Velma Kee Craig
Assistant Curator
Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ
(602) 251-0252, www.heard.org
What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I look forward to seeing Activation/Transformation, on view at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, through April 3, 2022. As a new curator, I’ve really been struggling with how to use the collection and present the pieces in ways that allow for new interpretation and understanding. With Activation/Transformation, chief curator Andrea Hanley (Diné) invited artist Nathan Young (Delaware/Kiowa/Pawnee) in to select pieces from the Wheelwright collection to create an interpretation of the museum’s collection. In thinking about “how people make a place in a community [and] what that looks like in Santa Fe,” Young created an abstract composition of 200 objects made from silver. It’s really inspiring to see this different approach at presenting and interpreting the collection and I’m finding it at just the moment when
I am really seeking guidance in the formation of my curatorial approach.
What are you reading?
I just finished Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo and am currently reading Original Fire, a book of poems by Louise Erdrich. I just picked up my copy of the Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature edited by Esther Belin, Jeff Berglund, Connie Jacobs and Anthony Webster, which I’m really excited about.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I’ve had the opportunity to spend time recently with weavers such as Venancio Aragon, Kevin Aspaas and Tyrrell Tapaha. Each of them has an Instagram and/or Facebook account in which they share their very innovative and colorful textiles. They are such great weavers and immensely prolific. I am excited for wherever their artistic trajectories take them. It’s wonderful to see such a strong creative community that young weavers have created online.
What are you researching at the moment?
Outside of my role as assistant curator, I am also a Diné (Navajo) weaver. My first projects I’ve co-curated here at the Heard Museum were textile exhibitions—one focusing on transitional textiles woven between the years 1860 to around 1910 and another which featured textiles woven more recently by established and known weavers. Most of the textiles in the latter exhibition were woven in the regional styles that many are familiar with but exhibited experimentation within those regional styles. As a weaver of conceptual and contemporary pictorial textiles, neither of these first curation projects took me outside of my comfort zone.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I’d really like to see or curate an exhibit focusing on two of my favorite mediums, Diné weaving and poetry. I think, having Diné poets craft works in response to textiles or having weavers create textiles in response to poetry and building an exhibition which presents both of these together can be quite intimate and meditative. I think the world needs this.—
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