The Defining Art Events of 2024
Editors of Artnews
December 16, 2024
Native and Indigenous art continued to be featured in museum exhibitions and in the market, boosted by the visibility of Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee) representing the US at the Venice Biennale this year. Both of the Biennale’s top prizes also went to Indigenous artists, and the façade of the central exhibition hall was covered with a mural by an indigenous collective from the Brazilian Amazon.
Phillips held its first exhibition sale focused on Native and Indigenous art in January. Then, in May, the auction house set a new artist record for Kent Monkman (Cree) after his 2020 painting The Storm sold for $300,000 ($381,000 with fees).
Solo shows for Native and Indigenous artists this year included Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) and Nicholas Galanin (Lingít/Unangax̂) at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Mary Sully (Yankton Dakota) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Melissa Cody (Navajo) at MoMA PS1. The Cincinnati Art Museum also held a large exhibition of glass works by contemporary Native American and Indigenous Pacific-Rim artists, while the Blanton Museum of Art currently has an exhibition curated by Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke).
There are already signs the momentum will continue into 2025: The Denver Art Museum announced that next year it will hold a large-scale exhibition of works by Monkman, the first museum survey for Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe), and a complete reinstallation of its collection of Indigenous art. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, will also open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., next October before traveling to other venues in Canada and the US. —Karen K. Ho