Past Exhibitions

March 1, 2024 - May 19, 2024

This exhibition, co-curated by Longyear Curatorial Assistant Summer Frazier and Curatorial Intern Raquel Marquez-Guerrero ‘24, explores the different ways that art leverages the creative process to metabolize conflict or aggression. This healing manifests in various forms, ranging from redefining narratives to empathizing with personal or communal losses. These artists, working in media from 2D to 3D to street and graffiti art, intentionally confront discontent, fostering creative growth and finding solutions.  In this context, their art becomes a means to process pain and to construct bridges amidst conflict. In addition to art, this exhibition also explores various ways that plants can be used in healing processes.

January 22−June 2, 2024

Explore Response Ability curated by Summer Frazier on the second floor of Alumni Hall. Delve into a collection inspired by themes from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, exhibiting themes of reciprocal relationships and Windigo economics. Sample lesson plans are available for faculty who would like to send their students on self-guided exploration.

February 10-May 21, 2023

This exhibit, curated by Curatorial Intern Justice Wysinger ‘23,  highlights case studies on material culture and knowledge from different Indigenous communities worldwide. Several issues, including globalization, environmental degradation, water pollution, and resource extraction, are linked to the negative impacts on these cultural practices. At the same time, they ignore and undermine Indigenous ways of knowing and practicing in their environment. She highlights Influential BIPOC authors at Colgate University and some authors that the university has introduced to its curriculum, including recent community reads How Beautiful We Were and Braiding Sweetgrass. This exhibit features collections from the Longyear Museum of Anthropology, interviews, and loans from community members. 

February 24-December 9, 2022

This exhibition features historic and contemporary works from the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and Picker Art Gallery from Africa, Latin America, and around the world. These collections, together with loans from the student curators, and interviews from individuals around campus, serve as a celebration of music around the world and in our community here at Colgate. This exhibition was curated by nine students during a Museum Curating class (MUSE 300) during the fall of 2021. From concept to research, design and label-writing, to interviews and installation, the students played a role at every step of the process.

Stop by the gallery to engage with our music stories and add to our community playlist!

April 6 - December 10, 2021

The Longyear Museum of Anthropology (LMA) team invites you to celebrate our latest exhibition: Makers and Materials of the Americas. Through a glimpse at 40 works from the Longyear Museum of Anthropology collections from Canada to Peru, this student-curated exhibition aims to center individual makers through close attention to the materials used and the makers’ stylistic choices. The show also features 17 loaned works celebrating the artistry, craftsmanship, and creativity of contemporary Haudenosaunee artists and makers. 

The Longyear Museum of Anthropology, in celebration of the University’s Bicentennial, conducted an archival and collections-based research project on the museum’s history. Based on this research, students in Christy DeLair’s spring 2019 course, 'MUSE 300: Museum Curating,' have curated an exhibition that explores the lives and activities of the curators who shaped the institution; traces how collections evolve; and asks visitors to envision the museum’s future. The exhibition highlights nine different collections that entered the museum from the mid-20th century to the present and are connected to communities in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

January 24–April 14, 2019

In collaboration with staff from the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and students from Professor Ntokozo Kunene’s Fall 2018 Costume Design class, Fashioning Africa surveys crafting traditions from the continent of Africa and examines their contemporary influence and global impact. The exhibition features six textiles and accessories from the African collection of the museum alongside design work by the students inspired by their research.

Image:

Examining Kente cloth in the Longyear Museum of Anthropology Collection (AF2008.18, Gift of Tim and Bobbi Hamill. Photo: Megan Meier ’18)

This student-curated exhibition focuses on foodways within Central New York, including local agriculture, Haudenosaunee nations, and international communities, to explore themes of indigenous food sovereignty, justice and access, economic development, and memory and identity. What is the role of food in our lives? Why do the foods we eat matter? How is food connected to broader cultural, political, and economic issues?

