The new gallery of Global Indigenous Arts at the Spencer Museum of Art will explore artistic inspirations gleaned from nature, heritage, and transcendent experiences. From the world’s most ancient types of instruments to the most detailed design techniques, these arts speak to the connections of people to place, the importance of traditions and the essential creativity of the human spirit.
Sculptural works from around the world, such as Abelam carvings from New Guinea, will serve as anchors for discrete segments of the gallery that will host rotations of arts and cultural works from The University of Kansas’ former Ethnographic collections. These collections will be presented in dialogue with new acquisitions and rarely seen works from the Spencer Museum of Arts collections to create new synergies and thought provoking engagements.
The first rotation, Markets and Migrations in American Indian Arts, will highlight historic and contemporary works from across North America, presented in visually stimulating pairings, in order to capture the imagination and illuminate the complexities of history made personal through artistic explorations.
Please join us in the Spring to welcome these indigenous works to our galleries. We look forward to sharing our African and Oceanic arts in future rotations within this gallery space.
Organized by Nancy Mahaney, Curator of Arts and Cultures of the Americas, Africa and Oceania