symbol for Australia. Violence visited upon Galanin’s Tlingit and Unangax̂ heritage resonated with similar histories within Australia’s Aboriginal culture, and there was no mistaking the sort of pent-up roar in a powerfully disquieting gesture.

—Andy Battaglia

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The Most Important Moments in Art in 2020 This was a year of protests and pivots. Monuments fell, museums looked inward. On the bright side, galleries persisted despite the pandemic’s grip and curators rolled out magisterial retrospectives.

By Holland Cotter, Roberta Smith and Jason Farago | Dec. 4, 2020

No Longer Business as Usual By Holland Cotter

The year was a 12-month stress test. When I asked friends “how are you?” the repeat answers came: “anxious,” “depressed,” “bored.” The first two I could relate to, but bored is something I rarely am. As a journalist, I’m addicted to art-specific information, to taking it in, parsing it, sorting it, trying to make sense of it. And there’s been a ton of it this year, all pretty intense. So as long as I’ve had a laptop, a home library, and at least some access to “live” art, I’ve been OK in lockdown mode. Here are some things that have kept me focused.

Nicholas Galanin Land Swipe, 2019, acrylic on deer hide, 44 x 36 inches (111.8 x 91.4 cm)

6. Indigenous Presence

A concentration of Indigenous artists lit up New York galleries and museums this year. They included, along with Sky Hopinka at Bard, Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho) at Fort Gansevoort; Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit and Unangan) at Peter Blum; Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw and Cherokee) at the Brooklyn Museum; and the Indigenous Canadian painter Kent Monkman (Cree) at the Met. In addition, the Met, which stands on Lenape homelands, hired Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha Indigenous Mexican) as its first full-time Native American curator

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The Best Public Art of 2020 Artsy Editorial // Dec 2, 2020 4:58pm

Across the world, 2020 saw museums and galleries close their doors due to COVID-19, limiting access to art for months on end. Never before was the value and need for public art quite so evident.

To celebrate the resounding power and meaning of public art, the art-and-design fabrication company UAP has released its annual list of the year’s best public art. This year, the selected works were chosen by the esteemed international artists and curators Brook Andrew, Manal AlDowayan, Kendal Henry, and Raqs Media Collective, plus UAP’s principal and senior curator Natasha Smith and curator Ineke Dane.Below, we share the 2020 list, with reflections from the nominators on what makes these works so impactful and inspiring. To learn more, you can tune into a webinar discussion of these public works led by Natasha Smith and Ineke Dane on Monday, December 7th, at 7 p.m. EST (Tuesday, December 8th, 10 a.m. AEST). Nicholas Galanin, Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial Sydney, Australia

Nicholas Galanin, installation view of Shadow on the Land, an excavation and Nicholas Galanin, installation view of Shadow on the Land, an bush burial, 2020, at the 22nd Biennale of excavation and bush burial, 2020, at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney Sydney (2020), Cockatoo Island. Photo by (2020), Cockatoo Island. Photo by Alex Robinson. Courtesy of the Jessica Maurer. Courtesy of the artist and artist and Biennale of Sydney. Biennale of Sydney.

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Nicholas Galanin’s site-specific public artwork on Cockatoo Island, created for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, was a remarkable statement about Indigenous land and the myth of discovery. In Australia, at the beginning of the year, we were preparing to protest and challenge the official celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s journey to Australia and the Pacific. Nicholas is a Tlingit/Unangax artist who lives in Sitka, Alaska, and his people also share these histories with Cook, who traveled up into Anchorage, and renamed many of the Indigenous inlets, disregarding Indigenous knowledge and connections with the land. His gesture of a counter-monument was developed over nearly two years of visiting Sydney, getting a taste of the Australian colonial context and connecting with fellow Indigenous peoples from across Australia including Pedro Wonaeamirri in the Tiwi Islands. Galanin’s final design was to excavate the shadow of the giant Captain Cook statue that dominates Hyde Park in central Sydney. Standing on Aboriginal lands of the Gadigal, it is inscribed with the giant slogan ‘Discovered this territory’ and has been the site of many protests and counter-inscriptions and spray-painted ‘No pride in genocide.’

“On Cockatoo Island, the excavation work took on the look and feel of an archaeological digging site, an action to metaphorically remove or bury the monument. The work opened in early March, in the lead-up to the official Cook celebrations in Australia, and interestingly it also really resonated with the counter- monument actions, which followed with the Black Lives Matter/Indigenous Lives Matter movement across the globe and the tearing down of statues to empire makers and slave owners that clearly connected international colonial legacies.” —Brook Andrew, artist, curator, scholar, and artistic director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, 2020

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"World Peace" Exhibition Opens at MoCA Westport in Connecticut November 28, 2020 | By Carlene Olsen

In 2019, MoCA Westport relocated to larger quarters—the former TV studio of Martha Stewart Living— renovated by Sellars Lathrop Architects. But it was before then, and the pandemic and racial justice protests that have come to define 2020, that the impetus for “World Peace,” the Connecticut museum’s exhibition on view through January 17, was already taking shape. The highly topical show examines the role of art as a form of social activism, featuring multimedia works by 33 local and world- renowned artists. Among them are such equally portending pieces as 2012’s Things Are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter by Nicholas Galanin and Marilyn Minter’s Resist Flag from 2017.

Things Are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter, Nicholas Galanin, 2012. Photography by Jason Wyche/courtesy of Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Image by MoCA Westport.

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Art World 23 Leading Figures in the Art World Share What They’re Grateful for This Thanksgiving, From the US Constitution to Public Art

Here's what Darren Bader, Cecilia Alemani, Coco Fusco, and others are thankful for this year. Artnet News, November 25, 2020

US-based artist Nicholas Galanin in Sydney, Australia. Photo by Don Arnold/WireImage.

I am thankful for health and the health of my family and friends, the abundance of creative work happening in circle, thankful for the support of this continued fearless creativity and these future projects I will get to share soon. Thankful for the travel pause —I’ve been on the road for 20 years; this is the longest I have been home. Thank you to all the Indigenous truth tellers out here trying to make this world a better place for all of us. Thankful for love. Fuck Thanksgiving. #landback —Nicholas Galanin, artist

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By Lauren Simon Krichewsky November 21, 2020

Nicholas Galanin – Yéil Ya-Tseen, Tlingit/Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist, and Laureline Simon, founder of One Resilient Earth, explore the use of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, the return of Indigenous objects and land to their community, and opening spaces to create something new.

Laureline: I am very grateful you are taking the time for this dialogue. I came across your powerful and eye-opening work, Created to Hold Power (Intellectual Property) via the Anchorage Museum, as I was diving deeper and deeper into the role of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge in addressing climate change and environmental degradation. In a recent dialogue on Tero Magazine, we questioned why Indigenous knowledge holders are not given center stage in leading the transmission or preservation of their knowledge. As an example, when the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples platform was set up under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to foster the sharing of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge in relation to climate change, countries negotiated on giving seats at the table to Indigenous people. They do have half of the seats now, which can be seen as good or as not enough, but this was not a given in the original mandate in 2015.

Besides, the more I understand about free, prior and informed consent for the use of indigenous peoples’ knowledge, the more I realize that modern western institutions are unlikely to provide for the cultural and spiritual dimensions of that knowledge, which is clear in Fair Warning. I also had to face the theft of Indigenous objects that populate our European museums, and how the presence of those objects feels wrong at a deep level today. As we ask for Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and support in dealing with the ecological crisis, such a theft cannot be silenced. More importantly, I fully agree that returning those objects would be beneficial for the “health of those objects, for the health of the communities that created them, and for the health of the communities that took them,” as expressed in Architecture of Return. The escape route that you have created feels like those indigenous objects are already

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY being freed at an imaginary level or in a possible future, which is quite liberating. Can you tell us more about this work and its context?

Architecture of return, escape -Metropolitan Museum of Art 32" x 61" deer hide, pigment, acrylic 2020

Nicholas: As an Indigenous person, our historical inheritance, objects, even ancestral bones are often held in museums. So, this work, Escape, was showing a way out of these prisons, which is what museums are essentially. And the way out is returning the objects. There are repatriation conversations happening today, that are oftentimes heavily bureaucratic. I have also heard conversations where the claim is that without these museums, cultures would be lost. But, the irony is that those same communities that built those museums are often the ones that have pushed out these cultures and communities in that process. So, the art piece is an escape route or it’s a plan of removal or it’s a possible future as you mentioned. A vision. And as a vision, it doesn’t just stop at the objects. It continues and goes to other larger conversations like land. Oftentimes these oppressive institutions are aspects of our societies or communities that are trying to maximize their return on our objects, on our land, on our bodies. It’s very common in white supremacist narratives of culture where things are not quickly changed or shifting because returns are still being maximized.

Fair Warning: A Sacred Place - Supernatural Spirits and Animals 2019 - photograph

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Laureline: I agree on the irony of having powers that have so damaged peoples and their cultures historically, subsequently promoting the conservation of some knowledge, objects or cultural expressions they find valuable, while defining the rules and purpose of that conservation process. If we had thriving Indigenous communities, with full access to their land and all of their rights respected, who would worry about the conservation of the vibrant, living, continuously growing knowledge systems and practices of Indigenous peoples? Only if we assume that Indigenous peoples or their culture are in the process of disappearing, do we feel the need to keep their intellectual productions and cultural expressions, or pieces of them, for them, in boxes, including in virtual spaces managed by international organizations. Maybe we should expose and question our assumptions more.

Nicholas: Those institutions and spaces also uphold the narrative that white supremacy is an authority on Indigeneity, and that is highly problematic and really oppressive to our communities and our knowledge. Where our communities have not only had their objects physically mined, but even our knowledge is mined at certain points when it’s profitable. And then, you know, of course, it’s also heavily homogenized through academia, or anthropology, and then it’s presented, as truth or knowledge after it goes through that process.

I Think it Goes Like This - Wood, Paint- Dimensions Variable – 2012

Laureline: True. And I often wonder how to best explain to non-Indigenous people that Indigenous peoples’ knowledge is fundamentally different from western knowledge as I am beginning to understand it myself. That the knowledge comes from the land, that it has to be alive, or that it holds power. It seems that a better understanding of that difference could help limit attempts at homogenization of Indigenous peoples knowledge and at cultural appropriation. Do you have any thoughts on that point?

Nicholas: I don’t have a simple answer to that, except obviously, that giving us equal rights, human rights, etc., is a good starting point. And then, obviously a big part of colonization in that process of genocide towards our communities was to displace and remove and break

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY down. And that still goes on today, in a lot of ways, for instance, in our access to land. I have to check the exact statistics, but I think less than 3% of land in North America or the US is owned by Indigenous people. That’s a major settler occupation on unceded Indigenous lands. With that comes a lot of other powers that are built into the land and upheld, that build wealth for nations. So, these are all starting points. Land back is the movement that a lot of people talk about. And cultural sovereignty. A lot of the tools that were provided by the government are generally tools that aren’t in our favor, ever.

Indian Land TM - Site specific installation and petroglyphs. - Les Jardins du Precambrien, 2014.

Laureline: Can you tell us more about the vision of a future where Indigenous land would be returned, and all rights would be fully respected? What would it look like?

Nicholas: We fight for it every day, all the time. And in our little ways, in all ways, in our resilience, so that our communities and cultures continue to live. The other ways that we access it are through learning and teaching, education, understanding and sharing our connection to this place, which is vital to the health of the ecosystems of the world. You look at things like the fires that have been happening in California or even in Australia. The Aboriginal community in Australia did controlled fires for a very long time. After that was banned by the government, forest fires clearly became a bigger problem.

Laureline: And do you have a vision of what could be the new use or uses of museums once all the Indigenous objects are returned and we have those empty spaces available?

Nicholas: It’s not like we’re ever going to stop sharing and creating culture and works. There are new things happening continually, and all these things can be shared in ways that are not based on theft, genocide, and violence. That’s the way that these spaces can be reimagined and programed. The irony is that we’re filling museums’ walls and vaults with our historical objects and bones, yet we’re also not necessarily given access to those spaces with our living

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY artists. They are disproportionately not represented in these modern art museums or spaces. So, there are very clear things happening here in where we’re allowed access and how, and where we’re not allowed access and how.

Nicholas: Of course, some of these things are shifting. If we look at history and recent history, it does seem slow, but it is changing. There’s more and more engagement in these institutions with the communities whose objects are in those spaces. There’s more programing surrounding that. And more open dialogue on repatriation is obviously happening. These things are happening, things are shifting, but it’s slow and it’s going to keep shifting. It’s not happening fast enough, but, people are resilient and continually in the fight for these things. There are also more and more of our artists that are in venues, collections, and celebrated museums like the MoMA, but it’s still very few. The power structures that maintain that are slow to shift.

Action is the most important thing really. It’s like land acknowledgment versus land back. Those are two very different things. So, it’s about what are people holding on to and why? And at whose expenses and costs?