Images:

Courtesy of Colgate University faculty, staff, and students

This exhibition examined issues of identity, stereotypes, and cultural appropriation connected to contemporary Indigenous fashion of the Western Hemisphere. The exhibition was curated by students and museum staff in collaboration with Colgate community members (students, faculty, staff, and alumni) who identify as members of an Indigenous community in the Western Hemisphere. Fashion items ranged from earrings to skirts, traditional regalia to T-shirts, and high fashion to streetwear.

Owner of OXDX Clothing Jared Yazzie visited Colgate as an artist in residence in conjunction with (not a costume). Major support for the residency was provided by the Colgate Arts Council, and additional support was provided by the ALANA Cultural Center, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department of Art and Art History, Museum Studies Program, Native American Studies Program, Communities and Identities, and the Howe Fund.

Image

Photograph by L. Paul Voss

From the Tuareg in the Sahara to the Inuit in the Arctic, and from island communities in the Pacific to communities in central New York, this student co-curated exhibition explores human interactions with diverse environments. How do environments shape us, and how do we shape environments? How do we talk about the environment and our experiences within it, and why does that matter? How do we imagine our future environments, and what are we doing now to help shape those possibilities?

Image:

Inuit Tools, early 20th century. LMA. Museum Purchase; Funded by Mortimer C. Howe Fund. Photo: Mark R. Williams (Left to right, top to bottom: NA1954.11, NA1954.13, NA1954.04, NA1954.03, NA1954.12, NA1954.09, NA1954.07, NA1954.08, NA1954.06).

This student-curated exhibition — by Cameron Pauly ’19, Sierra Sunshine ’17, and Carrie Zhang ’20 — brings together over fifty pottery objects from both the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and the Picker Art Gallery collections. Objects represent pottery making traditions from ancient to contemporary communities in South Africa, Nigeria, China, Thailand, Panama, Peru, and Native American nations and explore different phases of pottery manufacture, including material selection, clay shaping, surface treatments, and firing. An interactive center allows visitors to practice forming clay using different shaping techniques and learn how to analyze potsherds.

Image:

Ceramics from the Sawankhalok period, Thailand. LMA. Gift of Timothy Sullivan. Photo: Mark R. Williams (Clockwise from Top: AS2006.01, AS2006.06, AS2006.04, AS2006.03, AS2006.05)

September 27–December 22, 2016

From Australia to Ethiopia, Panama to the United States, this exhibition looks at over forty objects from different cultural and historical contexts to explore their role in human communication. Themes include objects as markers of identity, objects as storytellers, objects inscribed with meaningful designs, and objects used in performance. Through examination of the complex and multiple roles of each object in culturally situated communication, this exhibition aims to build more nuanced understanding of the objects in the museum while also deepening our appreciation of the everyday objects around us.

April 26–June 5, 2016

This experimental exhibition features material culture from the Longyear Museum of Anthropology's African collection displayed in an "open storage" format to mimic the experience of visiting a museum collection facility, with student written interpretive panels that address the politics of collection and representation in museums. This is the first stage in the development of a collaborative project to rethink techniques of displaying and interpreting African material culture. The public is invited to look closely at the objects and enter into a conversation about how to create new, innovative exhibitions.

This exhibition was conceived and created in collaboration with Mary H. Moran (professor of anthropology and Africana & Latin American studies), students in her spring 2016 course Introduction to African Studies, and student volunteers.

December 1, 2015–March 13, 2016

This student-curated exhibition, created in collaboration with Nick Shepherd, A. Lindsay O’Connor Professor of American Institutions in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and students in his fall 2015 course "Photography: Anthropology and Archaeology," features photographs as well as a video installation produced by Colgate University students and explores the peculiar power that image worlds have in contemporary life. Captured by the Lens is on view at the Longyear Museum of Anthropology through March 13, 2016 and at two satellite locations, the Creative Arts House on the Colgate University campus and the Thought Into Action Colgate Entrepreneurs in downtown Hamilton through April 29, 2016.

