Description

Organized by first-time grantee the Michener Museum and co-curated with Joe Baker, director of the Lenape Center in New York, “Never Broken” will consider how an iconic work of visual art has shaped widely shared perceptions of Native Americans, their history, and sovereignty. The exhibition centers on Benjamin West’s iconic 1771 painting “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians” and the plethora of prints, paintings, and decorative arts that have recycled its spurious imagery of a lasting treaty of peace between the Pennsylvania Province’s founder and Tamanend, Chief of the Lenni-Lenape Turtle Clan. The presentation will incorporate archaeological objects that demonstrate Lenape ancestral ties to the land, as well as works of contemporary Native art that represent living Lenape creative practices and offer critical responses to the persistent colonialist myth embodied by West’s painting and advanced by its countless offshoots.