Laureline: And do you think it will be important to keep places in museums that would be more about memory, telling the story of theft and genocide? Or should we focus those emptied spaces on new creations only?

Nicholas: I mean, they both serve importance roles and this can be done in ways where it’s healing and not, you know, continually traumatizing to the community.

We Dreamt Deaf - Polar bear Taxidermy - 120" x 80" x 42" -2015

Laureline: When we look at society more broadly, what is the best way for non-Indigenous people to support Indigenous peoples, including in relation to returning what has been taken, giving more space to thrive, and repairing the harm done? At One Resilient Earth, we thought about sharing your words and artworks, which have moved us profoundly, but can we do more or better?

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Nicholas: I mean, I think that is part of the work. It is spreading the message, the agency and voice, and platform and space. Those are already modes of sharing and telling stories, or histories, or experiences. Everything helps. After all, we don’t really know how we will get in those spaces eventually. And, that’s what the power of the [art]work is supposed to be. It is supposed to be something that others can experience or feel or understand when they don’t really feel and see that in the day. Certainly, a lot of my work opens that dialogue to other communities and perspectives, so it can continue to do work so that I don’t have to be there every day saying these things all the time. The work is doing it. The work could do this forever as long as it’s around – using that platform in space.

Because a big part of our struggle seems to be aligned with intentional amnesia or, a community or society choosing not to acknowledge or see even the tribal communities as existing. There’s so many federally unrecognized Indigenous tribes in the US.

The Imaginary Indian (Totem) - Paint, Wood, Wallpaper - 18'x 12' x 1' – 2016

Laureline: I also have another question, which is if a non-Indigenous person is genuinely interested in getting to know more about a specific Indigenous culture, what would be the best way to learn? Is it even possible? Do you have advice on how we could do that in a way that does not reproduce old patterns of extraction, homogenization and profit-making?

Nicholas: I mean, it’s different. It depends on what you are seeking to learn. But essentially you really need to connect with communities. It’s probably the most direct way. Listening. This is probably a good place to start. There’re so many different communities, so many different needs. It’s very vast.

Laureline: And if we’re not in North America, or living close to an Indigenous community, but in Europe for instance, is there something specific we can do to support?

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Nicholas: Sure. Send us the objects back!

And call healing spirits (intellectual property) - Tlingit mask NA34362 - Tlingit Mask. Bear collected in an old box from a grave containing shaman's paraphernalia. Wood, hair, feathers, pigment, shell. 2020 – Photograph

Laureline: I definitely support the return of objects stolen from their community, and am in contact with a few networks and organizations. We would really like to help, and hope it can re-build some trust and improve relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Yet, it sometimes feel there is so much to do. Based on your experience and the resilience of your community, how do you keep going when pursuing this vision of a future that’s so different from what we are experiencing today?

Nicholas: You don’t have to take it all in one go. For me, it’s realizing that we come from a powerful community and history of people and places of power. That connection is what’s important: connection to the land. Maybe I don’t step back and look at things all the time, which is good, because otherwise it would be overwhelming. But it’s good to have a community. I feel like I have this luck.

Laureline: To conclude, do you want to tell us about some new projects that you’re working on?

Nicholas: There’s definitely some new projects coming up that I can’t mention because they’re not public yet. But you’ll see them within the next three or four months, which is really exciting. Some big projects that have been in the works for years. I just got the master’s from the studio back and I’m really excited.

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Art & Culture An Homage to the Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Change-Makers of Today's America This country has always been about open spaces—for business, for creative expression, for change. And the men and women below saw those spaces and claimed them. By The Editors on October 14, 2020

From left to right: Nicholas Galanin by Will Wilson; Things Are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter (2012); Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery

Nicholas Galanin Drawing from Indigenous traditions to create provocative contemporary art. By Gisela Williams The artist Nicholas Galanin makes work that both engages with and radically questions modern-day Western systems, including the art world itself. Born in Sitka, Alaska, of Tlingit- Unangax ancestry, the artist, 41, began making traditional jewelry as an apprentice to his father, silver carver Dave Galanin, then studied jewelry design at London Guildhall University. It was at Massey University in New Zealand, where he earned a master’s degree in Indigenous visual arts, that he started to produce the kind of installations he has come to specialize in, combining mediums as varied as sculpture, video, and land art.

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“The work I created then,” alongside students and teachers of Maori descent, recalls Galanin, “was intentionally free from the romanticized frameworks that generally define what people think of as Indigenous art.” Examples of those early pieces include a series, “What Have We Become?,” that consists of books with pages carved into three- dimensional masks, a commentary on how Western literature has often erased Native narratives.

Galanin does multiple projects at the same time, from mounting a recent solo exhibition at Peter Blum gallery in New York to working with Tlingit tribe members on a dugout canoe project; from creating one-off jewelry pieces (Erykah Badu is a fan) to excavating a grave for a controversial statue of Captain James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park.

Signal Disruption, American Prayer Rug (2020). Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery

Galanin’s success hasn’t prevented him from questioning the very institutions that have championed him: Last year he pulled out of the Whitney Biennial to draw attention to one of the Whitney’s board members, Warren B. Kanders, because his company manufactured tear-gas canisters and other weapons. On a call from Sitka, Galanin says that he strongly believes in having Indigenous representation in the room, from professors to curators: “Everyone is less without it.”

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As Galleries Reopen, Two Critics Find Rewards Eclipse the Angst

By Holland Cotter | Friday, July 17, 2020 | C8

Nicholas Galanin’s “Architecture of return, escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art),” from 2020, pigment and acrylic on deer hide. Credit: Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery, New York; Jason Wyche

Nicholas Galanin at Peter Blum Gallery, 176 Grand Street; peterblumgallery.com.

A banked anger stokes the work of another 2019 Biennial star, Nicholas Galanin, in his first New York solo at Peter Blum, through July 26. I saw this show, “Carry a Song/Disrupt an Anthem,” when it went up in late January. It looked good then and after the mortalities and moral urgencies of the past months, makes an even stronger impression now.

Mr. Galanin is an Alaskan-born Native American of Tlingit-Unangan descent. Much of his art refers to this heritage, and to modern history shaped by dispossession, confinement and violence. In response to a dynamic of sundering, he makes an art of adding, combining. On a deer hide he paints what looks like an M.T.A. map of Native American trade routes through what is now New York City; from pages of white-authored anthropological text on Tlingit culture he molds image of his own face.

His much-noticed woven work from the Biennial, “White Noise, American Prayer Rug,” a version of which is here, looks abstract, but isn’t. It’s an image of a television screen filled with a blizzard of visual white noise: static. For centuries that static has clogged the American air, but in Mr. Galanin’s image, it is receding and dispersing. Deeper, intenser colors are coming though.

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Three exhibitions to see in New York, London and online this weekend

From Nicholas Galanin’s 'escape plans' for Indigenous objects at Peter Blum Gallery to the Royal College of Art's virtual degree show

GABRIELLA ANGELETI, GARETH HARRIS and JOSÉ DA SILVA 17th July 2020 16:19 BST

Nicholas Galanin, Architecture of return, Escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (2020) Courtesy of Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery

The Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist Nicholas Galanin addresses the pervasive appropriation and institutional display of Indigenous cultural objects in his first solo exhibition in New York, Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem at Peter Blum Gallery (until 26 July). The show brings together sculptures, installation, photographs, videos and textile-based works, including the series of drawings Architecture of Return, Escape—a collection of works made on deer hide that map out several “escape plans” for Indigenous objects using the architectural blueprint of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Institutional critique has been central to Galanin’s practice for some time: in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, he was one the artists who requested to withdraw his work in protest of the museum’s board member Warren Kanders. Galanin opted to remain in the biennial when Kanders

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY resigned, expressing that both decisions were made to “fight the erasure” of Indigenous artists in major American museum collections.

The Dutch photographer Rineke Djikstra fine tunes her modus operandi of tracking people over time in this exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery in London (until 25 July). On the upper floor, visitors can mull over the transformation of three siblings in Amsterdam in the work Emma, Lucy, Cecile (Three Sisters) (2008–2014)—subjects who were photographed once a year for seven years by Dijkstra. The artist’s portraits of individuals evolving through the ages—such as Chen and Efrat (1999-2005) that captures a pair of Israeli twins captured over six years—are impressive, even unsettling, anthropological studies. Meanwhile, 14 different groups of people ponder on the power of Rembrandt’s epic work The Night Watch (1642) in the three-screen video installation entitled Night Watching (2019); onlookers include a group of Japanese businessmen who say that the 17th-century work, housed at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, should be marketed more effectively as a tourist attraction. Others question the meaning and motivation behind Rembrandt’s masterpiece.

With many degree shows across the world either cancelled or postponed, art schools have had to turn to the digital realm. Some have gone extraterrestrial, while others such as London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) have gone for a “digital discovery platform”—commonly known as a website. This is a vast undertaking, so skip the homepage and head to the Collections section where arts professionals have picked out and curated selections from the 850 graduating students. Among these are selections by the Museum of Modern Art curator Paola Antonelli, who has gone for works themed around the five senses; the editor of British Vogue Edward Enninful who has a chosen a collection of fashion-related pieces; and the photographer Andreas Gursky, who has picked just three photography students. The Collections page also has thematic groupings of works, including sound pieces, works exploring food or surveillance, and even a one simply chosen to “make you smile”.

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It’s Funeral Time for Colonial Monuments

JUNE 19, 2020

By Trupti Rami

Nicholas Galanin, Shadow on the land, an excavation and bush burial, 2020. Art: Nicholas Galanin

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There is a much-hated statue of Captain James Cook, the 18th-century British Royal Navy captain who landed in what is now Australia (and later met his end in what is today Hawaii), in Sydney’s Hyde Park, and artist Nicholas Galanin has dug it a grave. For the artist’s new work, Shadow on the land, an excavation and bush burial (2020), made for the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, Galanin excavated the shadow cast by the statue. As he wrote in his artists statement: “By creating a hole large enough to bury the statue, the work’s excavation (along with its title) suggests the burial of the Cook monument itself, along with the burial of destructive governance and treatment of Indigenous land, Indigenous people and Indigenous knowledge.”

Galanin, who is Tlingit-Unangax̂ and lives and works in Sitka, Alaska, connected with Aboriginal artists and community members in Sydney while doing research for the Biennale last year. “We share similar colonial struggles with racism, erasure, and other disparities implemented and upheld by colonial governments,” he told Vulture via email. “The conversation surrounding monuments and statues which today often represents one-sided history of mainly white men responsible for genocide, rape, slave trade, etc., has been ongoing amongst our communitites.” Shadow on the land can be applied to almost every major colonial statue on Indigenous or Aboriginal lands, he said, and sits right in with larger social movements happening across the world.

Earlier this week, two Cook statues in Sydney were reportedly defaced, including one in Hyde Park, which was spray-painted with “sovereignty never ceded” and “no pride in genocide.” The calls for removal and protests around these monuments are not only about sculptural representation in the public community. “It is about acknowledging and changing social norms that normalize violence towards BIPOC while ‘honoring’ these figures who historically committed such acts,” Galanin said.

For Shadow on the land, Galanin told Vulture that he originally intended to excavate the on-site shadow of the monument in Hyde Park. “This became impossible with the local municipality,” he said. “I’d say that worked out though, to me, it is best showing this work without the statue, demonstrating a future where we can listen to our communities affected by continued colonial violence.”

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Shadow on the land, an excavation and bush burial (detail). Art: Nicholas Galanin. Photographed by Jessica Maurer.

Galanin’s work often centers on erasure. In 2019, he was one of eight artists who pulled his work from the 2019 Whitney Biennial until Warren B. Kanders, a then-museum board member and owner of Safariland, which manufactures tear- gas canisters that have been used against protesters around the world, resigned. “The Whitney, like so many other institutions of its kind, has historically continued the long American tradition of erasure by way of a lack of Indigenous artists represented in exhibitions and collections,” he wrote in an essay about the experience. His decision to protest and subsequently remain in the exhibition was about fighting erasure.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of Cook’s voyage to and “discovery” of Australia. “Historically speaking, anthropology and archaeology has been a mechanism and tool to uphold ideas of white supremacy,” he said in a video interview about the work. In using archaeology as an art medium, Galanin is contradicting that definition of discovery.

Still, there’s more work to be done. “Yes, remove these markers of white supremacy, act on and change all forms of violence aimed unproportionally at our

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY communities,” he said. “Don’t just change the Redskins name, contribute economically to the same communities these corporations or institutions have historically oppressed. We are living through one of the most important civil rights movements of our time, how will your children see your actions lived out today?”

Shadow on the land is open on Cockatoo Island through September 6, 2020.

