Honouring Tradition: Reframing Native Art at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary

February 16th - July 13th, 2008

Frederick R. McDonald, Nêhithawak (Woodland Cree) (1957-) Big Bear’s Dilemma,
Paper Promises, 1998. Image: glenbow.org

The Glenbow Museum’s new exhibit Honouring Tradition: Reframing Native Art sets traditional and contemporary Native art, side-by-side.

Traditional beaded shirts, moccasins and birchbark baskets are displayed alongside artwork by contemporary Native artists including Jane Ash Poitras, Alex Janvier, Allen Sapp and Joane Cardinal-Schubert.

Honouring Tradition encourages past and present to interact and challenges views that define historical art pieces as separate from contemporary Aboriginal art.

Glenbow collaborated with Aboriginal artist Frederick McDonald to create this exhibition. With his help, beautiful artworks were selected from Glenbow’s powerful collection. The selected pieces honour the importance of community, the connection to land and place and the tradition of storytelling.

‘”Both exhibitions highlight the significant place Aboriginal people have in Canadian art history, culture and identity,” said Glenbow’s art curator Quyen Hoang. “We need to recognize this history in order to fully appreciate what it means to be Canadian.”

For more information, please click HERE