Curating the West

Each Month We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World.

Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Christina E. Burke
Curator of Native American & Non-Western Art
Philbrook Museum of Art
Tulsa, OK
(918) 748-5387 | www.philbrook.org

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I’m thrilled that Philbrook is the final venue for the traveling exhibition Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists (June 28 through September 20, 2020). This incredible show of more than 100 works of art from the past 1,000 years celebrates the powerful and ongoing creativity of Indigenous women across a variety of media. It was developed by co-curators Teri Greeves (Kiowa) and Jill Ahlberg Yohe (Minneapolis Institute of Art) in collaboration with an advisory board of women artists, curators and scholars.

What are you reading?
At the moment I’m really enjoying Tommy Orange’s There There. It is such an engaging story with colorful characters…
I kind of don’t want to finish it!

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I recently attended a talk here in Tulsa by Heather Pesanti (Contemporary Austin) and several artists in a show Heather curated called Concept. This triennial event is sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) and features contemporary artists from across Oklahoma working in various media (painting, photography, video, sculpture, collage). It was great to hear the curator and artists voices directly addressing their various processes and providing significant insights for the visitors.

What are you researching at the moment?
I’m taking a closer look at Philbrook’s Native collection, in particular our holdings of Pueblo pottery. This is in preparation for a project funded by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation that includes a research fellow position. With the fellow, we will continue cataloguing work in the collection to support future traveling exhibitions, programming and publications.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I’d like to work with Native artists and healers create a traveling exhibition focused on Indigenous conceptions of health and wellness building on a similar project, Native Voices, done in 2011 by the National Library in Bethesda, Maryland. The traveling show could include such historical records as “winter counts,” tribal histories kept by the Lakota and other Plains tribes, as well as various types of art focused on traditional healing of body, mind and spirit from Native communities across North America.