Heritage & Legacies

The vibrant art in “Heritage & Legacies,” is a marked contrast to many depictions of Native Americans as forlorn and forgotten or romanticized people of the past. Although the subject matter refers to history and traditions of peoples Indigenous to the Southeast, the styles of many of the works appear contemporary if not futuristic. 

These works are not a modern twist on old artifacts, but integrate past, present and future. Indigenous cultures of the Southeast, which go back more than 10,000 years, have traditionally viewed time as cyclical and not linear. Thus, featured artists relate to their heritage with modern relevance and strive to pass along their heritage to emerging generations. 

Some of the works featured reflect how tribes of the Southeast are unique among Native Americans to the extent to which they both fused and filtered nonNative traditions that have come into their culture by choice or coercion. In recent centuries, Southeastern Indigenous people have had to adapt, relocate, reinvent themselves and even endure cultural genocide. 

Artists featured in this section reflect how their people have maintained or revived endangered cultural and artistic heritage through mentorship and family traditions. In the exhibition, works by an entire family of artists are represented showing traditions passed down through generations with subject matter and styles incorporating past, present and future. 

Other works reflect how material culture and traditions from the homelands extend to preserving sacred ancestral sites such as Ocmulgee in Georgia and Kituwah in North Carolina.

The historical architecture of ancestral homelands in the Southeast still inspire modern construction on modern tribal lands in Oklahoma. However, emerging generations are already interpreting and maintaining their Southeastern cultural legacies in an increasingly global context.