2025 Annual Meeting of the Inuit Art Society
September 12-13 at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis
Program
Opening Reception
Our meeting began with an evening reception at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in downtown Indianapolis. We had time to meet and mingle AND the “Voices from the Arctic” exhibit was open. It was a great opportunity to see it while the gallery was closed to the public.
“Voices of the Arctic” with Dorene Red Cloud
Not only did the IAS meeting offer plenty of time to explore this exhibit on our own, but we got to walk through it with the Eiteljorg’s Native American art curator Dorene Red Cloud. She talked about some of the artists and themes represented in the exhibit.
Red Cloud was a key collaborator behind the redesign and re-focusing of the Eiteljorg’s galleries a few years back. A change that moved the museum away from a highly geographic focus to a thematic approach based on culture and relationships. She is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and an artist as well as a curator. She holds degrees in American Indian Studies, Fine Arts in Ceramics, and Fine Arts in Museum Studies. Red Cloud worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian as a Repatriation Research Specialist from 1999-2003. After leaving the museum field for a number of years, she joined the Eiteljorg Museum as assistant curator of Native American art in 2016.
Niap
We were lucky to have Inuk artist Niap (Nancy Saunders) join us in Corning, New York, in 2017 as an emerging artist. Today she is an award-winning painter, carver, photographer, and textile artist based in Montreal. (She also created the IAS logo.)
Niap joined us again this year during her residency at the Eiteljorg.
If you haven’t been following her career since our Corning meeting, you might be surprised by the range of her work.
Michael Massie
While Michael Massie had hoped to join us in person, but this ended up being a virtual presentation. But he is a great speaker (as well as a great artist) and his presentation was a lot of fun.
Massie is a Labrador-based artist of mixed Inuit, Métis, and Scottish heritage. He began working in silver in high school, later adding wood and traditional Inuit materials to his work. While he is best known for his silver teapots and whimsical sculpture, he also draws and paints. Whatever the material, all of his work shares a refined sense of balance and gentle humor.
Massie is a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and a Member of the Order of Canada.
Joanne Swanson
Inupiaq artist Joanne Swanson was born in a fish camp near the Bering Sea and her paintings are inspired by her life in rural Alaska. She talked about life in Arctic Alaska and how that inspires and influences her work.
You can read more about Swanson on the Aboriginal Multi-Media Society’s website. And she occasionally posts on Facebook , where you can see a bit of her work.
John Geoghegan
John Geoghegan, an associate curator at the McMichael outside Toronto, gave an overview of their recently closed “Worlds on Paper” exhibit. He also gave an update on the digitization of the Kinngait (Cape Dorset) print archives and the website where anyone can access that archive.
Geoghegan is a curator and writer interested in uncovering lost or forgotten stories in Canadian art history. He was a senior editor at Inuit Quarterly, where he worked from 2016 to 2020. He has also contributed to publications for the McMichael, among others.
Shop in the marketplace
As most years, we had a marketplace with art for sale.
Socialize at the evening banquet
Our banquet at McMcCormick and Schmidt featured great food and conversation.
Visit a local collector’s home after our meeting ends
If you’ve been to one of our meetings before you know the opportunity to visit a collector’s home is always a highlight. And we had quite a treat in Indianapolis.
About the Eiteljorg
The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art was founded by Harrison Eiteljorg, a businessman who began traveling in the American West in the 1940s and fell in love with the land, people, and artwork he found there. The museum opened in 1989 with 2,000 objects – most from Eiteljorg’s personal collection. Today the museum has around 10,000 pieces and is said to hold the largest collection of contemporary indigenous art in the USA.
Previous meetings
See program and event information and photos from previous meetings.
Virtual Meetings
The IAS now holds occasional virtual meetings via zoom.
IAS members will automatically receive a link. If you are not a member and are interested in attending a virtual meeting, contact us for more information or go ahead and become a member!
Upcoming Virtual Meetings
No meeting currently scheduled
Members will receive a link when meetings are scheduled. Not a member? Contact us.
Past Virtual Meetings
Past virtual meetings include show-and-tell presentations featuring favorite works from the collections of members of the Inuit Art Society (IAS) and the Arctic Arts and Culture Society (AACS) in Vancouver, BC, with one show-and-tell focusing on prints, carvings, and wall hangings illustrating Inuit legends.
Our March 2025 virtual meeting featured Napatsi Folger on the work of Pitseolak Ashoona and Pitseolak’s influence on contemporary Inuit art.
You can see more virtual meetings, including presentation slides on the IAS Virtual Meeting Page.
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