Mays Symposium

On February 25 and 26, join our distinguished speakers for the 24th Annual Mays Symposium: Contemporary Perspectives on Native American Art. This year's symposium will coincide with the Museum’s presentation of our Spring Special Exhibition; Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth. 

During the symposium we will explore how Native American cultures have often been romanticized, appropriated, or erased from the canons of art history. This symposium seeks to provide greater context, understanding, and inclusivity through fresh insights into the personal and societal narratives that are woven into the practice of contemporary Native American artists. 

The symposium will be hosted through virtual and in-person speaker engagements. All tickets are for both Friday and Saturday programs. Limited seating for Saturday in-person programming, masks are strongly encouraged.

Friday

6:00-7:00 Virtual Keynote with Artist Wendy Red Star

Saturday

Program will be conducted in-person and streamed virtually 

9:00-9:30 Breakfast (For in-person attendees) 

9:30-9:45 Introductions

9:45-10:20 Lecture, Ruben Olguin, Native Futurism: Decolonizing Technology and Shaping the Future

10:20-10:25 Introductions

10:25-11:00 Lecture, Joe Harjo: Every Time We Breath, Deeply

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-11:20 Introduction to Panel Discussion

11:20-12:25 Panel Discussion and Q&A

12:25-12:30 Closing remarks

Speakers and Panelists

Wendy Red Star
Artist
Apsáalooke (Crow) Reservation, Montana

Red Star’s work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to incorporate and recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty, and unsettling.

Joe Harjo
Artist, Chair of Photography, Southwest School of Art Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma

Harjo is a multidisciplinary artist and is currently working and teaching in San Antonio, Texas. His work uncovers the lack of visibility of Native culture, lived experience, and identity in America, due to both the absence of proper representation in mainstream culture and the undermining of Native belief systems.

Dakota Hoska
Assistant Curator of Native Arts, Denver Art Museum Oglála Lakhóta Nation, Pine Ridge (Wounded Knee)

Hoska joined the Denver Art Museum in 2019 as the Assistant Curator of Native Arts after serving four years as a Curatorial Research Assistant at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In her art, Dakota makes connections between the personal and the universal. Through painting and monotype printmaking, Dakota explores her relationship to her Indigenous community.

Ruben Olguin
Artist and Educator

Olguin is a New Mexico-based artist working in ceramics, adobe, electronic media, and socially engaged art practices. His work draws from his mixed Indigenous American and Spanish (mestizo) heritage. He incorporates traditional hand processes with earth materials and modern elements with a focus on the American Southwest and has exhibited internationally in the United States, Spain, and Germany.

Risa Puleo
Independent Curator and Writer

Puleo is an independent curator whose projects include Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly—featuring the work of Wendy Red Star—which was curated for Bemis Center for Contemporary Art during her year as curator-in-residence. She has written for Art in America, Art Papers, Art 21, Asia Art Pacific, Hyperallergic, Modern Painters, and other art publications.

Dr. Annette Portillo (Moderator)
Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio

Portillo’s interdisciplinary research focuses on life stories, testimonios, autobiographies, oral histories, and visual works by women of color. She is the author of Sovereign Stories and Blood Memories: Native American Women’s Autobiography.