March 26–May 9, 2015

In Africa, important life transitions often call for the creation, manipulation, and display of aesthetic objects. Among these defining life moments is the coming of age, or transition from youth to adulthood.

Although both boys and girls undergo initiation procedures that culminate in a new status in their communities, public ceremonies – often utilizing masks, figures, and other forms of sculpture – are most often associated with male rites of passage. Among some African societies, men undergo further initiations that enable them to rise in rank in social or religious organizations. This exhibition brings together sculptures from West, Central, and East Africa in the Longyear Museum collections. The exhibition focuses on masks that serve as instructors, images of beauty and fertility, models of productive citizenship, guardians and protectors, and symbols of the new identities of initiates.

September 11–October 31, 2014

Peter B. Jones is a highly accomplished and talented artist who, during a career spanning fifty years, has created pottery and ceramic sculpture that is sought after by museums and collectors worldwide. He fell in love with clay as a medium in early childhood, and dedicated his studies to clay sculpture at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico, at Bacone College in Oklahoma, and at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana. After returning to his New York homeland, he has infused his sculpture with traditional and contemporary Haudenosaunee themes and images.

August 26–November 1, 2014

Leah Shenandoah, an emerging artist of the Oneida Nation (Wolf Clan), explores the concept of the hood (O’whahsa’ in Oneida language) as a metaphor for protection, comfort, and healing. On a deeper level, the hood also symbolizes the dome of Skyworld, the origin of Haudenosaunee people and the place to which they will ultimately return. The hood is thus a space within which one might commune with all aspects of the universe and especially the ancestral inhabitants of Skyworld. The work included in this dramatic exhibition includes three-dimensional textile sculptures, wearable textile art and jewelry, and the artist’s own interpretations of feathered smudging tools, widely used as a Native American healing device.

May 7–November 14, 2014

Students in the course "Art and Architecture of the Ancient Americas" chose prehistoric stone and clay artifacts from Peru, Ecuador and Mexico from the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology. They researched their selections, wrote illustrative labels, and presented to their peers and the public at the reception.

March 10–June 1, 2014

The "Layered Meanings" exhibition featured beautifully handcrafted mola textiles by the Kuna Indian women of Panama. Molas are appliqué and reverse-appliqué textiles that constitute the front and back panels of women’s blouses among the Kuna people in the San Blas Islands (Kuna Yala) of Panama. The original mola designs, based on body painting, were geometric and limited to two colors. Nowadays, molas are typically brilliantly multicolored and illustrate local flora and fauna, everyday activities, indigenous and Christian religious practices, folktales, transportation, and common objects such as garments and tools. The images draw on Kuna experiences of both traditional and modern life.

October 23, 2013–April 19, 2014

Students in the course "Native Art of North America" chose Southwest pottery from the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology. They researched their selections, wrote illustrative labels, and gave brief presentations at the reception. The pottery shown includes examples from many Pueblo cultures — including Hopi, Acoma, Zia, Jemez, and Laguna — and date from prehistoric times to the present.

November 11, 2013–February 28, 2014

Serbian-Canadian artist Gabriella Nikolic uses iconic archival images and texts in her artwork in order to tell her family's personal story and to put it in the context of the inestimable suffering and loss during the Holocaust. In a series of fifteen large-scale, dramatic monoprints from a series titled One Day, One Child, Nikolic tells the story of people, especially children, who perished in one day, as did most of her grandmother's family. The "one child" of the series title refers to her father, two years old at the time, who was saved from a similar fate. The images and texts were researched and identified by Sarah Loy '15 during a Humanities Summer Research Fellowship. The results of her research was presented in illustrative exhibition labels and a brochure.

March 25–October 18, 2013

Students in the course "African Arts" selected objects that served as containers or armatures for powerful effective substances. These substances were thought not only have the power to cause or prevent actions, but also modify or conceal the form of the sculpture itself.

