The Spencer Museum of Art’s Indigenous fashion exhibition, “Native Fashion,” spotlights artwork and fashion by Indigenous artists from more than forty tribes. The exhibition displays traditional garments, contemporary couture and streetwear, and an expansive array of accessories, including jewelry, bags and other adornments.
The “Native Fashion” exhibition is curated around themes of representation, resilience, resistance and relationships, showing the beauty of contemporary Indigenous life in the U.S. The collection will be open until Jan. 5, 2025.
“A lot of exhibitions that involve Indigenous peoples can be really sad,” said Sydney Brook Pursel, assistant curator of the Spencer Art Museum. “We wanted to do something that was a lot more celebratory and exciting, and talks about the vibrancy of our contemporary cultures.”
Pursel added that it’s not always the case where academics have all the answers.
“Sometimes the community knows best, especially when it comes to the Indigenous community,” Pursel said. “We really wanted to showcase the vibrant living cultures that are happening right now.”
The exhibition does not shy away from modernity. The “Representation” section of the exhibit features three Native American Mattel Barbies contrasted with hand-crafted work from artist Rhonda Holy Bear, showing that even dolls can rock high fashion pieces.
The “Representation” section also features a gorget, a metal chest accessory used for protection, made by Jodi Webster, a University of Kansas alumni. Webster said she purchased the gorget from the South Western Indian Arts market solely for this exhibition.
“This piece features the characters from ‘Reservation Dogs,’ the new television show which is super exciting for Native representation because we’re getting away from the cowboys and Indians motif, and finally having our own space that is really about contemporary reservation life,” Pursel said.
Equally as important as representation, the exhibit showed cases of misrepresentation of Indigenous people by corporations.
“We want to encourage companies that have in the past stolen designs and appropriated designs from Native peoples to be encouraged to actually collaborate with them,” Pursel said.
Pieces by Polo Ralph Lauren and Nike were featured as examples of appropriated Indigenous designs to show how including Native people in the creative process of fashion is important.
The exhibition took a year and a half to curate, according to Pursel. She said that it was a collaborative process with a team of Native advisors from the community including Kansas State Representative Christina Haswood, Alicia Swimmer, Felicia Miner and Miranda Bradford. The collaboration ensured that the exhibition stayed true to its focus on local artists.
Additional pieces borrowed from the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Nerman Museum at Johnson County Community College and the Haskell Cultural Center are also on display at the exhibition.
The museum will host an Indigenous fashion show on Dec. 14 at the Kansas Union, incorporating even more local Native designers.
“We’re hoping that having a living fashion show is showing that museum display cases are not where Native fashion lives, it’s on peoples’ bodies,” Pursel said. “We want people to be encouraged to support and buy works by Indigenous people and to wear them proudly. Even if you’re not Indigenous you can still wear things made by Native people.”
Because of the high level of involvement from Haskell students, the exhibition has also served as a way to build a connection between Haskell and KU students.
“We had a lot of Haskell students in here because they are represented so much in the exhibition, so I’m hoping it’s a way to bridge that divide and make them feel comfortable in our space so that we can continue to collaborate in the future,” Pursel said.
Pursel said this exhibition has meant a lot to the Indigenous students who helped curate it. She referred to Angelina Giago, a Haskell student who contributed to the exhibition and provided a statement about being part of the Indigenous fashion show hosted by Haskell in April, a fashion photography class she participated in, and seeing the physical exhibition in person.
“At the Native Art exhibit at the Spencer Museum I found a piece of home, a power reminder that fashion is a way of storytelling that weaves together our past, present and future,” Giago said. “Native Fashion challenges stereotypes and misconceptions, showing that Indigenous cultures are not just monolithic or confined to the past. Instead, we are diverse, dynamic and constantly evolving.”
