Description

In the course of the annual loan exhibition competition conducted by the APP, we regularly consider the option of offering discretionary grant funds to support worthy projects that have been eliminated in one of the rounds. The Gregory Allicar Museum of Art (GAMA) was invited to apply for support for a 2024 exhibition that will be Colorado State University’s (CSU) first major presentation of work by artists of the Hinonoʼeino (Arapaho) and Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) peoples, whose homelands include much of the plains and foothills of what is now known as Colorado. “3óóxoneeʼnohoʼóoóyóóʼ /Ho’honáa’e Tsé’amoo’ese: Art of the Rocky Mountain Homelands of the Hinono’ei and Tsistsistas People” will be curated by Dr. Emily Moore, Associate Professor of Art History at CSU, Bruce Cook (Haida/Arapaho) from the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, and George Curtis Levi (Southern Cheyenne/Arapaho) of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Featuring art form the 19 th -century to today, the exhibition will acknowledge the devastating histories of colonization along the Front Range and the Cache la Poudre Valley, including the forced removals of Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples to reservations in Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma that facilitated the founding of the land-grant university. A primary project goal is to establish equitable and ongoing relationships with Cheyenne and Arapaho artists whose ancestors called Colorado home and to begin to repair relationships with local Indigenous communities. GAMA will engage students in the organization of the exhibition and will seek to share it with students across curricula at CSU and in regional public schools, as well as with Native communities in the region. The grant will fund honoraria for two Indigenous co-curators and travel expenses for a Arapaho and Cheyenne artists from Wyoming and Oklahoma.