Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly

Monarchs takes the yearly migration path of the monarch butterfly, from Central Canada through the Midwest, the Plains of Nebraska and Texas, on its way to Michoacan, Mexico and back, as a metaphor for considering themes of place, home, movement, migration, immigration, mobility, diaspora across the Americas, transnationalism, land rights, and sovereignty. The exhibition considers the aesthetic forms in which objects and images reveal their identities through form, process, and materiality rather than through content. Contemporary artists in the exhibition incorporate mediums such as basket weaving, ceramics, beadwork, copper hammering, quilting, dressmaking and sewing processes, stucco, plaster, and feathers, and processes and materials that hold a high degree of resonance within native, immigrant, and Latino aesthetics and vernacular cultures.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website