March 25–October 18, 2013

Students in the course "African Arts" selected objects that served as containers or armatures for powerful effective substances. These substances were thought not only have the power to cause or prevent actions, but also modify or conceal the form of the sculpture itself.

November 12, 2012–March 8, 2013

Internationally acclaimed photographic artist Liu Bolin creates large-scale photographs that explore the invisibility of the individual in contemporary China and protest the destruction of cherished old structures to make way for new development.  The photographs were loaned courtesy of Liu Bolin, Beijing and Eli Klein Fine Art, New York City.

October 27, 2012–March 2013

Students in the course "Native Art of North America" chose Iroquois objects from the collections of the Longyear Museum, researched them and wrote illustrative labels. The exhibition objects ranged from ancient pipes and combs to contemporary sculptures, baskets, beadwork, and dolls.

August 27, 2012–November 2, 2012

Central to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Creation Story is a vital narrative about the descent of Skywoman to the dark and watery world below and the subsequent creation and peopling of the earth. This story has inspired many Iroquois artists, sixteen of whose works in diverse styles and media were included in this exhibition.

March 1, 2012–June 3, 2012

Drawing on weaving traditions that are many centuries deep, the indigenous peoples of the Andes create textiles that preserve ancient technologies and symbolic imagery while also invigorating their cloths with new materials and styles.  The collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology include woven mantles, ponchos, belts, hats, bags for various purposes, leadership materials, and ritual cloths.

November 8, 2011–February 10, 2012

The Central Asian textiles in the Longyear Museum collections, deriving from various tribal cultures of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are made from hand woven silk or cotton and adorned with patterns executed in lavish embroidery. The fabrics that were displayed included household items such as colorful bed covers and wall hangings. Also on view were items of clothing including embroidered hats, knitted socks, and handbags, accompanied by prints showing such items as those worn with traditional costumes.

Students in the course "Native Art of North America" chose American Southwest art works from the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology collections. In preparing to share their selections with the public, they researched them and wrote illustrative labels. The works included pottery, baskets, kachina figures, dolls, and textiles, and date from prehistoric times to the present.

August 29, 2011–October 30, 2011

The Iroquois nations adopted glass beads as ornaments in the 16th century and soon began to incorporate them into their ornaments and garments, often using abstract forms drawn from nature. During the Victorian era, Iroquois women produced innovative designs to decorate the sorts of personal and household items desired by American women, including purses, pincushions, wall pockets, and picture frames. The beaded images became more naturalistic and the repertoire of imagery expanded to include a great variety of birds and animals, as well as written words and dates. The beaded animals included not only local forest dwellers, but also house pets, farm animals, and exotic creatures seen in zoos and circuses.

February 21, 2011–June 5, 2011

“African House and Home” was an exhibition of African architectural sculptures and home furnishings, including carved house posts and lintels, doors, locks, seats and other architectural ornaments that testify to the owners' wealth, good taste, and standing in their community. The companion exhibition to “African House and Home” was “African Architecture in Situ.” It included photographs of African architecture chosen by students in ARTS 248 and SOAN 248, African Art. The students wrote informative labels for the presentation of their selected photographs in Alumni 111.

October 30, 2010–February 14, 2011

Many Native American peoples made baskets, utilizing materials at hand, whether wood splints, beach grass, pine needles, or other fibers. Baskets served both utilitarian and ceremonial functions and often depicted representational or symbolic images. The baskets shown derived from the collections of the Longyear Museum and were researched by students in the course “Native Art of North America.”

October 18, 2010–February 11, 2011

This exhibition included the work of four indigenous women -- Noongar artists Laurel Nannup and Sandra Hill from Australia and Mohawk artists Sue Ellen Herne and Katsitsionni Fox of New York State. The exhibition provides an opportunity to see how art can address the similar cultural values as well as experiences as colonized peoples that the Noongar and Mohawk people share. The Noongar artists’ works are also interesting when examined in light of the legacy of the Carrolup child artist tradition, which is represented by works in the Picker Art Gallery collections.