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TOP 10 NEW YORK GALLERY EXHIBITIONS CAUGHT IN THE COVID-19 SHUTDOWN By David Ebony | May 20, 2020

Highlights of New York Contemporary Art Galleries at the Shutdown As Covid-19 spread, with social distancing restrictions in place and most workplaces shuttered in response, New York City’s art galleries and museums entered lock-down mode in mid-March. As of mid- May, there were still no reopening plans in sight. The art world has practically ground to a halt, retreating to the illusionary effects of cyberspace, social media, or furtive drive-by exhibitions to simulate a creative environment that is, sadly, a mere ghost of its former self. The situation’s toll on artists, the art community, and cultural economy has yet to be determined comprehensively, but like the rest of the country’s condition in the wake of the pandemic and financial fallout, it is likely to be dire if not devastating.

At least for the moment, firsthand experience of artworks and art exhibitions have become precious memories that need to be preserved. Below are brief comments about some of the most memorable exhibitions I experienced in person just before the gallery shutdowns. These are gallery shows that on some level moved me intellectually, personally, and emotionally. Several of them constitute remarkable achievements by artists relatively new to the New York art scene, while others are key exhibitions by midcareer artists, or milestone presentations by art-world veterans, including a number of the most influential artists of our time. Some of the galleries mentioned here promise to keep these exhibitions on hold, and to reopen them to the public as soon as social distancing and other restrictions of movement due to the pandemic are relaxed.

Installation view: Nicholas Galanin: Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem, with, in foreground, The American Dream is Alie and Well, 2012, at Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY.

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Nicholas Galanin at Peter Blum Gallery

The works on view in Carry a Song / Disrupt and Anthem, the arresting New York solo debut of Alaska- born artist Nicholas Galanin, address issues of Indigenous people–political aggression against, as well as cultural suppression of Native Americans, specifically. A Tlingit-Unangax artist, with a studio in Sitka, Alaska, Galanin has gained a considerable amount of attention lately for his politically motivated, yet formally elegant works. His large-scale woven cotton and wool tapestry, White Noise, American Prayer Rug (2018), alluding to the racist and xenophobic cacophony that has permeated American airwaves in recent years, was a highlight of last year’s Whitney Biennial and is also featured in the Peter Blum exhibition.

Nicholas Galanin, I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), 2019, at Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY.

In command of an impressive array of mediums–from painting, sculpture and photography, to installation, video and performance–Galanin achieves a consistent balance of visual beauty and palpable rage against social injustice in practically every work here. Emblematic of the U.S. government’s often hunter-like aggression toward Indigenous people, their land and wildlife, The American Dream is Alie and Well (2012), for example, shows what appears to be a bear rug, but with the American flag insignia instead of fur, and rifle bullets in place of claws. Somewhat more subdued, but no less visually arresting, and harboring a similarly scathing critique, I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), 2019, features a chopped up totem pole, like those of the Pacific Northwest, arranged on the floor, with each section covered in gold leaf. In poetic fashion, it suggests the violent destruction of tribes, their once-glorious Indigenous culture, and the frustrated attempts to reassemble the splintered remains.

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Nicholas Galanin considers the unbalanced power of institutions over indigenous objects in Anchorage Museum exhibition The online exhibition aims to dispel myths that “indigenous communities are unqualified to care for their own cultural objects” By Gabriella Angeleti | 8th May 2020 17:41

Nicholas Galanin, And call healing spirits (Intellectual Property) Courtesy of Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery

While major museums around the world are shifting their programming online as many remain closed to the public in light of the coronavirus lockdown, the Tlingit and Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin is using the internet to address the pervasive consumption of Indigenous cultural objects. His online exhibition Created to Hold Power (Intellectual Property)—now available to view on Alaska’s Anchorage Museum’s website—aims to dispel myths that “Indigenous communities are unqualified to care for their own cultural objects”, the artist says. It was designed to be experienced online, even before museums were required to close, precisely because virtual platforms allow for greater access to objects held in institutions.

Institutional critique has been central to Galanin’s practice for some time. Last year, Galanin was one of the artists who requested that his work be withdrawn from the Whitney Biennial in protest of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s board member Warren Kanders, the owner of Safariland, which manufactures tear gas canisters used against protestors

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY in Puerto Rico. When Kanders resigned, Galanin opted to remain in the exhibition; he expressed that both decisions were made to “fight the erasure” of Indigenous artists in major American museum collections.

The artist says that the “power of institutions and the amount of control they have over what is entered into art history’s canon” is something that needs to be questioned. Indigenous communities and museums, in particular, have been at odds since colonial times, and the conflict still persists. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, was sharply criticised in 2018 for acquiring and showcasing sacred Indigenous objects and funerary items without consulting tribal government representatives as it inaugurated a wing of Native American art from the collection of Charles and Valerie Diker.

The Anchorage Museum exhibition is presented as a continuous scroll of text, photographs, videos, sculptures, paintings and even audio recordings of auctioneers offering sacred and often looted Indigenous objects like Hopi kachina dolls, which resounds powerfully as viewers peruse the exhibition. It begins with a collection of photographs titled Fair Warning: A Sacred Place, in which Galanin captured empty vitrines made to hold Indigenous art and objects at the Natural History Museum in New York. The work echoes the “ongoing relationship that indigenous people have with institutions, which often offer our only opportunity to visit our objects”, he says.

Nicholas Galanin, Fair Warning: A Sacred Place - Basketry (2019) Courtesy of Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery

The empty cases “were created specifically to house our ceremonial objects but have been taken completely out-of- context for this colonial mechanism of consuming culture, which has been responsible for the romanticism of our community and for upholding the idea of underlying white supremacy and anthropology”. The collection of stark photographs also aims to envision a possible future where these missing objects can exist outside of institutional spaces built on colonial power. The series of works in the section Architecture of Return, Escape comprises a series of drawings on deer hide that map out several “escape plans” for Indigenous objects using the architectural blueprint of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Nicholas Galanin, Architecture of Return, Escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (2019) Courtesy of Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery

While there are established institutions made to protect and seek the restitution of Indigenous objects to Indigenous communities, such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Association on American Indian Affairs, which often publishes notices of problematic or illegal items on view at museums and on offer at major auctions, “it is obvious that there is a market-driven and institutional culture around the ownership of Indigenous art and objects that still persists, and brings up questions around restitution versus reconciliation”, the artist says.

In the final work shown in the exhibition, called Unceremonial Dance Mask, Galanin is shown deconstructing an Indonesian replica of Tlingit mask, reflecting on the counterfeiting and appropriation of sacred objects. The counterfeiting of sacred objects “removes us completely from our cultural economy”, Galanin says. “People come to Alaska and purchase these objects that are completely void and that fetishise our labour and hands”.

Amid lockdowns due to the pandemic, the objects in the exhibition—and the equally powerful works in Galanin’s concurrent online exhibition Carry a Song/Disrupt an Anthem at Peter Blum gallery in New York—are virtually in the hands of everyone.

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Exhibition Review Reviewing Carry a Song – Disrupt an Anthem, Nicholas Galanin solo exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery, New York Jenna Ferrey | Mar 23, 2020

With his exhibition Carry as Song / Disrupt an Anthem, at Peter Blum Gallery, Nicholas Galanin gives the viewer an opportunity to look and to listen. Galanin is multidisciplinary artist of Tlingit and Unangax ̂ heritage. Born in Alaska, Galanin’s work has been shown in galleries and museums in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Europe. He has shown at the Native American Pavilion in at the Venice Biennale (2017) and his work is in collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, LACMA, The Denver Art Museum, and many others. Galanin notes, “working with concepts as a starting point tends to allow for diversity in process and medium.” It is customary, at present to acknowledge (at conferences, gatherings etc.) that the land we gather on is the ancestral homeland of indigenous North Americans. Indeed, we should acknowledge that Manhattan and the spaces on which our galleries sit occupies Lenape ancestral Homelands. Acknowledgements of something stolen, or taken, however, do nothing to ameliorate the injustice. With that in mind I am compelled to acknowledge that I come to Galanin’s exhibition as both an outsider (Canadian) and am connected to the legacy of colonization.

Installation view of Nicholas Galanin’s Carry a Song / Disrupt and Anthem at Peter Blum Gallery, NY Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery, NY

Galanin’s multidisciplinary work provokes. His work resonates cross-culturally but does not acquiesce to dominant or nationalist narratives. It can, in some ways, be difficult to discern what Audience Galanin has in mind. In some ways I felt he was showing me (the outsider) our histories. I was able to look at Indian Children’s Bracelet, a hand engraved pair of iron handcuffs and be confronted with my country’s history of Residential Schools. Galanin’s The American Dream is Alie and Well, a bear skin rug fashioned out of an American flag with bullets serving as its claws seems to speak directly to white mainstream America. Land Swipe, however, which depicts the New York City subway lines on a deer hide appears to speak directly to Indigenous American’s as if to

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY say, “look what has been taken from us.” Of course, it is likely that neither of these interpretations are true, and no work is made with just one audience in mind. In many ways the ambiguity adds to the power of the work. They express Galanin’s vision. He is not obligated to educate white America, but if we stop, and listen, we might learn something anyway.

Installation view of Nicholas Galanin’s Carry a Song / Disrupt and Anthem at Peter Blum Gallery, NY Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery, NY

Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem does just that, it disrupts. It stops you in your tracks. But it also carries something beautiful. Galanin’s works are masterfully executed, exhilarating to look at. The Imaginary Indian has a large carved totem pole painted to match the wallpaper behind it. They provoke and inspire. The blues, golds and blacks of Galanin’s monotypes are striking. Even the engraving on the handcuffs Indian Children’s Bracelet are beautiful. Galanin manages to use beauty to tell truths and to illuminate realities that are anything but. His works address injustice and they celebrate culture and creativity. If you get a chance to visit Peter Blum Gallery, or via the eazel online tour, allow your anthem to be disrupted. Try to be quiet. To look and listen. Galanin’s song is well worth it.

Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem is on view through March 28, 2020 at Peter Blum Gallery, New York.

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Editors’ Picks: 10 Things Not to Miss in the Virtual Art World This Week Sarah Cascone, March 23, 2020 Through Saturday, April 4

Nicholas Galanin, The Imaginary Indian (Totem) (2016), Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

8. “Nicholas Galanin: Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem” at Peter Blum Gallery Available for online viewing is Peter Blum’s exhibition of Native American artist Nicholas Galanin. Having just shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennale, Galanin is making his solo exhibition debut in cyberspace (although it was intended for Peter Blum’s New York gallery). “To carry the songs of Indigenous people, to carry the songs of the land, is inherently disruptive of the national anthem,” the artist says of the exhibition title. In The Imaginary Indian (Totem), a totem is covered in the same floral wallpaper as the wall it hangs on, a metaphor for attempted and forced assimilation between European and Native American cultures. Price: Free Time: Open daily, at all times —Cristina Cruz

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In the Time of Social Distance, Galleries Go Digital As galleries transfer programming online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve noted exhibitions worth checking out. Jasmine Weber, Dessane Lopez Cassell | March 20, 2020

Tired of hate-watching reality TV? Same here. Luckily, these days there’s an extra plentiful selection of visual art you can view from the comfort of your own tower of self-isolation. With today’s public launch of Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms, art lovers all over the world now have an opportunity to view works that were previously planned for the Hong Kong iteration of the prestigious art fair. (Originally scheduled to begin March 19, the fair was canceled last month due to the spread of the novel coronavirus.) To accompany your virtual visit to the fair, we’ve gathered several other online exhibitions worth checking out. While the viewing conditions may be new to some, engaging with these standout artists and artworks is well worth the learning curve as we adjust to our new normal.

Installation view of Nicholas Galanin: Carry a Song/Disrupt an Anthem (image courtesy Peter Blum Gallery)

Nicholas Galanin: Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem, Peter Blum Gallery (through March 28)

Regarding the title of his first solo exhibition with a New York gallery, Nicholas Galanin explains, “to carry the songs of Indigenous people, to carry the songs of the land, is inherently disruptive of the national anthem.” This expansive show brings together work of varying mediums primarily concerned with the experiences of Indigenous folks in the United States, and the precarity and violence of assimilation after colonialism. His woven textile work, “White Noise, American Prayer Rug” (2018), featured here, was a fan favorite in the most recent Whitney Biennial. Installed nearby is “The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole)” (2016), which clings to a wall. The hanging totem, covered by Victorian wallpaper, is a poignant commentary on assimilation in a nation that has been diligent in its attempts to violently stamp out Indigenous cultures. —Jasmine Weber

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Art World Editors’ Picks: 17 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week

From the Armory Party at MoMA to the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, there's something for everyone this week.

