DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Exhibit Case: Pandemic Face Masks by Native Women Artists:
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- Description of Pictures: Artists from Native American nations of the Northwest Coast, Midwest, and Northeast created these face masks in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Accomplished beadwork artists and basket makers, these women adapted materials and techniques from their tribal traditions onto the most common of contemporary accessories -- protective face coverings. Each mask carries a message of strength, resilience, and hope. They were exhibited in the online exhibition Masked Heroes: Facial Coverings by Native Artists presented by First American Art Magazine, which included more than one hundred works by seventy-three artists.
Pandemic Face Masks by Native Women Artists
Adding functional and artistic masks to SAAM’s collection during Covid-19 projects artists’ messages of strength, resilience, and hope
The Smithsonian American Art Museum recently acquired three face masks created by Indigenous women artists in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These accomplished beadwork artists and basket makers utilized diverse materials and artistic techniques onto their protective face coverings.
In mid-March when SAAM’s Renwick Gallery and the other Smithsonian museums closed due to the pandemic, the Renwick curators envisaged how to document the current moment. The curators have been guided both by the gallery’s vision of celebrating makers taking both innovative and time-honored approaches to their work as well as the pronouncement by Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch that “the job of a museum is not just to look back. It’s to collect today for tomorrow.”
The three masks were exhibited in the virtual art exhibition, Masked Heroes: Facial Coverings by Native Artists, launched in April 2020 and organized by First American Art Magazine. More than seventy artists submitted 125 functional and artistic face mask creations using cloth, leather, cedar bark, plastic, and other materials. The magazine’s editor, America Meredith
The three masks are currently on view in the second-floor permanent collection galleries at the Renwick. Below, each artist has shared more about her artistic practice and the messages of strength, resilience, and hope behind the masks.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- MASKS_200918_09.JPG: Artists from Native American nations of the Northwest Coast, Midwest, and Northeast created these face masks in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Accomplished beadwork artists and basket makers, these women adapted materials and techniques from their tribal traditions onto the most common of the contemporary accessories -- protective face coverings. Each mask carries a message of strength, resilience, and hope. They were exhibited in the online exhibition by First American Art Magazine, which included more than one hundred works by seventy-three artists.
- MASKS_200918_19.JPG: Yellow Cedar Face Mask, 2020
yellow cedar and sinew
Vicki Lee Soboleff (Haida/Tlingit)
- MASKS_200918_27.JPG: Onockwashon:a (Medicine Plants)
2020
velveteen, flannel, beads, sweetgrass, sage, and leather
Mariana Thompson (MohawkNationl of Akwesasne)
- MASKS_200918_32.JPG: MMIW
2020
cotton, ribbon, beads, bone, and shell
Katrina Mitten (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma)
- MASKS_200930_07.JPG: Yellow Cedar Face Mask, 2020
yellow cedar and sinew
Vicki Lee Soboleff (Haida/Tlingit)
- MASKS_200930_10.JPG: Onockwashon:a (Medicine Plants)
2020
velveteen, flannel, beads, sweetgrass, sage, and leather
Mariana Thompson (MohawkNationl of Akwesasne)
- MASKS_200930_26.JPG: MMIW
2020
cotton, ribbon, beads, bone, and shell
Katrina Mitten (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma)
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