Jolene Rickard, associate professor in the Department of Art (Architecture, Art and Planning) and the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies (Arts and Sciences), has artwork currently on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Rickard’s piece is part of an ongoing exhibition of artwork by Native American women, “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” that honors the achievements of more than 115 artists from the United States and Canada spanning more than 1,000 years. Rickard is a citizen of the Tuscarora nation, Turtle clan, and the former director of the Cornell American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program.
For her piece, “...the sky is darkening” (2018), Rickard collected older Tuscarora and Haudenosaunee beadwork pieces and incorporated them with work by contemporary bead workers. “The piece is about deep reclamation of land by the Cayuga in conjunction with the complexity of the beaded bird,” Rickard said.
“Hearts of Our People” opened in June 2019 at Minneapolis Institute of Art, then went to the Frist Museum in Nashville before moving to the Smithsonian in late February. “Hearts of Our People” will be in D.C. until May 17, then will be at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, from June 28 through Sept. 20.
