Curator Chat

We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World

Henrietta Lidchi
Executive Director Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian
Santa Fe, NM (505) 982-4636 www.wheelwright.org

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I am looking forward to the Mary Sully show at the Metropolitan which opens in July and the DY Begay exhibition in September at National Museum of the American Indian. Having read, several times, Philip Deloria’s mesmeric book about this great-aunt and her sister, with all its texture, reflection and thought, and having seen one of Sully’s personality prints up close, I want to see the others. DY’s work is luminous and her color sensibility completely distinctive, and being in rooms will all her pieces will be fabulous.

What are you reading?
I am reviewing an edited collection on repair and the politics of memory. It includes The Icon (L’Icona), a speculative retelling by Somali-Italian writer Igiaba Scego of meetings between Aldo Moro (Italian prime minister) and Haile Selassie in the 1960s and 1970s as they negotiate the return of the Obelisk of Axum. Ten extraordinary pages. I am a bit stuck in the 1970s; re-reading the American Indian Art magazines of the period and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Maybe not too stuck, I am also reading Not Native American Art by Janet Berlo.

Mavasta Honyouti (Hopi), Coming Home, 2024. Photograph by Mavasta Honyouti.

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
At present, I am especially enthralled by Hopi artist and educator Mavasta Honyouti’s series Coming Home. In 16 panels, he evocatively speaks of his close relationship with his grandfather, Clyde Honyouti, and his memories as a child going out farming and being cared for. This moves him to consider his grandfather’s painful experience of Boarding School. It is a powerful story told through love and art. It will come out as a book later this year. The Wheelwright was supported to acquire the series and it will be our new show in October.

What are you researching at the moment?
There are a few strands, some linked to Native American art, some about practices of collecting and some about under-acknowledged figures. It is a bit restless, but exciting, thinking through these questions in relationship to each other. We have a big archive at the Wheelwright and I dip into it regularly to see what I don’t know because there are surprising insights. For example, both Charles Loloma and Alan Houser were trustees in the 1970s and 1980s, and reading through the archive you can see their influence on our programming.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
Who would not want to be in Venice right now? Looking at Jeffrey Gibson’s work and celebrating with the curators. However, I have had the opportunity to work on a show I always wanted to see on Marcus Amerman. To see Marcus’s beaded paintings with all his work in other media and collaborations is to get a glimpse of his aesthetic sense, the themes he returns to, and to spend time with him. I would like to see Santa Fe as a city where exhibitions are connected to provide both polyvocality and critical thinking. We are discussing with SITE how we might link up in 2025.