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 ...More...
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