About this episode
This episode discusses the significance of the Rockwell Museum's exhibition 'Native Now' and features conversations with its curators about contemporary Native American art.
Native art isn’t a relic. It’s a dispatch from the present — and the Rockwell Museum’s new exhibition, Native Now, makes that impossible to ignore. In this episode, host Joe Williams sits down with Amanda Lett, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Rockwell, and Randee Spruce, Seneca Nation artist and independent curator, to unpack one of the most significant contemporary Native American art exhibitions in the museum’s 50-year history. Native Now brings together works spanning Indigenous landscapes, Native futurism, and the concept of “always becoming” — a phrase the curators chose specifically because it resists the idea that Native peoples and their stories are finished. The show features artists including Jeffrey Gibson, Virgil Ortiz, Wendy Red Star, and Theresa Baker, many of whose works appear publicly for the first time. Amanda and Randee speak candidly about what it meant to build a real curatorial partnership — one where the exhibition labels were written entirely from artists’ own words, where themes were reshaped until they felt true rather than academic, and where the Seneca Nation’s voice had a genuine seat at the table. This is a conversation about art, land…
People in this episode
Host: Joe Williams
Guests: Amanda Lett, Randee Spruce
Topics covered
- Native American art
- contemporary art
- curatorial practices
- Indigenous landscapes
- Native futurism
- cultural resilience
Keywords
- Native art
- Rockwell Museum
- exhibition
- curatorial partnership
- Indigenous artists
- art and land
- cultural narratives
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Rockwell Museum, Seneca Nation
Books & works: Native Now
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