Sarah Cascone, March 2, 2020 Thursday, March 5–Sunday, April 5

TOP ROW: Janiva Ellis, Keebler’s Revenge, (2018); Jessica Jackson Hutchins, My Friend the Poet (2019); Trenton Doyle Hancock, Ferroneous & The Monk (1999); Nicholas Galanin, Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We Are Right Now – Untitled (Black Figure), 2019; Mike Cloud, F of J (2016). BOTTOM ROW: Lonnie Holley, Busted Without Arms II (2016); Rona Pondick, Magenta Swimming in Yellow (2015–17); Sheila Hicks, Caid Nejjai (1977); Henry Taylor, Portrait of Deana Lawson (2014).

8. “2020 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts” at the American Academy of Arts and Letters This year, more than 150 artists were nominated by members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honorary society of architects, artists, composers, and writ ers, for the organization’s annual show. There are some impressive names—both emerging and established—among the 28 who made the final cut, including Henry Taylor, Janiva Ellis, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Betye Saar, Sheila Hicks, Diana Al -Hadid, and Arthur Jafa. If you’ve never visited the academy, it’s worth the trip uptown. Location: The American Academy of Arts and Letters, 633 West 155th Street, entrance on Audubon Terrace at Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets Price: Free Time: Thursday–Sunday, 1 p.m.–4 p.m. —Sarah Cascone

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By Andy Battaglia | February 13, 2020

Ancient to the Future: Nicholas Galanin Aims to Change How Indigenous Art Is Understood

Years ago, onto the surface of the earth, Nicholas Galanin painted a petroglyph of the kind found on rocks and mesas in expansive landscapes around the globe. It tapped into a lineage of ancient artworks whose meanings can be simple and complex in ways that take ages to reveal themselves in full. But the pattern of this petroglyph was unique—in the form of the word “Indians” as styled slightly cartoonishly by the Cleveland Indians baseball team. And the expansive landscape was denser than most—on a sidewalk along a stretch of Wooster Street in the downtown New York district of SoHo.

That interventionist gesture happened back in 2011—which feels like an eon ago for an artist whose star has been on the rise. Last year, Galanin exhibited one of the defining works in the Whitney Biennial, and he made news when he joined a group of artists in a high-profile call to have their work removed from the museum in protest of since-departed Whitney board chair Warren B. Kanders. Now, Galanin is back in New York—from his home in Sitka, Alaska—with “Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem,” his first solo gallery show in the city.

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The sculptures, paintings, textiles, and installations in the exhibition, at Peter Blum Gallery on the Lower East Side, focus on Galanin’s standing as a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist exploring Indigenous identity and various conceptions and misconceptions surrounding it. “To balance out the diversity of medium and process was, as always, interesting because I do a lot of different projects,” Galanin told ARTnews during a walkthrough of the exhibition. (As he wrote in Kindred Spirit: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art, a book published around an earlier group show at Peter Blum: “I work with concepts, the medium follows.”)

“These are maps and exit routes for cultural objects from institutions,” Galanin said as he pointed to two new works made over the past year on deer hides pinned to a wall. The first—Architecture of return, escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art)—has arrows charting ways out from where Northwest Coast objects are kept at the Met, and the second—Land Swipe— shows greenspaces and underground transit patterns in Manhattan that used to be Indigenous travel routes Nicholas Galanin, Land Swipe, 2019. in the past. Both address “the simple fact that objects JASON WYCHE/COURTESY THE ARTIST often were removed from communities forcefully or AND PETER BLUM GALLERY, NEW YORK through theft,” Galanin said—but also diverging perspectives on “care for cultural objects, and repatriation and restitution as forms of oppression.”

Pointing out common requirements for museums to even consider relinquishing culturally significant holdings in their collections (temperature control, particular kinds of storage, etc.), Galanin said trading one form of capture for another is not necessarily the best way to think about correcting for the past. “The myth that our cultures wouldn’t be here without museums is still one that’s perpetuated heavily,” he said.

A series of works gathered under the title What Have We Become? centers on carvings of the artist’s face from thousands of pages in an anthropological study published by the Smithsonian in the 1970s. The works, Galanin said, deal with “homogenizing Indigenous knowledge and how that shapes identity and what we can or can’t be.”

Anthropological studies privilege certain kinds of knowledge over others, and the notion that studies of the kind might confer worth on their own is wrong-headed, Galanin said. “Our elders’ words are valued only after they’ve been processed through academia or anthropological texts, and then they’re devalued when conversations come up.” An example is the wealth of knowledge accumulated by local communities over thousands of years about the waterways around Alaska and the transformation of fisheries as a result of climate change. “When our elders speak about the health of the sea and land, it’s deemed memory and myth, and not really entered into scientific reports with numbers that start often in the ’70s. It becomes myth or this ‘other’ that is pushed aside when it doesn’t serve capitalism.”

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An arresting work splayed out on the floor nearby serves a similar point, with what looks like a bear pelt fashioned from a U.S. flag under the punning title The American Dream Is Alie and Well. The bear is festooned with gold leaf and has .50-caliber ammunition for claws—and speaks to notions of trophy-keeping as a component of colonial practice at odds with indigenous ways of treating the remains of a kill. “Our relationship to everything that we do is connected to a form of respect and spirituality and understanding,” Galanin said, while noting an analog between approaches to hunting mementos and objects on view in museums. “Those objects are cared for with humidity control, dust control, etc., but historically, they were also poisoned through conservation techniques with arsenic and defaced with museological numbering. They are not cared for culturally and spiritually in those spaces, and that’s something that we can’t escape as Indigenous people. If we seek to connect with our ancestral past through these objects, it requires a lot of effort, funding, and travel, and not everybody has access to that.”

Nicholas Galanin, The American Dream Is Alie and Well, 2012. JASON WYCHE/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PETER BLUM GALLERY, NEW YORK

Damage and disrespect are not reserved for museums, either. “There’s a whole economy where our aesthetic is appropriated and misappropriated,” Galanin said in front of The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole), a work from 2016 that features a wooden statue seemingly dissolving in front of wallpaper in a display that greets visitors stepping into the gallery by the entryway. Based on Indigenous patterns, totems of the kind are actually carved in Indonesia before being shipped to Alaskan tourist markets “as a curio,” Galanin said. “Entrepreneurs exploit two communities: the Indonesians for cheap labor and the culture they take from.” The objects, in turn, become “ghost- like shells” in every way at odds with At.óow, a Tlingit word for what Galanin described as tangible and intangible property in the form of treasured cultural objects. “Ceremonial objects have spirits and lives,” he said. “They’re not owned by somebody—they’re your grandchildren’s children’s.”

An especially haunting work in the exhibition is Indian Children’s Bracelet (2014–18), one of three such pieces of jewelry alluding to forced removal and matriculation into boarding schools among Indigenous kids. “Part of the work is that all three are in separate institutions,” Galanin said of a set purposely split up and dispersed so far between the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and

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The legacy of mistreatment of children is only one aspect of “how our histories are often either ignored, erased, or not really spoken about,” Galanin said. “Society generally likes to consume our imagery and art forms without conversations about us or our experiences. Often it’s our iconography that people want, without any actual connection to people or recognition of the multigenerational impact on our communities.”

Nicholas Galanin, Indian Children’s Bracelet, 2014-18 JASON WYCHE/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PETER BLUM GALLERY, NEW YORK

Peering into a series of pointedly abstract prints in the show referencing a type of ritualistic dance, Galanin recalled early reviews of the Whitney Biennial that criticized certain artists for not being radical enough or working at an aesthetic remove from subject matter detractors would have liked to see engaged more directly. But his iconic work in the Biennial—a woven prayer rug resembling a television screen broadcasting white noise (a smaller version of which hangs in the gallery show)— enlisted abstraction in part to point out how, historically, abstraction has often not been afforded to certain artists expected to work in culturally specific ways.

The irony is especially troubling when those culturally specific ways have themselves long been abstract, and in any case, abstraction can be a language on its own terms. He called the dance- informed prints (which share the title Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces) “an attempt at capturing cultural memory that is accessed through connections to land, through skinning a deer, through cleaning a salmon—and teaching your children to do all of that. We have these things ingrained in our memory and in our DNA. Whatever that feeling is, it’s not something you can look at, and it’s not something you can hold. But you can feel it, and it comes and goes.”

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Channeling a sense of place is integral to Galanin’s art, whether he’s at home in Sitka—as one can often see on an Instagram feed that finds him doing things like smoking salmon pulled from the Gulf of Alaska—or in a gallery in New York. “It’s important to help share the memory that everybody comes from a place,” he said. “The goal of colonization is often consumption and extraction, and then it just continues on. But it’s through memory and connection to places— and sharing that memory and connection—that we can demonstrate, share, and educate about ways of being in a world that are healthy for not just us but our future generations.” One of the aims of his practice, to that end, involves “challenging what forms of Indigenous art might look like, or how it’s activated through conversation and community.”

Offerings from that practice include artworks that make for ample opportunities to try to understand where they’re coming from. “It’s abstract language that’s been Nicholas Galanin’s The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole) at Peter Blum Gallery. developed over 10,000 or 15,000 JASON WYCHE/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PETER BLUM GALLERY, years of relationship to a place,” NEW YORK Galanin said. “Sometimes anthropology wants to understand how or what or where or when that came from. But that’s not answered by asking that question. It’s answered by being out on the land, being in a community, being in a place. Then you start to understand.”

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Carry a Song, Disrupt an Anthem

Nicholas Galanin at Peter Blum Gallery, Manhattan 10 FEBRUARY 2020, DANIEL GAUSS

Nicholas Galanin, The American Dream is Alie and Well

Cultural anthropology was established at the height of British imperialism and reflected the racist ideology justifying colonization. E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer believed that systems of magic, religion and science revealed an evolution of the human mind, showing peoples of the past and non-urban folks of the present to be “savage” and just a stage toward the development of the white race and its achievements. Anthropologists now seem to believe that (in a nutshell) hunter-gatherers prefer animism/shamanism, farmers prefer magic and city folks like religion, because those belief systems work best for those environments and corresponding emotional exigencies. There is no evolution from one to the other.

By creating a sculpture of a human head from a thick anthropology book, Nicholas Galanin points to the gap between the experience of the Indigenous person, the meaning and gratification derived from that life, and attempts by academia to examine the Indigenous and to what end they aim this analysis. Ties to the natural environment, and the beliefs, stories and communities engendered by those ties, cannot be conveyed adequately through anthropological methods. There is much for us to learn by studying Indigenous cultures:

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY e.g. how shamanism and magic work for many societies or how overpopulation and environmental destruction were fueled by an economic system that divides and exploits. Attempts by a self-described “developed” culture to study the Indigenous will often implicitly categorize their behavior as exotic and backward. When Galanin presents a textbook gutted through the creation of a facial sculpture, he implies that an outsider will never capture the soul of the Indigenous person.

Not grasping the dynamics of the Indigenous experience has not been a problem in the West. From the 1880s through the 1930s there was a huge market in Europe for Tlingit totem poles. Europeans could not possibly understand what they meant, because the poles reflected clan history, kinship systems, accomplishments and meaningful stories. But they loved the ambiguous creativity. Galanin has a totem pole camouflaged, as it were, with a Victorian floral design. The Thunderbird at the top represents power, transformation, transcendence and was often an omen of warfare. Hidden within the floral design, therefore, is an otherworldly threat of vengeance. In another piece Galanin has a totem pole which has been broken up and gilded. The fragmentation results from the Western craving to possess and profit by the beautiful.

Galanin also mashes up Indonesian-made Alaskan masks and presents the pulp as a new type of mask. This mirrors a responsibility for Indigenous artists to expose the inauthentic which is not tied to the culture or dances of the people. He is destroying the attempt to fetishize the masks and to present them shorn of the potency they derive in actual use. He also reveals this in his monochrome series titled Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces. Many museum exhibits show objects apart from their uses in ceremonies and dances. As Galanin writes: “Dancing in our culture is to move as our ancestors moved. There is much to be learned in this space where we combine time, song, ceremony and community, and breathe life into our mask, headdresses, and hats, our at’oow.”

In one image showing the meaningless appropriation of an Indigenous culture practice, we see Princess Leia side by side with a Hopi girl with a squash blossom whorl in her hair. Bjork also seemed to use this whorl on one of her album covers. The squash blossom was an important fertility symbol used in a winter dance between a male Hopi hawk youth and a hawk woman of marriageable age. The blossoms are spread around the ground to represent and hasten the rebirth of vegetation. For Bjork and Leia, well, it made them look cool. One can be reminded of how the punks began using the Mohawk hairstyle. Of course, it was actually the Pawnee who adopted that style in order to make it more difficult for their warriors to be scalped.

We also see an icon with the head of a shaman’s mask, in lieu of the visage of Jesus, implying we can only imagine the shaman through the lens of our own cultural history and the religion we were taught. So we might look with contempt on the shaman, due to the contempt shown toward shamanism by Christian missionaries who considered the performances to be shams when, in fact, the shaman is the central cultural, spiritual and medicinal figure in many indigenous societies and highly valued for his/her usefulness.