April 1–October 22, 2010

This exhibition focused on West Mexican greenstone figures, commonly called “jades,” from the Luis de Hoyos '43 collection. The earliest figures conform closely to the shape of celts (stone axes) and eventually develop into clearly defined and naturalistic human figures. The de Hoyos figures include examples representing the full stylistic range of Mezcala artistic development, which began during the third and second millennia B.C. In addition to human figures, the exhibition included stone tools, ornaments, temple models, animal effigies, and masks.

March 8, 2010–May 16, 2010

Lalla Essaydi is a feminist artist from Morocco. She creates richly textured photographs of women in staged environments that critique the visual clichés and stereotypes of western Orientalist paintings and colonialist photographs of the harem in the Islamic world. Essaydi interjects script that confounds the western gaze. Self-taught in the elegant maghribi calligraphy of North Africa, Essaydi covers her female subjects, as well as their clothing and furnishings, in texts that convey her own thoughts about being an Arab woman in the 21st century.

October 31, 2009–February 26, 2010

This exhibition included small-scale African sculptures from the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University. Students in the course “African Art” chose works from the collections, researched them and wrote informative labels, and then presented their selections in a public exhibition.

October 21, 2009–February 26, 2010

This exhibition included images of the eighteen sand paintings associated with a war ceremonial preserved by Navajo chanter (medicine man) Jeff King. The paintings and related narrative were recorded by Maud Oakes, an artist and self-taught anthropologist who spent nearly two years documenting Navajo ceremonies between 1941 and 1943.

August 31–October 9, 2009

Dual exhibitions titled "Reflections of Ethiopian Orthodoxy" in the Clifford Art Gallery (Little Hall) and the Longyear Museum of Anthropology (Alumni Hall) displayed 20th century Ethiopian artwork, consisting of paintings on canvas and vellum, processional crosses and priests’ armrests in silver alloys and brass, and objects of personal devotion such as amulets and magic scrolls. The paintings illustrate multiple religious subjects related to Ethiopian Coptic Christianity, as well as historical and genre scenes.

April 14–October 16, 2009

Children in almost every Native American culture have played with dolls. This exhibition explored not only doll-making, but also how dolls illustrate regional differences in costume and ornament, participate in child-rearing practices, and have been subject to change over time, many now becoming art objects rather than toys. Students in "Art of Native North America" selected dolls from the collections of the Longyear Museum, researched them and wrote informative labels to share with their peers and the general public.

March 23–May 31, 2009

The ancestors of contemporary Inuit people have made decorated objects for millennia. It was not until the 1960s, however, that printmaking was introduced to Inuit territory. Print cooperatives now flourish in Inuit communities including Holman, Pangnirtung, Baker Lake, Cape Dorset, Povungnituk, and others. Brian Gerber ’66 generously loaned works from his collection to this exhibition. The prints included early works from the 1960s by masters such as Pitseolak and Pudlo Pudlat through 21st century works by Annie Pitsiulak, Leetia Alivatuk and others.

February 25–June 1, 2009

Norval Morrisseau, an Anishnaabe artist also known as Copper Thunderbird, was one of the earliest native artists of Canada to work in a modern style. His paintings are saturated with vibrant color, which he considers to be curative. For this reason, his style of painting is sometimes referred to as Medicine Painting. It is also known as Legend Painting because Morrisseau drew upon the myths of his culture, which he learned from the shaman grandfather who raised him. Morrisseau’s work inspired nearly 200 Canadian First Nations artists, some of whom work in closely related styles while others have developed their own artistic vision.

October 30, 2008–February 20, 2009

Eric Gansworth (Onondaga) is an artist and writer. The paintings in the exhibition were executed primarily in purple and white, the colors of the shell beads used to create wampum strings and belts, which are repositories of the Haudenosaunee cultural, historical, and political ideas. The images interwoven family portraits, traditional objects, popular culture, medical texts, and more, creating a narrative of hybridity.

