The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Inuit Art Society was held on September 12-13 at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis
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” tour 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 discussed 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.
At our meeting, she walked through the exhibit with us, engaging IAS members in a discussion of the work on display.
A few images from the Eiteljorg exhibit.
Catching up with 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. And she is the same funny, wildly creative, and lovely person we met back in Corning.
Niap walked us through her evolution as an artist, explaining her rather unorthodox path. That included information on what’s behind some of her images, including a gorgeous image of her mother (who also attended the meeting and is as delightful as her daughter) imagined with traditional Inuit tattoos.
While her mother was fine with the portrait, some of Niap’s family were very upset by it. An example of how complicated choosing what to claim as your identity can be.
Lately Niap has been doing more organic work than we’ve seen from her before.
Michael Massie
While Michael Massie had hoped to join us in person, 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.
During the meeting, he gave us a look inside his studio, discussed recent work and exhibits, and showed us how he makes all those mosquitos that show up in his work!
Prints and parts for mosquitos in Massie’s studio.
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.
Visit to a local collector’s home after our meeting ends
As usual, we had the good fortune of visiting a local collector’s home to socialize amid some wonderful art.