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Perhaps as a snide response to Trump removing prayer rugs from the White House or by Trump’s belief that Islamic prayer rugs have been discovered at the US border, pointing to the infiltration of terrorists, Galanin presents his own American prayer rug. The white-noise emanating from a TV may refer to the ethical system of a consumerist society which does not encourage moral transformation or rising to a higher level of humanity, but instead justifies virtually any kind of abuse one feels like committing for the sake of self- indulgence. In The American Dream is Alie and Well, the “v” is deliberately missing and this is the type of décor, a polar bear rug covered by an American flag, we might see in longhouses once the Ghost Dance is begun again and the earth is renewed and reclaimed by the Indigenous. It is the image of a conquered economic system, which now seems dominant and indestructible.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 pushed Native Americans farther and farther west until it became clear that whites wanted the land that Indians had been pushed onto. This led to the assimilation movement reflected by the Dawes Act of 1887. Native Americans were to be taught to value the ownership of individual parcels of land and their children were to be sent to dominant culture schools. The most famous was the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania – its most famous alumnus was Jim Thorpe. Galanin carves Tlingit designs on the types of handcuffs often employed to forcibly remove children to these schools representing the efforts made during the era of the Dawes Act to save and preserve Indigenous culture at all costs. The children were taking their culture with them into this new hell.

Galanin also presents a deer hide painting of the land once occupied by the Lenape tribe, now burrowed though by the New York City subway system. One sees green parcels of ersatz parks created by landscape artists to provide tranquil spaces folks can go into and leave safely as a respite from their city lives. One also sees markings where the upper crust live and are protected by the NYPD. The piece is called Land Swipe because the land was swiped from the Lenape and because a swiping gesture is required to get into the subway system using an MTA card. Police would often hide behind pillars, during the Bloomberg era, and wait for economically poor New Yorkers to jump turnstyles so as to ticket and criminalize them, not caring that spending over $5 for a short round trip ride was just too much for many people. There is also a deer hide painting as an escape plan for artifacts from Indigenous cultures that are being held at the Met Museum. These pieces cannot be understood apart from their cultural contexts, are often held in storage and are just waiting for a return to their proper circumstances in a transformed world.

In The Golden Bough, Frazer’s attempt to prove an evolution of the human mind inadvertently turned many open-minded Westerners onto the magical practices of non-city-dwellers. Many were taken by the ingenuity, creativity and wonder of the rituals and ceremonies described by Frazer so that, ironically, many folks began to value the culture of Indigenous folks and dispute the evolutionary theory on which cultural anthropology was initially established. This early effort by the early anthropologists backfired as they gave us a new perspective from which to judge our own crimes and ignorance. The critique provided by Galanin and other Indigenous artists should change our overall orientation to Indigenous folks and compel us to focus on the factors which caused us to arrive at such a perilous point in human history.

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By Tulika Bahadur | February 7, 2020

A few days ago I encountered something that made quite an impact on me—White Noise, American Prayer Rug, made of wool and cotton (a version of which was exhibited at the 2019 Whitney Biennial in New York), is a woven image of static on a television set. It is something we are all familiar with—millions of black and white dots dancing rapidly on the screen, difficult to look at. This piece of art offers a critical analysis of contemporary American culture’s relationship with white noise, an acoustic vibration used to drown out unwanted sounds and mask alternate voices. The prayer rug generally signals adherence, devotion, commitment. But here, satirically, it seems to indicate an arrogant, inflexible, adamant, myopic attitude.

White Noise, American Prayer Rug comes from Nicholas Galanin (born 1979), an artist of Tlingit– Unangax̂ background (Native American) based in Sitka, Alaska. He forcefully uses “whiteness as a construct has been used historically throughout the world to obliterate the voices and rights of generations of people and cultures regardless of complexion”—a position to which different people will react in different ways. Some might take it to be exaggeration—but, it must be kept in mind, the artist is expressing himself through his own lived experience and that of his immediate community.

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White Noise, American Prayer Rug (2020). Wool and cotton, 60 x 96 inches (152.5 x 244 cm). © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

In his new exhibition titled “Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem” running from January 24 to March 28, 2020 at Peter Blum Gallery in New York, Galanin goes further in exploring the intersection of his Indigenous identity and contemporary culture. The exhibition’s title implies that “to carry the songs of Indigenous people, to carry the songs of the land, is inherently disruptive of the national anthem.” Galanin creates mixed media works (including photography, carvings, books, animal hides, ammunition, handcuffs) that show the violence behind the American Dream, how Western anthropology has coldly dissected and recycled Indigenous experience from a distance, how popular culture borrows elements from Indigenous aesthetics (as in Star Wars) even as it refuses to acknowledge the agency of Native Americans to define their own position.

The artist also refers to painful events of the past—the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families and the programmes of assimilation into Western culture they were subjected to against their will, the forced removal of Indigenous objects from their communities that their subsequent display in museums that are unable to take care of them and where they lose their ceremonial value. Moreover, the theft of land, hunting and fishing rights and the expulsion of Native Americans from areas such as present-day New York City.

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The American Dream Is Alive and Well (2012). US flag, felt, .50 caliber ammunition, foam, gold leaf and plastic, 84 x 84 x 9 inches (213.4 x 213.4 x 22.9 cm).© Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

Galanin’s overall themes are obscured collective memory, barriers to the acquisition of knowledge, the resilience and strength of Indigenous people and culture, the connection to and disconnection from land. Through his deep, serious, complex creations, he reminds us that the comforts of many developed societies have come at a cost—and the ones who have truly paid the price aren’t always the ones who have got to enjoy the comforts.

Galanin earned his BFA at London Guildhall University (2003), his MFA at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (2007), and he has apprenticed with master carvers and jewellers. He has participated in the Venice Biennale (2017) in the Native American Pavilion, in the Whitney Biennial (2019), the Honolulu Biennial (2019) and been invited to participate in the Biennale of Sydney (2020). His work is in permanent collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of What Have We Become? (2017). Carved book, 8 1/2 x 5 x 4 1/2 inches (21.6 x 12.7 x 11.4 cm). © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery. Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Denver Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Anchorage Museum, the Nevada Museum of Art and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

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Constructing enigmatic sculptures of masklike faces from the pages of a 19th century anthropological books, Galanin examines the politics of cultural representation and contemporary Indigenous identity. In this series, the materiality of the sculptures is significant pointing to a construct of Tlingit culture by Europeans. Commenting on the outsider’s perspective of Tlingit culture, Galanin notes, “I have found myself reading Western literature, What Have We Become? (2017). Carved book, 11 3/4 x 19 x 2 1/2 inches often written from a foreign (29.8 x 48.3 x 6.3 cm). © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery. perspective, in which my culture has

been digested and recycled back to me.” Galanin recognizes the importance of literature as documentation and is also overtly conscious of its biases in presenting “a dilemma in which old and new, customary and non-customary, overlap and collide. It is at this point of collision that a new dynamic and tension is being negotiated.”

In Kill the Indian, Save the Man, Galanin splinters a mask in what appears to be a destructive gesture. However, this act is not directed at the cultural production of Tlingit people, the materials are masks made by Indonesians for predominantly non-Indigenous markets. The exclusion of Tlingit people as participants in either the creation or collection of these objects is terminated. As Galanin intercedes, he dismantles the masks and forms a new mask from the resulting wood chips, thereby taking back agency through this new creation. This narrative is further segmented Kill the Indian, Save the Man (2016). by the title that references the Diptych, photographs, Edition of 10, 20 x 14 1/2 inches traumatic imprisonment of (50.8 x 36.8 cm) each. © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery. Indigenous children. In 1879, the United States opened the Carlisle Indian Industrial School under Pratt’s coined slogan, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Indigenous children were taken from their families and subjected to forced assimilation program that included corporal punishment for speaking Indigenous language or practicing cultural rites.

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In Things Are Looking Native, Natives Are Looking Whiter, Galanin juxtaposes two iconic images. One image is of a Hopi woman wearing her hair in the squash blossom, or butterfly whorl style worn by unmarried Hopi women. The Edward Curtis photo is a part of the documentation of Indigenous people throughout the West in the early 1900s that supported the false notion that Indigenous people and ways of life were disappearing. The second image is taken from a promotional photo for Star Wars, depicting a white female, fantasy character wearing her hair in a style mimicking the squash blossom or butterfly whorl. As Galanin asserts, “In borrowing from an Indigenous aesthetic, the image projects settler claims to Indigenous culture into the future. The title speaks to consumer culture’s desire to claim ‘Native inspired’ looks, while simultaneously refusing Indigenous people the agency to define Indigenous culture in an increasingly hybrid world.”

Things Are Looking Native, Natives Are Looking Whiter (2012). Giclée print, 40 x 28 1/2 inches (101.6 x 72.4 cm), Edition of 5. © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

In The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole), Galanin juxtaposes the form of a carved totem overlaid with Victorian Era floral designs. He both confronts viewers with their own assumptions about Indigenous art and reflects on the attempted assimilation of Indigenous culture by Europeans, thereby asserting contemporary Tlingit art as continually evolving. As he says, “This is despite the resistance of individuals and institutions that would limit Indigenous culture based on assumptions about Indigenous The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole) (2016). Wood, acrylic, and floral wallpaper, Totem: 80 1/2 x 51 1/2 x 11 inches (204.5 x 130.8 x 27.9 cm); wallpaper: dimensions variable. peoples prior to interaction with © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery. Europeans. The fetishization of early contact and pre-contact Tlingit art has resulted in skeletal, ghost-like objects in gallery and museum collections. The Imaginary Indian series points to the romanticization of these works as a form of colonization of culture, dependent on devaluing current cultural artistic production. The

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In Indian Children’s Bracelet, hand engravings adorn small handcuffs, like those used to remove Indigenous children from their families during the Resdential Scool Period in the United States and Canada. Tlingit carvers began engraving copper bracelets to replace clan tattoos when the practice of tattoo was forcibly removed from communities by the church and settler state. The practice of jewelry making by Indigenous

Indian Children’s Bracelet (2014-18). Hand-engraved iron, 3 x 8 x 1/2 inches people of the Northwest Coast is (7.6 x 20.3 x 1.3 cm).© Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery. one of cultural preservation, adaptation, and survival. As Galanin states, “These ‘bracelets’ embody the shared history of European colonization and settlement of the Americas as experienced by Indigenous communities, despite the amnesia of settler states in recognizing history. The work suggests the complexities of the desire for Tlingit art and simultaneous rejection of Tlingit people’s realities and experiences by non-native consumers.” In engraving these bracelets Galanin claims them as part of his history, acknowledging and honoring the resilience and survival of the generations affected by the weight of wearing these “bracelets”.

With Galanin’s unique monotypes, it is the artist’s hand as much as Tlingit culture’s history that shapes the representation. Each monotype bears this imprint and tells the story of its creation, not as myth, but as lived experience—the marks showing the spontaneity of a drawing with the enduring qualities of a print. The imagery is central to Tlingit life and references and mimics visual movements of a customary aesthetic. However, Galanin’s contemporary interpretation forms a creative continuum that combines past with Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We Are Right Now – Below (2019). present, demonstrating Tlingit artwork Monotype and gold leaf on paper, 22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm). as a continually evolving practice. © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

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In Land Swipe, a deer hide is painted with lines based on the New York City Transit Authority’s subway map. It represents the limited green spaces and subway routes on Lenapehoking, Lenape land, the area that New York City currently occupies. This was a location for overlap and trade among thriving Indigenous communities, while hide paintings have been used in many Indigenous communities to record and remember events of significance. The word “swipe” in the work’s title refers to the theft of land, hunting, and fishing rights from Indigenous people, while also referencing the “swipe” needed by low income residents and commuters of color in the city to move across the area. The process of pushing Indigenous people off the land is repeated through the gentrification of the land the city occupies, pushing people of color further from access to employment and educational opportunities, as the cost of living, Land Swipe (2019). Acrylic on deer hide, 60 x 36 inches (152.4 x 91.4 cm). © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery. rent, and commuting increases. The guns painted on the hide point out to the defense of the commuters at the wealthiest stations, while they point in at the commuters in the lowest income station, to make clear that whether NYPD presence is threatening or comforting is based on income, appearance, and location. This work was created in solidarity with protesters and communities of color in New York City for holding the NYPD and MTA accountable for violence and demanding an end to discriminatory legislation and practices.

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Architecture of return, escape (2020). Deer hide, pigment and acrylic, 31 x 61 inches (78.7 x 154.9 cm). © Nicholas Galanin / Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery.