May 1–October 17, 2008

Throughout history a wide variety of objects have been used as mediums of exchange. In Africa, currency took many different forms including: cowrie shells, brass manilas, bracelets, anklets, and large metal blades and hoes. Students in the class "African Art" researched objects and made informative labels for the presentation of the exhibition to the Colgate community and general public.

September 1–October 17, 2008

This exhibition included a selection of Lunai New Year prints (Aian Hua), produced by Chinese farmers in celebration of the new year and commemoration of seminal events in the past year. Each print provides insight into the mind of the Chinese farmer and gives the viewer a startling realistic portrayal of the dominant imagery in Chinese consciousness.

October 2007–April 2008

Students in "Art of Native North America" selected a variety of art works from the collections of the Longyear Museum, from Yup’ik objects from Alaska to pottery from the Southwest to Mohawk baskets from the Northeast. The objects that were selected ranged from 16th century bone combs to contemporary graphic art. The students’ selections demonstrated the significant contributions to world art that Native American peoples have made over time. Their research was presented to the Colgate campus and the public in the form of illustrative labels that accompanied the exhibition.

October 25, 2007–February 17, 2008

Carol Cole is a Philadelphia-area artist whose sculptures are constructed from handmade paper pulp and found objects. Some of these items (hairbrushes, paint stirrers, clothespins, buttons) speak of the ordinary and everyday. Others (plastic bread bag fasteners, industrial springs, floor polisher parts) are cast-offs that would otherwise find their way into our landfills. The result is the transformation of the ordinary and the discarded into stunningly beautiful works of art. Many of Cole’s sculptures are inspired by ethnographic artworks, which are also typically made from readily available materials and often have an iconic, effective power. The diffusion of materials, technologies, images, and ideas on a global scale are constant themes in her work.

August 27–October 21, 2007

The images in "Occupation," as well as its companion exhibition "The Art in War" in the Longyear Museum, were taken during Benjamin Busch’s deployments as a Reserve Marine Major in Iraq in 2003 and 2005. His evocative photographs capture life in Iraq at a pivotal moment between its dissolving past and uncertain future.

August 27–October 21, 2007

Companion exhibition to Occupation: Benjamin Busch Photographs from Iraq in the Clifford Art Gallery (see above).

March 6–June 3, 2007

This exhibition was a retrospective of the work of outsider artist Paul Edlin, a reclusive New Yorker who made art in obscurity for many years, but whose work has recently garnered international attention. Edlin, now 76 and handicapped by severe lifelong hearing loss, began making mixed media art in the 1980s, but soon worked exclusively in postage stamps, which he cuts into tiny pieces and applies to board. The resulting complex and beautiful mosaic-like images include human and animal figures that suggest a visionary personal cosmology.

November 10, 2006–February 23, 2007

"Have We Met?" was an installation by New York City artist Janet Goldner, and presented a nuanced and positive image of Africa. It engaged the public in an interactive dialogue to bridge Malian realities and Western audiences, to humanize rather than exoticize. The installation includes video that introduces the viewer to Karengumbe, a remote village in Mali, as well as gestural steel sculptures inspired by Malian masks, figures, and ideograms that act as text, glyphs, and symbols. The combination of video and sculpture was a first for the artist.

October 28, 2006–May 11, 2007

This exhibition presented masks from the collections of the Longyear Museum. Students studying African art selected masks from the nearly 900 in the collections, researched them, and wrote informative labels to present to the Colgate campus and the public. Their selections were from a wide range of cultures from West, Central and East Africa.

September 4–October 22, 2006

Much Yoruba art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft. This exhibition included sacred art that was made to pay respect to the divinities, communicate with them, beautify their shrines, and add visual appeal to the rituals and festivals performed in their honor. It included traditional Yoruba shrine furniture and vessels, divination objects, memorial twin figures, masks, and other sculptures that figure in the practice of Yoruba religion.

