Indigenizing the (Art) Museum: Gerald McMaster In Conversation with Patricia Norby

Thursday, May 6th, 2021 at 1:00PM (EDT)

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Please join Onsite Gallery and Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge for an exciting virtual In-Conversation event featuring Patricia Norby as part of the Indigenizing the (Art) Museum series with Gerald McMaster.

This event is one of many planned for Spring 2021 as part of the Indigenizing the Museum Project and the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art. Each week this Spring, we will engage with a different curator from (art) museums around the world, with the aim of addressing questions around Indigenous curation, ceremony, and research in digital spaces.

How are museums Indigenizing their collections? 

Who are the curators shaping the future of (Art) museums? 

What are the new practices defining digital curatorial spaces?

Gerald McMaster, O.C., is one of Canada’s most revered and esteemed academics. He is a curator, artist, and author, and is currently professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University where he leads a team of researchers at the Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge. McMaster served as the curator for the 1995 Venice Biennale, artistic director of the 2012 Biennale of Sydney, and curator for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. He is nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) and a citizen of the Siksika First Nation.

Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha) oversees the American Wing’s Native American art collections. An award-winning art scholar and museum leader, she served as Senior Executive and Assistant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian-New York and as Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry in Chicago. Her forthcoming book, Water, Bones, and Bombs, examines 20th-century American Indian art and environmental disputes in northern New Mexico (University of Nebraska Press). She co-edited “Aesthetic Violence: Art and Indigenous Ways of Knowing,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, (2015). She earned her PhD at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Caption: Square bag with short rectangular flap decorated on one side with quillwork in a geometric design with human figures and edged with metal tubes (detail), Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, Photograph by Dr. Gerald McMaster.

Wapatah Team Contributors

Gerald McMaster

Natalja Chestopalova

Brittany Pitseolak Bergin

Mariah Meawasige

Yiyi Shao