Wendy Ponca’s name is among today’s top Native American designers. Her designs are being featured right along with Virgil Ortiz, Jamie Okuma, Bethany Yellowtail, Patricia Michaels and Sho Sho Esquiro in the Peabody Essex Museum’s critically acclaimed exhibition Native Fashion Now, which is now being featured at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa.
Ponca said she has always enjoyed Philbrook and has used it as an education tool for tribal youth during field trips throughout her long career. Philbrook also has a blanket designed by Ponca in their permanent collection.
“The Native Fashion Now exhibit is so progressive and influential that this exhibition will shape the world of fashion and perception of American Indian art on a global scale,” Ponca said in an email. “Excited is my best response and only positive repercussions have come from this exhibition!”
The Native Fashion Now exhibition is from the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Mass. The large-scale exhibition, that features nearly 100 designs from more than 70 artists, celebrates Native American designers from across the United States and Canada from the 1950s to today, according to a prepared release. The exhibition has been featured at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Ore., and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York.
The exhibit will be at Philbrook until Jan. 8, 2017.
“Native American art and culture are often perceived as a phenomena of the past, or just mere replicas,” said Karen Kramer, PEM’s Curator of Native American Art and Culture. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Contemporary Native fashion designers are dismantling and upending familiar motifs, adopting new forms of expression and materials, and sharing their vision of Native culture and design with a global audience.”
The exhibition features the designers in four sections: Pathbreakers, Revisitors, Activators, and Provocateurs, according to the release.
The Philbrook Museum of Art is open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Thursdays, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Philbrook Downtown is open Wednesdays – Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Sundays, 12 – 5 p.m. Museum admission is $9 for adults, $7 for seniors and university students; Philbrook Museum Members and youth 17 and younger are always free. For additional information, visit www.philbrook.org.
To see photos from the exhibition, visit the Osage News Flickr page at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/osagenews/albums/72157674712338005/with/30052184316/
By
Shannon Shaw Duty
Original Publish Date: 2016-10-04 00:00:00