March 20–June 4, 2006

Comanche artist Walter BigBee is a professional photographer whose work has been exhibited in museums throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Although he was educated at the University of Maryland and Rochester Institute of Technology and has traveled around the world, BigBee states that the strongest influence on his work comes from his maternal Comanche heritage and his concern for the natural environment. His photographs are often narrative, inspired by the oral traditions and pictographic drawings of his forebears. The title of this exhibition derived from the Comanche name — Tutsi Wai (Always Searching) — of the artist, who considers himself a contemporary descendant of the 19th century Plains ledger artists.

December 5, 2005–March 10, 2006

In 1935, the collaborative satirical writers Ilya Il’f (Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg, 1897-1937) and Yevgeny Petrov (Yevgeny Petrovich Katayev, 1903-1942) traveled to the United States from the Soviet Union on assignment as correspondents for the newspaper Pravda. Shortly after their arrival, they embarked upon a ten-week road trip to California and back, stopping at major attractions and staying in tourist motels. Il’f, an accomplished photographer, recorded the trip with his Leica camera, producing an insightful pictorial record of his travels. Twenty of the American road trip photos were shown together with excerpts from Il’f and Petrov’s final collaboration, Single-Storied America.

September 12–November 18, 2005

The display cases in Alumni 111 were filled with African bronze and iron sculptures selected from the collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology. Students in ARTS 248 chose the objects, researched them, and wrote the labels for this public display. The students also made a brief presentation on their work with the collections and on the objects — including figures, heads, pendant maskettes, jewelry, goldweights, and weapons — included in the exhibition.

September 5–November 18, 2005

Since ancient times, Maya women have woven elaborately decorated textiles for themselves and their families. These textiles — fashioned into garments and accessories — distinguish the wearer by language group and village, as well as by gender, age, and marital status. The Maya traje, or indigenous outfit, also proclaims Indian identity, in contrast to Ladino or mixed European and Indian heritage. The brightly colored cloths are covered with images that constitute deeply cultural ideograms referring to cosmic concerns as well as the immediate environment.

March 11–May 13, 2005

Randall (Randy) Knott was born and raised on the Curve Lake Indian Reserve just north of Peterborough, Ontario. He began to draw as a child of twelve years and to paint seriously in his twenties. He describes his art not as a talent but as a “gift” that he has dedicated to keeping his First Nations culture alive. He is inspired by dream imagery and a vision of harmonious relationships between human beings and nature as well as between the different peoples of the world. In Randy Knott’s work, the interconnectedness of nature can be seen in the blending of earth, sky and water elements. Frequent visual themes include the lake, sun and pine forest of the artist’s Great Lakes homeland, as well as the animals of that environment, especially loons, turtles, eagles, bears, and wolves. These creatures also have relationships with humans as clan animals, spiritual protectors, and symbols of physical and supernatural power.

November 30, 2004 - March 11, 2005

This exhibition included pottery of many types as well as terra cotta figures, heads and pipes drawn from the Longyear Museum collections. The exhibition explored ideas related to form, surface ornamentation, technology, function and symbolism. Students in the Fall 2004 course ARTS 248 — "African Art" — assisted in selecting the work, researching it, and writing illustrative labels.

September 6–November 12, 2004

Carol Hamony's exhibition consisted of installations based on WWII memories of the artist, who was a Jewish child of immigrants to the US, and her feelings of empathy with children in Europe during that time. Children’s Stories is a series of works based on memoirs by children who survived the Warsaw Ghetto or the Auschwitz death camp, who were hidden during the war, or who were inducted into the Hitler Youth Movement. Other works — including Kitchen Kaddish, Wooden Synagogues, and Letters from the Front and Back — constitute a poignant anti-war commentary.

