This presentation speaks to Native people’s dynamic and powerful relationship with land, home, and sanctuary. While they have beliefs and practices as wide and vast as this continent, Native communities share a recognition that humans exist as part of a larger ecosystem that must stay in balance. As the pressures of colonization and contemporary life have assaulted traditional lifeways, the works in this exhibition demonstrate the resilience and versatility with which Native artists maintain their cultures, community connections, and sense of home.

Featured artists whose names are known to us include:

- Tom Haukaas (Lakota and Puerto Rican, b. 1950, San Juan, PR)
- Marie Watt (Seneca Nation and German-Scot ancestry, b. 1967, Seattle, WA)
- Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee, b. 1957 Baltimore, MD; d. 2018 Tulsa, OK)
- Duane Linklater (Omaskêko Ininiwak from Moose Cree First Nation, b. 1976, Moose Factory, ON, Canada)
- Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy, b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, ME)
- Meryl McMaster (nêhiyaw from Red Pheasant Cree Nation, a member of the Siksika Nation, British and Dutch, b. 1988, Ottawa, ON, Canada)
- Mark Tayac (Chief of the Piscataway Indian Nation, b. 1959, MD)

Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum is a wide-reaching project that proposes Indigenizing interventions to address and refuse the oppressive hierarchies of coloniality that pervade the realm of culture and serve as the underpinning of museums. The project encompasses community engagement, a series of nine monographic and thematic exhibitions, institutional interventions, public programs, and an untraditional catalog.

Curated by Leila Grothe, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Dare Turner (Yurok Tribe), Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum, with support from Curatorial Research Assistant Elise Boulanger (Citizen of the O​sage Nation).

This project is generously supported by the Ford Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, the Estate of Carolyn Lee Smith, The Dorman/Mazaroff Art Exhibition Fund, the Hardiman Family Endowment Fund, the Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Fund for American Art, The Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal Contemporary Art Endowment Fund, and the Robert Lehman Foundation.

Dates: May 12, 2024 - December 1, 2024