The Luce Foundation is proud to support the Montclair Art Museum’s new efforts to strengthen the voices of Indigenous people in the presentation of its Native art collection by making collaboration with Native artists, scholars, and communities part of the curatorial process.

Montclair Art Museum (MAM) announced that it has received a grant in the amount of $320,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation to support a project to develop new strategies for the presentation of MAM’s collection of the Native Art of North America in its Rand Gallery and throughout the Museum. This award is the Museum’s largest ever one-time foundation grant.

With key goals to engage current, innovative ideas about Indigenous communities with art museum collections and exhibitions, this project seeks to indigenize the curatorial process, making decisions collaboratively from the start. The grant will fund the necessary project personnel, honoraria, and travel expenses to develop and execute key principal activities of an Advisory Board for Native American Art, a Project Curator of Native American Art, and two scholarly assemblies over a three year period.

“We are so grateful to the Henry Luce Foundation for making it possible to realize what has been our longtime dream and goal of collaboratively engaging Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities with innovative plans for the museum’s collection and exhibitions,” said Chief Curator Gail Stavitsky. “I look forward to working closely with the Advisory Board members and the future Curator of Native American Art, who will bring current thinking and new strategies to the process of creating new, more dynamic, more ethical and fully realized presentations of the Museum’s collection that feature the perspectives and voices of their Native creators.”

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