February 16–May 15, 2004

David Hannan, a Métis artist and educator living in Toronto, produced a series of monoprints exploring the hybrid nature of Métis identity and the relationship between Métis history and the present. Hannan uses archival photographs of important figures such as Poundmaker, Big Bear and Gabriel Dumont juxtaposed with photos of family members, the unsung heroes of Métis history.

November 17, 2003 - January 30, 2004

Animals and their Meanings in Traditional African Art was an exhibition organized with the students of ARTS 248 "African Art," spring 2003, and was originally shown as a virtual exhibition. The objects, drawn from the African collection of the Longyear Museum, included animals symbolizing such ideas as power, leadership, chaos, and communication with the supernatural world.

September 8–October 24, 2003

An exhibition of recent work by Simon Brascoupé (Mohawk/Algonquin) and Karen Hodge Russell. It showed how the form and symbolism of prehistoric bone and antler combs has inspired contemporary artists. The exhibition included examples of 16th century combs from the Longyear Museum, paintings and experimental sculptures by Brascoupé and Russell, and an antler comb by Stan Hill, a Mohawk artist who is responsible for the remarkable revival of antler carving among Iroquois people today.

March 31– June 1, 2003

Persian Dreams and Reveries was an exhibition of recent works by an Iranian-born artist inspired by the themes and metaphors of Persian poetry and the images of the lush gardens and colorful tribal costumes of her homeland.

February 3–March 14, 2003

The inaugural exhibition from the recently acquired collection of the late Herman Copen explored ideas projected in art of woman as creator, progenitrix, mother, queen, maiden, witch, servant and artist. The exhibition explored these ideas in images of women alone as well as in paired images of men and women, in which messages of harmony, fertility, genesis, and contrasting roles are implied.

• Tonto Revisited: Native American Stereotypes
• Legend Painting: Ten First Nations Artists of the Woodlands Tradition
• Rez 4 Life: Recent Work by Frank Buffalo Hyde

• Arte Popular do Brasil: Folk Art and Village Life
• Elemental Creation: Recent Work by Christian Dennis
• Russia in Transition 1937-1998

• Auturo Lindsay: Santuario/Sanctuary
• Twizzler Art (Red and Twisted): Uninhibited Expressions of the Postmodern Native
• Latin American Painters in New York City
• Musical Instruments of India from the Collection of William Skelton

• Imaging/Imagining Our Stories: Haudenosaunee Visual and Verbal Art
• One Song, Many Voices: The Asian Pacific American Experience
• Seeing Red: Haudenosaunee Political Art
• The Mesoamerican Almanac: A Selection of Divinatory Codices

• Culture in Decay: Installation and Paintings by Rhett Lynch
• Humble Work and Mad Wanderings: Street Life in the Machine Age
• Pieces of the Past: Mesoamerican Art from the David and Barbara Hunter Collection
• Women of Hope: African Americans and Latinas Who Made a Difference

• Blues in Black and White: Photographs by Bill Greensmith
• Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Art of Leonard Peltier
• Contemporary Native American Women Photographers. Shelley Niro: The Border
• Contemporary Native American Women Photographers. Jolene Rickard: Historic Bifurcation
• John Loftus: In Praise of Wang Wei and other Works on Paper
• Between Past and Future: A Photographic Study of Siberia in Suspension by Sergei Burasovsky and Vasily Shumkov

• Zambia Alive: Paintings by Stephen Kappata
• Magic in Surrealist Pop Art: Paintings by James Lallemand
• Navajo Pictorial Weaving: Native American Artists Integrate Euro-American Cultural Images
• Contemporary Latin American Paintings: Two Perspectives
• African Miniature Sculpture

• Life and the Loom: Thai Women and Weaving in Southeast Asia
• African Encounter: Making Art in Nigeria 1992-1993. Tom Aprile, Sculpture. Laura Young, Paintings.
• The Iroquois Presence in the Hamilton Area