Art News

Peabody Essex Museum presents bold, new exhibition of native American art

SALEM, MA.- This winter, the Peabody Essex Museum presents, Shapeshifting, one of the largest Native American Art exhibitions to open in North America in more than 30 years. Nearly 80 works from public and private collections worldwide offer a far-reaching exploration of Native American art as a continuum, juxtaposing historic and contemporary artworks. Through constellations of objects created in a range of media – ­­­­sculpture, painting, ceramics, textiles, photography, drawing, film, video and monumental installation – visual and conceptual connections are drawn between generations of Native people, art traditions and cultures. The exhibition opened to the public on Saturday, January 14, 2012. “Typically arranged chronologically, geographically, or by medium, exhibitions of Native Art have almost exclusively focused on either historical or contemporary works, with very little mixing of the two,” says Karen