Dressing with Purpose: Belonging and Resistance in Scandinavia
December 12, 2021 - February 19, 2023
Dress helps us fashion identity, history, community, and place. Dress has been harnessed as a metaphor for both progress and stability, the exotic and the utopian, oppression and freedom, belonging and resistance. Dressing with Purpose examines three Scandinavian dress traditions—Swedish folkdräkt, Norwegian bunad, and Sámi gákti—and traces their development during two centuries of social and political change across northern Europe.
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Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy
March 12, 2023 - March 26, 2024
Through a combination of in-gallery objects and multimedia pieces, as well as public conversations and events held at the museum and in the community, this exhibition addresses themes of incarceration, social justice and prisoners’ rights, recidivism and transitional justice. Works featured in exhibition are drawn from the Museum’s extensive collection of prison art alongside recently acquired art - including pieces made during workshops at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in 2017, pieces purchased at the state Penitentiary’s bi-annual Inmate Craftsmanship and Trades Fair in 2019, and a mural created by at-risk-youth through a school-to-prison pipeline initiative https://www.sitesofconscience.org/en/2018/01/brown-v-board-to-ferguson-toolkit/ program between MOIFA and Santa Fe ¡YouthWorks! in 2018. The exhibition further explores strategies helping underserved populations so that they may avoid future incarceration and examine how the arts can be a catalyst for healing, rehabilitation, and change.
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To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka
May 21, 2023 - June 23, 2024
Parkas are complex expressions of Alaska Native cultures’ deep respect for the animals of land and sea. The harmonious marriage of beauty, function, and resourcefulness, parkas are a living tradition rooted in centuries of indigenous knowledge of material science and design. They also demonstrate the resilience of indigenous communities to thrive in the arctic environment.
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