This is the first in a series of hide paintings for guiding the escape of Indigenous remains and objects in non-Indigenous institutions to their home communities. Entitled, Architecture of return, escape, the series of hide paintings depict a floor plan referencing a visitor’s guide as well as blue architectural blueprints. This particular work references the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is a mapped escape plan for objects held in the New York City institution. Of the few objects held in display cases, many more (including human remains and ceremonial objects not intended for public view) are held in museum archives. The cost and processes required for Indigenous communities to travel and visit these archives limits access to cultural knowledge and inheritance, and continues the removal of the objects from their land and people. While institutions control the environmental conditions, they are unable to adequately care for these objects in cultural or spiritual ways. The objects themselves are unwilling visitors to the museum, and the painting builds a route for escape and a vision for reunification of cultural inheritance with community. The work serves as a reminder of the past, and as a plan for a good way forward. Stolen objects, human remains, and works sold under duress can now return home for their own health, for the health of the communities that created them, and for the health of the communities that took them.

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Events and Parties

Editors Picks: 11 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week This week, the Brooklyn Museum hosts a panel of female museum directors, and Susan Cianciolo has a show at Bridget Donahue Gallery.

Artnet News, February 3, 2020 Through Saturday, March 28

Nicholas Galanin, Land Swipe (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York.

11. “Nicholas Galanin: Carry a Song / Disrupt an Anthem” at Peter Blum Fresh off being featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial —and being among the artists whose demands to remove their work from the show helped push embattled trustee Warren B. Kanders out of the boardroom for good—Nicholas Galanin returns to New York for his fi rst solo gallery exhibition in the city. The show brings together works in multiple media to surface the stories and resilience of Indigenous American communities (especially the Tlingit and Unangax̂ communities of which Galanin is a part), as well as visualize the inherent conflict between their independence and the merciless colonial history of the United States. Location: 176 Grand Street Price: Free Time: Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. —Tim Schneider

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PETER BLUM GALLERY

Biennale of Sydney to Tackle Race and Colonialism Sam Gaskin | Sydney | 4 February 2020

Newly announced highlights of the event include Arthur Jafa's The White Album, which won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Biennale.

Lisa Reihana, In Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-17). Ultra HD video, colour, 7.1 sound, 64 mins, Courtesy the artist and New Zealand at Venice.

The 22nd Biennale of Sydney has announced highlights of its programme, which runs 14 March to 8 June. Occurring 250 years after British explorer Captain Cook landed in Australia, many of the artists selected for the biennale deal with themes of race and colonialism.

Curated by Indigenous Australian artist Brook Andrew, the biennale is entitled NIRIN, which means 'edge' in the language of the Wiradjuri, the Indigenous people of western New South Wales. Andrew said the biennale programme 'demonstrates how artists have the power to inspire and lead through difficult global times such as environmental catastrophe, urgent states of conflict and reframing histories.'

One of the most celebrated works being shown is Arthur Jafa's The White Album (2018), which won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Biennale. The video cuts together close-up portraits of white people with found footage of race-based violence, fumbling efforts to excuse racism, and attempts to acknowledge and address it. The work will be shown in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time at the biennale.

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Many of the other participating artists are either people in majority white countries or people who live in countries underserved by the contemporary art world.

Barbara Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Biennale of Sydney said, 'the biennale invites diverse and often marginalised voices of the world to converge, creating a safe place where people can think and talk about issues that resonate on a local and international level.'

Among other highlights are: Peruvian artist Fátima Rodrigo Gonzales' recreation of an TV set from 1960s Latin TV show Sabado Gigante (Gigantic Saturday); Tlingit/Unangax̂ artist Nicholas Galanin's excavation of the shadow cast by the Captain Cook statue in Sydney's Hyde Park; and New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana's Nomads of the Sea, an immersive film installation exploring Māori and Pacific peoples' culture.

The biennale will take place at six sites where entry is free: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Cockatoo Island, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and the National Art School.

An interconnected programme called NIRIN WIR (meaning 'edge of the sky'), includes ticketed events and extends to the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Observatory, Parramatta Female Factory and Sydney University. —[O]

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SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA JANUARY 2019

Nicholas Galanin and Merritt Johnson, Creation and her children, 2017, mixed media, 62 × 84 × 74". Nicholas Galanin

LAW WARSCHAW GALLERY, MACALESTER COLLEGE

On-screen, a break-dancer’s fluid movements rhythmically align with a Tlingit song. When voice and drumbeat end, club music takes over and accompanies a Tlingit dancer’s slow, circling steps. This pair of videos, Tsu Héidei Shugaxtutaan I and II, both 2006—whose titles translate to “We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care”—epitomized Nicholas Galanin’s interest in remixing cultural references and bridging the past and present. The title of his recent exhibition, “Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We Are Right Now,” suggested an expansive view of ever-emergent identities and histories, of the not quite yet. Addressing the legacies of violence inflicted on Native peoples, Galanin insisted on nuance as a route to addressing trauma and allowing for transformation.

Creation and her children, 2017, showed a knife-wielding mother carving her own face. Her features, sketched in pencil, are still incomplete. This act of self-re-creation seemed to be a response to the violence of her past beheading: “Cut off or burned or stolen, it may have been left to rot,” the

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY artist suggests. Her skeletal arms, covered in gold, contrast with her smooth torso, which is rendered like a classical sculpture. She shelters her children under a makeshift skirt of resilient tarp as they play with furry, disembodied muzzles full of sharp teeth. In creation and child rearing alike, a degree of danger can be productive, even generative—but here the depicted danger is acute, the recreation a necessity.

We Dreamt Deaf, 2015, presented a different scene of violence’s aftermath. A taxidermied polar bear claws its way out of a fur rug—or is its torso about to be flattened into an expensive skin? The trophy kill, formerly majestic, has morphed into a reliquary for species threatened by global warming. The subduing of the bear also serves as an allegory of conquest. Its recognizable shape reappeared in The American Dream is Alie and Well, 2012, in which the Stars and Stripes takes the place of an actual hide. Outfitted with a plastic head and claws made from bullets, this ersatz skin doubles as a patriotic masquerade, suggesting pride in having brutally subjugated “the wilderness.”

Galanin took aim at cultural camouflage elsewhere in the show, pushing back against appropriation and erasure by foregrounding both product and producer: In White Carver, 2012–, Galanin invites non-Native carvers to produce phallic shapes outfitted with a “pocket pussy,” a masturbatory toy ready “to satisfy desire without intimacy,” as the artist writes. One such toy was displayed in a vitrine for the show. With its title, I Looooove Your Culture! Fine Wood Working, 2012, the work mocked appreciation-fueled cultural theft. The critique was subtler in Unceremonial Dance Mask, 2017, in which the artist splintered an Indonesian reproduction of a Tlingit mask before gluing together the fragments to form a new visage, itself exhibited alongside comparison photographs in Kill the Indian, Save the Man, 2016, whose title references Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt’s infamous words.

A similar mask appeared in How Bout Those Mariners, 2014, a single-channel video that revisits the 2010 fatal shooting of John T. Williams, a hearing-impaired Native artist, by a Seattle police officer. Galanin pairs audio from the police vehicle with choppy footage of a masked Tlingit warrior rushing toward the camera, carving knife in hand. As the leather-clad figure rapidly approached, one wondered: Does this warrior come to haunt or avenge? Or does he stand for the specter the officer thought he saw before killing a man who carried a carving knife?

Six monotypes struck a markedly different tone while still centering Galanin’s concern for the intersections of cultures and temporalities. They integrated gold leaf, a staple of medieval European religious iconography, to pay tribute to “above,” “below,” and the four cardinal directions. In one of the works that gave the show its title, a thin shimmering line reached from golden sky to golden land, traversing a feathery blue expanse. In another, two profiles faced each other: One was deep underground, the other poised on the horizon. A kiss, or maybe a river of breath, connected them. By interlacing such moments of deep reverence with pointed critique, Galanin carved a space for complexity that unsettled rather than pacified.

— Christina Schmid

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First American Art Magazine’s Top Ten Native Art Events of 2019

BY FAAZINE ON JANUARY 3, 2020 ARTICLES, WEB CONTENT

The politics of the last year have been volatile, particularly for Indigenous peoples of Brazil, Colombia, and Bolivia. It is profoundly important that those of us with media platforms use our voices to advocate for fellow Indigenous peoples of the Americas, both to provide hope for the future when the darkness can seem overwhelming and to embody and share Indigenous worldviews for future generations.

The arts are one platform where Native people can communicate our perspectives with each other and the greater world at large. Indigenous artists shared their visions of sustainability and resilience throughout 2019, and below are ten events the writers, editors, advisors, and supporters of First American Art Magazine found most inspiring.

5. Indigenous Inclusion at the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art The longest-running survey of new American art, the Whitney Biennial featured a critical mass of Indigenous artists for the first time in 2019. Curators Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley co-curated this 79th edition of the Whitney Biennial that included Indigenous artists Thirza Cuthand (Plains Cree), Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk), Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax), Adam Khalil (Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe), Zach Khalil (Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe), Caroline Monnet (Algonquin), and Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee), Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) and the late James Luna (Payómkawichum/Ipi, 1950–2018). Galanin was one of the first of many artists who pulled their work from the show to protest the vice-chairman of the museum’s board, Warren Kanders, who owns Safariland, a tear gas manufacturer, and Sierra Bullets. The protests resulted in Kanders resigning from the museum board.

Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax), “White Noise, American Prayer Rug,” 2018. whitney.org

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The year's best Twin Cities art exhibitions were diverse and international The best art exhibits this year. By Art Alicia Eler | DECEMBER 20, 2019 — 4:16PM

Nicholas Galanin The Violence of Blood Quantum, Half Human (animal), Half Human (animal) after James Luna, 2019.

From the powerful and arresting Native women showcase "Hearts of Our People" to the radical lesbian world of "Strong Women, Full of Love": the best of 2019 arts and entertainment included these 10 art shows. 1. "Hearts of Our People" at Minneapolis Institute of Art: The first-ever major museum exhibition of art by Native women showcased the work of 115 artists from the United States and Canada, spanning more than 50 tribes, 65 languages and seven centuries. 2. "History Is Not Here: Art and the Arab Imaginary" at the Minnesota Museum of American Art: The 17 artists in this exhibition, still on view through Jan. 5, hail from 22 countries and explore the complexities of the "Arab" diaspora, questioning the colonial nature of geographic boundaries.

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3. Nicholas Galanin, "Everything We've Ever Been, Everything We Are Right Now" at Macalester College: Galanin took on America's cultural amnesia, delivering critiques of colonialism and settler mentality, the imposition of "blood quantum" and the cultural appropriation of Native cultures. 4. "The Body Electric" at Walker Art Center: Nearly 50 artists or collectives addressed the body's relationship to technology in this boldly intergenerational exhibition. 5. "Queer Forms" at the University of Minnesota's Nash Gallery: More than 100 LGBTQ artists struck a pose in this exhibition coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riot. 6. "Swimming on Dry Land/ Nadar en Seco" at St. Olaf College: This modest solo exhibit by internationally acclaimed Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco explored the politics and poetics of her home country's revolution. 7. "I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating" at Weinstein Hammons Gallery: Self-proclaimed "kind of 'emo' photographer" Alec Soth had a spiritual awakening in 2016, took a break from snapping pics, then returned with 70 intimate photos aimed at shifting the power dynamic between photographer and subject. 8. "Strong Women, Full of Love" at Mia: Photos by Carolyn "Meadow" Muska, documenting the radical lesbian world of 1970s Minnesota, emerged from the closet. 9. Cara Romero at Bockley Gallery: The Chemehuevi artist based in Santa Fe explored the supernatural in everyday life and contemporary Indigenous expression. 10. "The Builders: Shaping Minnesota's Architectural Landscape on the Color Line" at Mill City Museum: Three prominent black Minnesota architects leapt out of the history vault and into a show all their own.

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Culture Desk Living with Art

By Jenny Kroik | November 28, 2019

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The Most Important Works of the 2010s: Favorite Artworks That Didn’t Make the List BY The Editors of ARTnews NOVEMBER 28, 2019 9:00AM

Nicholas Galanin, White Noise, American Prayer Rug, 2018. | COURTESY THE ARTIST

Today, ARTnews presented a list of the most important artworks produced between 2010 and 2019: just 20 of them. Of course, many more works were made in that span of time that remain absolutely essential. Below are a few more entries from the editors, involving only pieces by artists not represented on the main list. Let the debates begin.

Andy Battaglia, Deputy Editor Laurie Anderson, Habeas Corpus, 2015 Matthew Barney, River of Fundament, 2015 Carol Bove, Polka Dots, 2016 David Brooks, Continuous Service Altered Daily, 2016 Stan Douglas, Helen Lawrence, 2014 Nicholas Galanin, White Noise, American Prayer Rug, 2018 Pope.L, Claim (Whitney Version), 2017 Walid Raad, Scratching on things I could disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World, 2007–ongoing Tom Sachs, Tea Ceremony, 2016 Taryn Simon, “Paperwork and the Will of Capital,” 2015

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ARTnews in Brief: Liverpool Biennial Names Artists—and More from November 6, 2019

BY The Editors of ARTnews POSTED 11/04/19 5:31 PM

Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 17-Sept. 22, 2019).

