Posted July 8, 2022 at 11:13 am EDT
Delaware Public Media Kelli Steele interviews Heather Campbell Coyle, chief curator at the Delaware Art Museum, and Iz Balleto, community engagement specialist.
Indigenous culture is celebrated in a summer exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington.
In Conversation: Will Wilson opens this weekend.
“And the title says a lot,” said Heather Campbell Coyle — the museum’s chief curator. “So this is the work of photographer Will Wilson; He’s a Native American photographer – he’s Dine or Navajo – working in the Santa Fe, New Mexico area, producing a series of portraits of Native Americans across the United States.”
According to Campbell Coyle, Wilson visited the First State in May to photograph members of the Delaware Lenape Indian tribe and the Nanticoke Indian association.
Thirty-eight of these photos are on view through September 11 before going to the Nanticoke Indian Museum in Sussex County.
The exhibition will be paired with an arts and culture pow-wow planned for later this month, according to Iz Balleto, the museum’s specialist in community engagement.
“With the guidance of the Nanticoke and Lenape tribes doing this together, it took about two years to put this (one) event together – bringing together different tribes and different dancers. We will have over 50 dancers here – participating in the Pow Wow; We’ll have the Red Blanket Singers of the Lenape Tribe from New Jersey – Bridgerton. And we will have a day of culture – even in the Aztec culture – the Parroquia.”
The Pow Wow is scheduled for Saturday, July 23 from 11am to 4pm.
Also, on September 8th, there will be a program called My Land, My Roots, featuring stories from community members.
In Conversation: Will Wilson is accompanied by Indigenous Faces of Wilmington, an exhibition by local photographer Andre’ L. Wright, Jr.,
The national tour of In Conversation: Will Wilson is supported by the Art Bridges Foundation.
Delaware Public Media’s arts coverage is made possible in part by support of the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to the nurturing and support of the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
