Heritage & GLAM Sector
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Indigenising museum spaces
In 2022 TSRG co-produced an exhibition with the American Museum & Gardens in Bath entitled, Dress to Redress: Exploring Native American Material Culture. Featuring work from Material Kwe by Anishinabekwe artist Dr. Celeste Pedri-Spade, Dress to Redress celebrated the inspirational women in Dr. Pedri-Spade’s community, while examining oil pipeline politics, Indigenous diplomacy, and the wider cultural significance of the British Crown’s relationships with Indigenous populations in the Northeastern United States.
The ‘Dress to Redress’ exhibition has had a significant impact on the American Museum & Garden’s permanent displays of North American Indigenous cultures, which have been revised to foreground Indigenous presence, agency and resilience and remove outdated stereotypes and language. As a consequence of the exhibition AM&G have also produced a formal repatriation and restitution policy regarding their Indigenous objects and artefacts.
“We were super grateful for having the support of the team at Hull because we would never have found Celeste. To have that was amazing… Her work was just right for our audience. It was challenging enough and brought in some new themes and ideas… but because her work is textiles, and it’s clothing… it was familiar enough that people weren’t frightened by it.”
Kate Hebert, AM&G Chief Curator
“The Dress to Redress was an exciting moment because it was the first time we’d… started to involve the voice of someone from an Indigenous community. Up to that I’m not aware of anything we’ve done like that before.”
AM&G staff member
“I got a deeper understanding of how Indigenous cultures are spiritually linked with the land and what that actually means, how they talk about it, the meaning or significance of different materials, the way they use them… I felt I had a really superficial idea before and actually through experiencing the exhibition and talking to Celeste, I started to develop a more thorough understanding of what that actually means”.
Dress to Redress visitor
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