Photograph by Ron Amstutz. Nicholas Galanin, White Noise, American Prayer Rug, 2018, wool and cotton, 84 × 120 inches.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Nicholas Galanin Gets New York Gallery Representation One of the 2019 Whitney Biennial’s most talked-about artists, Nicholas Galanin, will now be represented by Peter Blum Gallery in New York. The artist, who is based in Sitka, Alaska, and is of Tlingit and Unangax̂ descent, frequently deals with themes related to Indigenous identity and the perception of it by non-Indigenous people in his work. At the Whitney Biennial, he showed a prayer rug resembling white noise on a television monitor, which Galanin said refers to the way that distractions are generated to ward off political strife. Earlier this year, he made headlines for being one of eight artists to request that their work be removed from the Biennial amid controversy over a Whitney board member—a topic he addressed in an essay for ARTnews. A show of his work will open at Peter Blum Gallery in 2020.

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Biennale of Sydney Releases Artist List for 2020 Edition With Focus on Indigenous Artists

BY Alex Greenberger POSTED 09/12/19 9:21 AM

Jota Mombaça, How old is suffering?, 2018, performance view. | ANNA CERATO

The Biennale of Sydney in Australia has revealed the full artist list for its 2020 edition. Some 98 artists and collectives are lined up to participate in the exhibition, which is due to run next year from March 14 to June 8.

The focus of the show curated by Brook Andrew, a member of the Wiradjuri people, is the “unresolved past anxieties and hidden layers of the supernatural,” according to a statement. Its title is “NIRIN,” after the Wiradjuri word for “edge.”

Andrew has previously stated that the title is meant to reference a de-centering that he hopes to achieve with a Biennial, which focuses in large part on indigenous artists and members of various diasporas.

Among the indigenous artists lined up for the event are various members of First Nations hailing from areas near Sydney—Noŋgirrŋa Marawili (Darrpirra/Yirrkala) and S.J Norman (Wiradjuri) among them. There are also Native Americans included in the show, such as Nicholas Galanin (a citizen of the Sitka Tribe in Alaska who recently wrote for ARTnews about his decision to pull out of the Whitney Biennial in July) and Demian DinéYazhi´ (Navajo), who is participating alongside the activist initiative that he founded, R.I.S.E. Other artists include Arthur Jafa, who has said he will consider blackness in relation to Australia with his new work.

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Standing Together: Whitney Biennial Artist Nicholas Galanin on His Decision in July to Pull Work from the Show BY Nicholas Galanin POSTED 09/11/19 11:47 AM

Nicholas Galanin’s White Noise, American Prayer Rug, 2018, is one of two works by the artist included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. | COURTESY THE ARTIST

Nicholas Galanin is an artist and citizen of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. He is of Tlingit and Unangax̂ descent, and lives and works with his family in Sitka.

In July I was one of eight artists who requested that our work be pulled from the 2019 Whitney Biennial in protest of the presence on the Whitney Museum board of

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Warren B. Kanders, owner of the company Safariland, a manufacturer of tear-gas canisters and other weapons used against protesters around the world. I was also part of the same group of artists who, when Kanders resigned a little more than a week later, chose to remain in the exhibition. For me, the reason for both decisions was to fight erasure. My position as an Indigenous artist invited to show at the Biennial had been conflicted from the start. I accepted the invitation fully aware of Kanders’s position on the board and the potential for both conflict and—I hoped— conversation about culture and capital, in relation to Kanders as well as other issues that transcend him. The Whitney, like so many other institutions of its kind, has historically continued the long American tradition of erasure by way of a lack of Indigenous artists represented in exhibitions and collections. In the past, when it has been acknowledged at all, Indigenous art has too often been romanticized, fetishized, and homogenized through a Eurocentric lens, all in the service of lies about who we have been, who we are, and who we can be.

As an Indigenous artist, I am not new to the Nicholas Galanin. ©CARLOS CRUZ feeling of being seen as spectacle. Indigenous cultures have been objectified in World’s Fairs and in display cases, our ancestors’ bones secured in museum storage even as our populations shrank through forced starvation and removal. While museums claim to be safe spaces for sharing knowledge and generating discussion, this has not been true from my Indigenous perspective.

But in order to have agency in such spaces, you have to show up. It’s more impactful to engage in conversation than to avoid it. That is not the same for everybody, but for me it is important and true—and showing up in the interest of engagement was part of the promise of exhibiting at the Whitney.

I agreed to contribute to the Biennial because underrepresented voices are so rarely given such a platform from which to tell their truth. The invitation presented me with acknowledgment of my work but, more important, with a responsibility to my culture, my community, and my ancestry.

Prior to the group request with other artists to have our work pulled, we—along with additional artists in the show and important figures from around the art world—sent a letter to the Whitney asking the museum to remove Kanders from the board. For me, it

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY was about more than just tear gas. Tear gas is a means of biological warfare designed to clear space. Today, it is used at Standing Rock in North Dakota, at the border between the U.S. and Mexico, in city streets. Kanders and the war profiteers who supply tear gas and other weapons have no place guiding our cultural institutions. And those institutions do not have to accept direction from such sources or reward them with board positions or namesake galleries.

But the Whitney, like so many other museums, continues to draw on toxic philanthropy that wields power over our communities while creating a self-congratulatory climate of comfort for the existence of economic disparity, cultural suppression, erased histories, and white guilt. This is all part of the noise that White Noise, American Prayer Rug (2018), one of my two works in the Whitney Biennial, refers to: distraction from economic, cultural, and environmental realities constantly being generated to justify and protect the status quo.

Nicholas Galanin’s Let them enter dancing and showing their faces: Shaman, 2019, is installed on a ground-floor window at the Whitney Museum in New York.

We live in a nation built on white supremacy, and white supremacy fuels the militarization of our borders and the lands between them, for Indigenous people as well as others of different descent. It has been as American as apple pie for white officers of the law to attack black and brown men, women, and children since the era of “Manifest Destiny.” When such communities assemble in protest, it is very possible they will be

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY removed—cleared from the space they’re in—by a Safariland-manufactured canister. Our children are being taken from their parents, innocent people killed in the streets, our families and communities torn apart. If you are able to view such conditions from a position of comfort and can’t see why I and other artists might remove work in protest, then this is an opportunity to look and listen, carefully.

The media coverage of protests at the Whitney Biennial, starting with actions organized by the activist group Decolonize This Place before the show opened and continuing through mass letters sent to the museum and the ultimate call for artwork to be taken back, has largely focused on making protest into spectacle rather than listening to different perspectives and valuing them for what they are—thoughtful calls for action.

My decision to remove my work from the Whitney came when my hope for meaningful conversation was met with inaction—on the part of many but, most fatefully, by the museum, which for weeks and then months failed to issue any meaningful response to protests mounting within its walls. For me, that inaction translated to complicity with militarized denial of the right of Indigenous people to freely move through land that we belong to.

I am glad that Kanders left the board. I’m glad that the exhibition curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta—which reflects the strengths and values of creative people of color, women, LGBTQ, and other artistic voices who came together to insist we do better in our institutions—remains intact and on view for the duration of the Biennial through September 22.

The protests had everything to do with the Whitney Museum and its capacity to contribute to culture. Culture not only reflects the reality of life and politics—it creates it. My aim is to engage in conversation based on reality—to create change rooted in responsibility and resist cultural amnesia that would have us mistake the status quo as acceptable or just.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of ARTnews, on newsstands September 24, under the title “Standing Together.”

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The Whitney Biennial Called. How Will They Answer?

By Siddhartha Mitter | May 9, 2019 Nicholas Galanin

“All these institutions come with politics.”

Mr. Galanin at his studio in Sitka, Alaska .Credit: Ben Huff for The New York Times

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Mr. Galanin’s “White Noise, American Prayer Rug” (2018).Credit: Nicholas Galanin

Nicholas Galanin stepped outside his house on the hill and aimed his phone camera toward the bay. An artist of Tlingit descent, he lives in Sitka, Alaska, making a video visit more convenient.

“There’s a herring fishery here, managed by the state,” Mr. Galanin, 39, said. He explained how overfishing had depleted the stock despite years of warnings by elders. Native knowledge was overlooked in arts as well, he said. Ethnography presented it as static, when in fact it adapts.

Mr. Galanin is a craftsman who recently led the carving of a 40-foot totem pole near Juneau. He is also adept at contemporary techniques like video and installation.

His work will greet Biennial visitors in the form of a large ink and gold-leaf monoprint of a female shaman in the museum lobby. A textile piece, combining imagery of a prayer rug and a television screen flickering white fuzz, is also in the show.

By refusing to stay bounded, Mr. Galanin said he could connect with other artists and communities, and help Native culture evolve on its own terms. “People who want to fetishize us are going to have to wait and see what we do next,” he said.

Mr. Galanin is a veteran of museum shows, including a midcareer retrospective at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. He welcomed the Biennial curators’ decision to feature several Native artists. “It’s empowering to have voice in these spaces,” he said.

Still, he tempered his expectations of dramatic change. “All these institutions come with politics,” he said.

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Nicholas Galanin: The Value of Sharpness: When It Falls By Christopher Green | March 2019

Installation view: Nicholas Galanin,The Value of Sharpness: When It Falls, Open Source Gallery, 2019. Photo: Stefan Hagen. Courtesy Open Source Gallery, New York.

At Open Source Gallery, 60 white porcelain hatchets, patterned with red and blue florals, tumble end over end in a shallow arc along the length of the gallery. Suspended from the ceiling by threads of clear fishing line, they fly as if thrown. Rising from chest height, the visitor can just barely walk under the peak of their crest before the axes fall and come to a stop at eye level, shy of the gallery wall. Their shadows dance on the walls as the hatchets sway on their strings, the angular shades appearing out the corner of one's eye like another crowd of blades thrown from out of sight. Walking around the installation, one cannot help but step directly into the arrested trajectory and look head-long into the drove of spinning earthenware. Staring down the gilded edges, the light shines off their delftware glaze, a glimmering hint at their true fragility.

A single-work exhibition by Sitka-based Nichola Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), The Value of Sharpness: When It Falls reprises a recurring medium and format that the artist uses to engage

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY questions around the authenticity, commodification, and responsiveness of Indigenous culture in the face of colonialism's legacy. The present work recalls his 2013 installation I dreamt I could fly, in which sixty porcelain arrows with a similar blue delftware decoration hung in an arc from the gallery ceiling. The arrows in that piece are long and thin, evident in their wavering fragility. As tools for sustenance and protection they are functionless decorative representations, incapable of flight. The hatchets of The Value of Sharpness are likewise fragile and decorative, but Galanin finds further ambiguity in their form and material utility. While the porcelain is guaranteed to break upon first impact, the hatchets have a palpable heft nearly felt in one's palm. As Galanin notes in the exhibition release, "The capability of the hatchets is not in their ability to split wood or bone, but in their ability to shatter, creating small sharp projectiles and edges from decorative representations." The potentiality in the sharpness of fragmentation, the mutability of material, is Galanin's apt metaphor for the survivance and resilience of Indigenous communities.

Porcelain is a fragile and malleable medium that Galanin has frequently exploited to mask, confound, and make ambiguous the utility and cultural associations of its moldable forms. In God Complex (2016) a white porcelain set of riot gear hangs on the wall in a cruciform. The material fragility of the body armor belies its connotations of police militarization and bodily violence, the fragile ceramic shell of the suit suggesting the emptiness of the white savior-martyr ideology at the heart of the settler-colonial state. He has likewise used floral patterning as cultural camouflage in ongoing series such as Imaginary Indian (2008-2016) and S'igeika'awu: Ghosts (2009). In the former, the artist sourced Indonesian made imitation masks that are frequently sold in Alaskan tourist shops and painted them with the floral and garden patterns of French toile. S'igeika'awu: Ghosts features similarly sourced masks cast out of porcelain and decorated with the floral delftware pattern that recurs in The Value of Sharpness. These cultural transmutations, whereby a cheap imitation acquires the status of Indigenous art, are a hallmark of Galanin's practice and are insightful commentaries on the commodification of Indigenous culture. The delftware hatchets are likewise outsourced, made by a non-Native porcelain studio based in Colorado after a commercial hatchet design that provided the mold. Thus Galanin, in a Duchampian move, doubly transforms the non-Native products, the readymade commercial design and the Colorado-sourced porcelain, into a conceptual work of contemporary and "authentic" Indigenous art.

