Description

Renowned for their support of pioneering contemporary artists, Mass MoCA has commissioned new work from Indigenous artist Jeffrey Gibson with the landmark installation of POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT. Mass MoCA has recently focused their efforts on public engagement with a diverse range of audiences for this exhibit, including outreach to new audiences, while including space for learning and experimental approaches to integrating visual and performing arts that center Indigenous and queer communities. To that end, t his grant would additionally support related public programming including an extensive series of gallery activations, convenings, performances, school partnerships and community engagement. The exhibit and accompanying events were conceived in partnership with artists from the show to serve as a dynamic forum for public engagement with Indigenous and queer artistic traditions, political histories, and visions for the future. The exhibit opens in November 2024 and will be on view through February 2026 in their signature Building 5 gallery space.
 
Jeffrey Gibson is an artist and member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. This exhibit will showcase the breadth and vision of Gibson’s path-breaking work as a queer, Native American artist. In his broader arts practice, Gibson brings Minimalist and Afro-Futurist influences to bear on aesthetic vernaculars and cultural traditions from Indigenous North American and LGBTQ+ communities, staging important conversations belonging, collectivity, and futurity. For this show, Gibson pairs video portraits projecting archival and contemporary footage of queer, two-spirit, and gender non-conforming indigenous artists and community members alongside embroidered garments based on the regalia used in Indigenous faith ceremonies. Gibson invites viewers to imagine a future resounding with and inhabited by Indigenous and queer voices, inspired in part by drag culture and other queer dance spaces. Accompanying these solo works, the show will also provide a platform for newly commissioned works from Gibson’s engagement with the Collaborator Cohort, a group of Indigenous artists and creatives from across North America. Gibson and the Collaborator Cohort co-designed related programming for the show to engage new and diverse publics through dance, workshops, and artist activations.
 
This grant would support an extensive series of gallery activations, convenings, performances, workshops, and school partnerships, all conducted in partnership Gibson and the Cohort, who co-designed public programming for the museum and worked with them to generate ideas that would inform the exhibitions structure and activation in communities.  Mass MoCA has focused their efforts on public engagement with a diverse range of audiences for this exhibit, including outreach to new audiences, while including space for learning and experimental approaches to integrating visual and performing arts that center Indigenous and queer communities. Gibson’s exhibition and its core themes will be the focal point of two convenings at the Museum: Representation and the Public Record and Revisioning Histories in American Art which will be for general audiences, arts practitioners, and art professionals. Representation and the Public Record held in March 2025 will bring together designers, journalists, and civic leaders to respond to two inter-related conference themes: 1) how individuals and groups are represented in public discourse, institutions, and the media and 2) what is the role of the public record in shaping these representations?
 
Revisioning Histories in American Art will feature panels with indigenous artists and museum curators who will discuss the ethical practices and flawed past of museum collecting by considering the history of US museums in light of social movements for racial just6ice. Panels will also work together to propose guidelines for an inclusive future for how American art is displayed and taught, highlighting the need for Native American, African American, Asian American, and Latinx artists in the history of American art.
 
Mass MoCA’s Department of Public Programs will work with Collaborator Cohort artists to develop and implement a broad suite of programming for engagement with Teen audiences, public schools, and communities from the rural north Berkshires community, where residents have few opportunities to access arts and culture from diverse perspectives.
 
Finally, this grants will go towards an extensive outreach and public engagement program to connect with new audiences. Performances, presentations, and workshops will center collaboration and collective approaches to the creative process and feature the perspectives of Indigenous and Queer artists.