As the summer days grow longer and hotter, few things are more tempting than finding an activity that involves air conditioning—mercifully, new and ongoing exhibits at art museums across the Triangle offer enriching, colorful ways to beat the heat.
Here are a few of the many local exhibitions ongoing or opening over the summer.
To Take Shape and Meaning | North Carolina Museum of Art | Through July 28
Featuring carefully curated work by Native American artists across the United States, To Take Shape and Meaning is NCMA’s first major exhibit of contemporary Indigenous art.
Opened in March, the exhibit contains 96 three-dimensional works by 75 different artists, eight of whom are based in North Carolina. The wide-ranging exhibit invites viewers to engage with Indigenous culture and art in a new context they haven’t before as artists from over 50 tribes share their stories and cultures in one space, with some artwork specifically created for the exhibit. While each work tells a story of its own, each part of the exhibit uplifts Indigenous art by focusing on stories and themes shared between tribes.
Nancy Strickland Fields, guest curator for To Take Shape and Meaning and director/curator of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, tells the INDY that she wants museum guests to not only understand the breadth of Indigenous art but see the people in the art.
“You know, a lot of times native people seem invisible in plain sight, and that’s certainly not the case,” Fields says. “This is a big declaration that native peoples are here and thriving with incredible stories to share and phenomenal art.”
When I visited To Take Shape and Meaning, recently, I was stunned by the breadth of colors and mediums—though the stories behind the artwork took center stage. As Fields led a tour through the building, explaining the stories behind each piece, I found myself lost in imagining the rich histories that brought each piece to the NCMA. Fields says that she called each artist herself, developing an individual relationship with every artist as she curated each work, and making sure all native tribes from North Carolina were represented.
Walking from one end of the exhibit to the other, Fields started the tour by talking about one of the pieces that inspired her to curate the collection: a stunningly intricate burial pot that was “killed”—that is, broken at the bottom—to release the spirit of the child it formerly held.
The tour went on to explore other stories behind the artwork, including an intricate dice portrait of Henry Berry Lowry, a native “Robin Hood” with over 20,000 dice, stunningly beaded punching bags that represented the passing along of physical energy, and a sleek black Chevy El Camino with matte black accents representing Española’s Lowrider culture.
Fields says that, as the exhibit is the first of its kind at North Carolina’s flagship museum, it may be the start of a “new chapter” for the NCMA.
“They are committed to native art and also the rework of their permanent gallery, to where art is being looked at and told in other ways that are not siloed,” Fields says. “I’m excited about how the acquisitions that they’re making are going to be incorporated with this new approach to their curation, that it doesn’t just have to be boxed into Indian art. It can be included with all different genres of art and curated in many different ways.”
Each ticket costs $20 and the museum has a free upcoming community day on July 21.
“Pantheress” by Georgie Nakima | The Ackland | Through July 21
Unlike the other exhibits mentioned here, “Pantheress” by Charlotte-based artist Georgie Nakima is a single site-specific installation. However, “Pantheress” stands proudly by itself as a spectacular piece featuring rich, vivid colors that seem to pop off its “canvas”—a mix of cut wood and custom wallpaper.
While Nakima now focuses on art, she has a background in biology. Her love of life sciences inspires her art, which is rife with a balanced blend of natural and geometric forms. Her work encourages the viewer to look towards a hopeful future, one in which both the natural and the unnatural can coexist as beautifully as it does within work like “Pantheress.”
Eye Goop, Christmas Tick, and other names of things | PEEL Gallery | Through July 7
Eye Goop, Christmas Tick, and other names of things is a gallery of drawings by father-and-son duo Mike Montgomery and his young son Colin.
Bold colors and unique forms blend in both Montgomerys’ work to demonstrate their respective passions. All works in the show were made with father and son working side by side; some created just by Mike or by four-year-old Colin, and others made through collaborations between the two.
The duo began working together during the pandemic, Mike says. At the time, Lauren Foster, who is married to Mike and is Colin’s mother, was diagnosed with breast cancer and they had recently moved into an empty house. Mike began drawing to make Colin smile. Colin was happy to join in, and eventually, began creating his own artwork. The Peel exhibit spans the last two years of the duo’s art. In the exhibit materials, Mike says that viewers can see Colin’s work develop from “naïve, squiggly pen strokes to bold, confident, refined lines as well as full character and scene development.”
Eye Goop, Christmas Tick, and other names of things acts as a fundraiser for ongoing medical care for Foster.
Samantha Everette, Jalen Jackson, & Zaire Miles-Moultrie | Raleigh Contemporary Art Museum | Through Sept 8
This summer, with new leadership, the CAM is making an extra effort to uplift BIPOC artists. While the CAM will have special events all summer, Samantha Everette, Jalen Jackson, and Zaire Miles-Moultrie’s exhibitions are available to visit at any time.
Everette’s Crowning Glory focuses on the art and meaning of braiding through photography, and the deeper spiritual meaning hair has in Black culture. Jackson’s God’s Plan For Shone features oil paintings inspired by his past that combine surrealism and naturalism to give viewers a sense of nostalgia and Black soul. Miles-Moultrie’s exhibit work, meanwhile, explores Black identity and memory through collage, “breathing new life into images of the past to resonate powerfully in the present.”
Holding Space: Dreams and Memories | Ella West Gallery | June 21-Sept 21
Holding Space: Dreams and Memories, the latest exhibit at downtown Durham’s Ella West Gallery, which opened last summer, features artists Isabel Lu, Julia Rivera, and Toni Scott. The exhibit focuses on the concept of space, specifically the practice of “holding space” by focusing on acceptance and compassion of your own and others’ internal struggles.
Each artist boasts unique styles, from Scott’s multimodal work, with vibrant colors and interesting collaged subjects; Lu’s dreamlike oil-on-wood paintings that marry realistic models with running pastel paint, and Rivera’s stunning mixed media artwork that melds bold subjects with collage and gold leaf.
Alongside differing styles, each artist has wildly different experiences. Lu, a 2023 Emerging Artists-in-Residence at Artspace, creates art inspired by concepts in Traditional Chinese Medicine, reworking these to fit various modern topics. Rivera, who has studied art around the world, creates work stemming from a mix of poetry and humor. Scott, who has presented various solo exhibits throughout the world, creates work inspired by her family’s multicultural heritage.
Throughout the exhibit, the works serve to not only “hold space” for the artists, but for visitors who might see themselves in or find their views challenged by the works.
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