Viewers will get a unique glimpse into the traditional arts of New York’s Akwesasne Mohawk and Tuscarora tribes when “North by Northeast: Baskets and Beadwork from the Akwesasne Mohawk and Tuscarora” opens Friday, Sept. 25 in the Mandeville Gallery.
The selected pieces were chosen from a larger traveling exhibition curated by Kathleen Mundell, folklorist and director of Cultural Resources, a nonprofit organization that helps communities sustain local culture.
The show runs through Saturday, Oct. 24. An opening reception will be held Friday, Oct. 2, 5-8 p.m. in the Nott Memorial, in conjunction with the opening reception for a second show, “Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit.”
This traveling exhibit, curated by New Paltz, N.Y., independent curator and historian Rickie Solinger, features 36 works by 28 contemporary artists.
Each work incorporates a tool that was important for women’s domestic labor in the past. Many of these tools, including a washboard, a dressmaker’s figure, cooking pans, rug-beaters and mason jars, facilitated hard, repetitive labor. They evoke various histories – European American, African-American, Asian American – of women’s unpaid and often diminished and disrespected status within the household and society.
The show’s title aptly includes the distaff, a tool attached to a spinning wheel that’s designed to hold un-spun fibers. Over time, the word came to refer to matters and objects in the domestic or women’s sphere, and then, to women in general.
Solinger will give a lecture in conjunction with the show on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 4 p.m. in Reamer Campus Center Auditorium. Her talk is entitled “Becoming a Curator: Seeing Race, Class, Gender and History in Objects and Images.”
“Reimagining the Distaff” runs through Sunday, Dec. 20.