Lectures and Talks

Join us for a panel discussion featuring artists Jennifer Elise Foerster, Steven Yazzie, and Dana El Masri as they respond to the exhibition Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism.

Learn how their contributions to the exhibition, including two custom scents developed by Dana and a video poem created by Jennifer and Steven, respond to, complicate, and reappropriate the colonial perspectives of the artworks on display. Moderated by exhibition curator JR (Jennifer R.) Henneman.

Dana El Masri is a perfumer, interdisciplinary artist, lecturer, writer, and storyteller based in Montreal, Canada who is inspired by the scents and sounds of contemporary landscapes, as well as by her deeply rooted Egyptian Lebanese cultures and global life experience.

Jennifer Elise Foerster (Mvskoke) is the author of three books of poetry, The Maybe Bird (2022), Bright Rain in the Afterweather (2018), and Leaving Tulsa (2013).

Steven Yazzie (Navajo/Laguna Pueblo) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the complexities of the post-settler colonial indigenous experience as it relates to personal identity, community relationships, and the essential connection to the land as the source of life, stories, conflict, and healing.

What role does community play in the development of an exhibition?

Get a glimpse into Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism with JR (Jennifer R.) Henneman, director of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art and curator of the exhibition, and Lauren Thompson, senior interpretive specialist. Learn how the exhibition team collaborated with local community members, national scholars, and the Denver Art Museum’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) committee and Indigenous Advisory Council to create a multi-faceted and thought-provoking visitor experience.

What role does community play in the development of an exhibition?

Get a glimpse into Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism with JR (Jennifer R.) Henneman, director of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art and curator of the exhibition, and Lauren Thompson, senior interpretive specialist. Learn how the exhibition team collaborated with local community members, national scholars, and the Denver Art Museum’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) committee and Indigenous Advisory Council to create a multi-faceted and thought-provoking visitor experience.

Join us for a conversation between preeminent contemporary Pacific artist Niki Hastings-McFall (S?moan/P?keh?), Rory Padeken, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Emelihter Kihleng, Mellon Fellow for Oceanic Arts and curator of Islands Beyond Blue: Niki Hastings-McFall and Treasures from the Oceania Collection.

Hastings-McFall, from Auckland, New Zealand, is currently installing her site-specific work, No Man Is an Island, as part of Islands Beyond Blue. Hastings-McFall’s installation of monumental synthetic tourist lei debuts her acclaimed Polynisation series here in the United States.

This presentation will examine myths and realities about “cowboy culture” and particularly the world’s fascination/obsession with of a lone armed man on horseback as a misguided representative of a noble genre that has fed the world for centuries.

What we think we know about cowboys comes almost exclusively from popular culture, from dime novels to fiction books to the silver screen.

However, “Cowboy Ground Zero” extends farther back than Texas, Mexico, and even Spain to north and west Africa and herding technologies introduced to the Americas from these regions in the 16th century.

Presented by Michael R. Grauer, McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and Curator of Cowboy Collections and Western Art, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Artist Eric Garcia’s drawings reexamine and reframe invisible histories of brown and black communities in the United States. His politically charged works use humor and a bold graphic style to prompt viewers to consider themes of power, language, and memory.

As Garcia explains, "I am the colonized and the colonizer. I am a descendant of the Indigenous lands north of the Rio Grande conquered and colonized by Spain and then by the United States. Like many generations of black and brown people have done before, I enlisted in the occupying military with the hopes of opportunities within the empire. Drawing on my experiences and cultural history, I create site specific installations, murals, hand printed posters and political cartoons. By reexamining forgotten stories in an accessible and visually striking way, my work can be a tool with which to share, learn from and spark critical dialogue. Specifically, I make art to prevent historical amnesia and cultural erasure."

This presentation will examine myths and realities about “cowboy culture” and particularly the world’s fascination/obsession with of a lone armed man on horseback as a misguided representative of a noble genre that has fed the world for centuries.

What we think we know about cowboys comes almost exclusively from popular culture, from dime novels to fiction books to the silver screen.

However, “Cowboy Ground Zero” extends farther back than Texas, Mexico, and even Spain to north and west Africa and herding technologies introduced to the Americas from these regions in the 16th century.

Presented by Michael R. Grauer, McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and Curator of Cowboy Collections and Western Art, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.