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Installation view: Nicholas Galanin,The Value of Sharpness: When It Falls, Open Source Gallery, 2019. Photo: Stefan Hagen. Courtesy Open Source Gallery, New York. The particular style of hatchet was intentionally chosen to evoke the tomahawk, the stereotypical weapon of choice in popular imaginings of the "Indian." The ambiguity in The Value of Sharpness between hatchet and tomahawk, tool and weapon, plays on the assumptions, stereotypes, and fetishes that the viewer brings and accordingly must confront from their own position. The opportunity is available, in standing before the path of the flying hatchets, to engage in cowboy and Indian fantasies. It is not dissimilar from the expectations that consumers of tourist curios, unloading from cruise ships and tour buses, bring to the market for Alaska Native arts. Seeking the fantasy of the authentic, the consumer is more often confronted by the foreign-made facsimile, in the end only to not know or care about the difference. We see that desire for the decorative, consumable, stereotypical representations of Indigenous people in the floral patterning of Galanin's hatchets, and the commodification of culture in the gilded edge of the blade. The gold glaze, however, is soft; it cancels out the imagined sharpness of the blade, just as the delicate ceramic does. While gold had less value than ceremonially significant materials like copper or utilitarian metal like steel when introduced to the Northwest Coast as a trade good, its value as currency and capital had to be reckoned with as contrasting ideals of wealth were steadily imposed on Indigenous communities. The gilded edge obscures any use value, and the sharpness of the hatchets will only return when they break. The porcelain blades of The Value of Sharpness are in a state of arrested flight; their trajectory leads towards a shattering point, but their fall is controlled, tied up in an alien system. When these tools do break, perhaps their fragmentary edges might be turned on the binds that hold them.

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Out of Line: Nicholas Galanin Rejects the Traditional/Contemporary Binary By Nicolas Galanin | Mar 26, 2018

Leornard Getinthecar (Nicholas and Jerrod Galanin), Space Invaders, hides, ink, paint, 2013

As an artist, Nicholas Galanin has utilized a wide range of tools and techniques and tapped into influences from conceptual art, pop culture, indigenous philosophy, protest, and his Tlingit and Unangax̂ (Aleut) ancestry. Born in Sitka, Alaska, the artist’s work is often characterized as a fusion of elements found along a continuum between tradition and contemporaneity: he’s modified an AR-15 rifle with Tlingit hand-engraving, carved walnut, and a hand-sewn sea otter strap; a photomontage pairs a 1906 Edward Curtis image of a young Hopi-Tewa woman with a photo of Carrie Fisher as Star Wars’s Princess Leia; a taxidermied polar bear rug is clad in an American flag; his music, created as part of the trio Indian Agent (with Otis Calvin III and Zak Dylan Wass) melds hip-hop, experimental, and electronic sounds with stories and sensibilities from its members’ Indigenous, African, and European backgrounds. But it’s a premise he rejects: the “tradition versus contemporary” binary, he argues, is more about settler pain than about his own reality as an indigenous person, artist or otherwise, living today.

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In advance of his March 28 artist talk at the University of Minnesota and his participation in the March 29 Walker panel discussion, we share Galanin’s Walker Reader commission on this oft- perpetuated and false dichotomy.

I have the immense joy and honor to participate in the continuum of Tlingit culture, creating from a position of independence and interdependence. Settler society attempts to categorize and compartmentalize work by artists of Indigenous descent. In doing so, lines are invented according to percentages, materials, processes, and dates strategically selected to limit who and what we are told we can be and how we should function.

Nicholas Galanin, Operation Geronimo, silkscreen, 2013

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I refuse to separate the intricacies of Indigenous culture and community to maintain authority for colonial and settler institutions or agendas. Stereotypes and romanticization of Indigenous people are rooted in centuries-old justifications for genocide which have been continued via blood quantum and ethnicity based on percentage. We are the only community in the United States that resides in part in internment camps (reservations). We are the only community in the United States whose blood percentage is monitored to determine if we are registered with the Bureau of Indian Nicholas Galanin, I dreamt I could fly, 60 porcelain Affairs by a number. I challenge those who view or arrows, 2013 listen to my work to consider that Indigenous people are not contained by colonial mechanisms designed to erase our existence through continually narrowing categories of Indian-ness.

Early assertions that we were primitive, uncivilized people in need of white saviors and religion were used to advocate for our physical destruction. When such destruction was not possible, efforts turned toward Nicholas Galanin, The Imaginary Indian, from the destroying our cultures, removing us from the series, Paint. Wood, Wallpaper, 2009 land, dividing our communities and forcibly removing our children. Today, due to the partial success of these violent and sustained efforts to remove, disperse, and dilute our cultures and communities, the attempt to control and erase us is based on grading and categorizing how closely we match the characters written into settler accounts of our ancestors. A viewer’s position and participation in engaging my work reveals more about them and the culture they come from than it does about who I am or the cultures I Nicholas Galanin, Follow S'igeika'awu: Ghost, continue to shape. ceramic, horse hair, 2009

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Nicholas Galanin, Things Are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter, giclée, 2012

The process of channeling ideas and knowledge into physical form has been practiced by Indigenous communities for as long as we have existed. We create canoes to connect our communities with ceremony, to subsist and feed our people. We create drums and songs to heal, masks to dance stories and ceremony. Our creative output is visual, and our spoken language is not separated by materials of process, by museum or gallery standards, by anthropologists or art historians. My work holds stories, ideas; it documents and reflects the world. My works teach and tell histories, based on my relationship to land and Nicholas Galanin, Where will we go?, 2008 communities.

Tradition is not defined by anthropologists, art historians, or institutions. Tradition is an English word that speaks to continuum. For me, the continuum of Indigenous ways of being is embodied in giving, in living respectful of land and water. Conversations around “tradition versus contemporary” are tired, from where I stand; they continue to reinforce and accept the division of the two as a form of control. Those insistent on continuing these

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY conversations continually ask me to differentiate and divide my work using this boundary, to impose this line on my creative practice. It’s problematic and absurd to classify “traditional” as a pure and selfless maker creating solely from experience of Indigenous culture, materials, and processes that predate colonization and “contemporary” as the personification of western individuality embodied in an Indian Artist creating with any and all materials available and usually labeled as a shapeshifter. It seems that this absurd insistence to imagine and create “tradition versus contemporary” in living/contemporary artists is responsive to settler pain, a pain that is real but non-guiding. Settler Nicholas Galanin, Get Comfortable,C-print, 2012 pain and discomfort with the continued existence of Indigenous people as thriving post-colonization and post-settlement does not define who we are, what we do, or how we dream as Indigenous people. Settler pain deserves none of our energy or magic, though we continue to give, share, and teach in the wake of so much theft and destruction because we continue to recognize that we are all connected.

Nicholas Galanin, stills from Unceremonial Dance Mask, 21st century, video, 2012

This line placed before me when presenting this conversation of “tradition versus contemporary” may seem fixed and solid to those who invent, believe, and enforce it. For me this line moves, disappearing and reappearing, shifting constantly in attempts to contain or disrupt the flow of creation and culture through categorization—attempting to control and exert

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY power through variable exclusion or inclusion. Like colonial national borders cutting through land and people who have lived here longer than those invented lines, these lines drawn through creative production are also an attempt to control. I actively resist the authority of settler culture to define who I am or what I do. I resist the internalization of these lines and division in Indigenous communities, and work to affirm connection with land among all living things in everything I do.

Nicholas Galanin, Haa Aaní (Our Land), hand-carved and etched AR-15 with hand-seen sea otter strap, 2013

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Nicholas Galanin remixes Native American identity at Phoenix’s Heard Museum

The artist, who is of Tlingit and Unangax descent, confronts the traumatic past in deeply affecting ways but does not wallow in it

JILLIAN STEINHAUER | 6th August 2018 22:05 BST

Nicholas Galanin’s mid-career survey at the Heard Museum in Phoenix begins in a spacious gallery, where a photograph of the artist’s head has been blown up and split in half

Nicholas Galanin’s mid-career survey Dear Listener (until 3 September), at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, is grounded in the artist’s experiences and heritage as a Native Alaskan. But to reduce his art to the limiting category of “identity politics” would be a mistake. The exhibition is expansive, embracing and grappling with many facets and complexities of what it means to be Native American today.

The show begins in a spacious gallery, where a photograph of the artist’s head has been blown up and split in half. Its two parts frame the doorway through which visitors must pass to get to the main display. It is not entirely unusual for the introduction to a solo show to contain a photograph of the

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY artist, but more often than not, the image is historical and the subject is dead. Galanin, who is of Tlingit and Unangax descent, is very much alive, although his peoples have been decimated by white America. The large photograph of his face reminds visitors to the Heard, one of the top institutions in the country dedicated to Native American art, that they are not about to see more ethnographic displays of artefacts like the ones sitting in glass cases across the lobby; they are encountering contemporary art made by a practitioner in the present day.

One of the showstoppers in the exhibition of around 50 pieces, organised by the museum’s fine arts curator, Erin Joyce, is We Dreamt Deaf (2015), which greets visitors in the same entry gallery as Galanin’s photograph. On a raised platform, the front half of a taxidermy polar bear seems to crawl forward, while its back half is flattened into a rug. The animal, which has bullet holes in its side, has suffered triply at the hands of humans. Visitors accustomed to benign taxidermy displays in natural history museums will likely be unsettled by the sight of a creature trying to escape its brutal fate.

Galanin is a keen observer and critic of exploitation, especially of Native people. For White Carver (2012-present), he enlists a white man to sit on a platform behind a red velvet rope and carve a wooden “fleshlight” sex toy that resembles one made by the artist himself, titled I Looooove Your Culture (2012). The performance, which took place five times at the Heard, brilliantly satirises the way “Indian” culture has been fetishised and flips whose bodies get exhibited by whom.

The performance White Carver brilliantly satirises the way “Indian” culture has been fetishised and flips whose bodies get exhibited by whom

On adjacent walls, two sets of work are based on Galanin’s practice of buying fake Native American masks made in Indonesia, chopping them up, and reassembling the pieces to create abstract masks of his own. The artist also carries out this process in a video, Unceremonial Dance Mask, 21st century (2012), playing in the same gallery. There’s something powerful in the image of a steady and determined Galanin hacking away at the commodification of indigenous culture with a hand tool. As I watched him hold the new mask to his face and dance around a fire, I wondered if he was re-

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY consecrating the object, skewering the ignorance of non-Native viewers, commenting on the slipperiness of authenticity, or all three.

Clearly, for Galanin, it’s just as important to destroy the fake masks as it is to make something new of them. This impulse to reuse pre-existing material, no matter how offensive, runs throughout the show. In one gallery, a tiny pair of iron handcuffs lays low to the ground in a case. Galanin found the shackles, which were used in boarding schools where the US government tried to “assimilate” Native American children by stripping them of their culture. He engraved them with designs of Tlingit formline, reclaiming the oppressor’s tool. Acerbically titled Indian Children’s Bracelet (2014), the work is deeply affecting.

In one gallery, a tiny pair of iron handcuffs lays low to the ground in a case. Galanin has engraved the shackles, used in boarding schools where the US government tried to “assimilate” Native American children by stripping them of their culture, with designs of Tlingit formline, reclaiming the oppressor’s tool

Galanin often talks about his art as part of a cultural continuum, and you can feel that at the Heard: he confronts the traumatic past but does not wallow in it. He works in traditional Native arts, such as formline, and in mediums more associated with contemporary art, like video. Tsu Héidei Shugaxtutaan (2006)—which translates to “We will again open this container of wisdom that has been left in our care”—features a man break-dancing to a Tlingit chant. A follow-up video shows another man performing a ceremonial Tlingit dance to electronic music. In both cases, the performers’ moves appear perfectly in tune with the music of a different culture. The continuum is vast, and it is hybrid.

The show’s most beautiful expression of hybridity is No Pigs in Paradise, a collaboration between Galanin and the Canadian artist Nep Sidhu. The series honours Canadian indigenous women, who have been the targets of deadly violence for decades, with elaborate garments that are outfitted on

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected] PETER BLUM GALLERY mannequins and displayed mostly in one gallery, as if in a showroom. They are stunningly original creations—mash-ups that seem to blend high-end casual wear, punk gear, ceremonial clothing, and even, in one case, what looks like a foil emergency blanket. With titles such as She in Gold Form, She in Shadow Form, and She in Rhythm Form 7B, the works seem to evoke a pantheon of goddesses that will rise in part due to the strength bestowed on them by such carefully wrought garments.

Although the Heard’s mission is “to be the world’s pre-eminent museum for the presentation, interpretation and advancement of American Indian art,” it was founded by white collectors. It’s also not a contemporary art museum with a history of exhibiting such conceptual and political work. To an outsider, at least, Galanin’s survey feels like an act of decolonisation. I hope that visitors will, as the exhibition title beseeches them, make an effort to truly listen.

• Dear Listener: Works by Nicholas Galanin, Heard Museum, Pheonix, Arizona, until 3 September

Blumarts Inc. 176 Grand Street Tel + 1 212 244 6055 www.peterblumgallery.com New York, NY 10013 Fax + 1 212 244 6054 [email protected]