Description

The American Art Program (AAP) has invited the Denver Art Museum (DAM) to apply for a Museum Partners for Social Justice (MPSJ) grant. This AAP sub-program aims to support museums that explore, develop, and disseminate new project models and implementation frameworks to advance justice and equity. Each year, AAP seeks to make these grants to a cohort of four museums in two pairs: two that have distinguished themselves in the execution of prior Luce-funded projects and two that will learn from them and implement new approaches in planned projects at their own museums. The pairs will work closely across the grant period, and all four will join in a set of dialogues.
In this cohort, the Denver Art Museum will act as a lead and will partner with the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) for a series of cross-staff, in-person convenings and virtual meetings. DAM’s case study will be the recently completed, Luce-funded reinstallation and reinterpretation of its Indigenous Arts of North America Galleries. Through these conversations and convenings, DAM and DIA will work to support and strengthen the DIA’s plans for the reinstallation and interpretation of its Indigenous arts collection.
DAM’s 2021 reinstallation centers Native peoples’ originality as artists and their rootedness within a system that includes community, land/place, Indigenous knowledge, and formal aesthetics. DAM’s approach aims to convey that continuity and change are interrelated aesthetic and cultural forces that inform peoples’ worldviews, lifeways and creative work. The installation narratives and design were influenced by culturally specific knowledge shared by Indigenous artists, community advisors, and collaborators, working with the curatorial team.
DAM will share its practices: for building authentic and sustained relationships with Indigenous people at multiple touch points across the museum; centering and supporting Indigenous people in programs and practices; providing meaningful access to resources including collections, programs, tools, and spaces; and listening to and integrating Indigenous voices.
DAM staff will address approaches to Indigenous community involvement and collaboration with its standing Indigenous Community Advisory Committee, which informs project planning, and guides and advances the museum’s relationships with local and national Native communities. DAM will also share the museum-wide work of its EDI Steering Committee, a resource and advisory council to the Museum’s Equity Director, DAM leadership, and all departments involved in exhibitions, programs, and collections display.
Key project team members include curators John P. Lukavic, and Dakota Hoska (Oglála Lakȟóta), and Danielle Stephens, a senior interpretive specialist.