‘Genius’ or ‘Amoral’? Artist’s Latest Angers Indigenous Canadians

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Catherine Porter

Critics say Cree artist Kent Monkman’s controversial painting Hanky Panky depicts the sexual assault of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Postmedia News

TORONTO — Many Indigenous activists in Canada consider Justin Trudeau, after more than four years as prime minister, as little better than the other white colonial leaders who have oppressed them for the past 150 years. His only Indigenous cabinet minister quit and his government approved pipelines across Indigenous territory, despite dissent and protests. Despite that, even some of Mr. Trudeau’s sharpest critics were appalled by a painting by the celebrated Canadian Cree artist, Kent Monkman. Titled “Hanky Panky,” Mr. Monkman’s painting depicts the prime minister on his hands and knees with his pants down as a crowd of Indigenous women looks on, laughing. Behind him is the artist’s alter ego, wearing knee-high stiletto boots and a long feather headdress. [More]

Kent Monkman, a True Artist Finding New Ways to Shock the Conscience

THE NATIONAL POST
BY Jonathon Kay

Aent Monkman is seen with a piece of his artwork at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary on June 15, 2017.

As some of my regular readers know, I often like having a bash at the government-subsidized amateurs who populate the field of Canadian arts and letters. (It’s not their fault: when the government pays for something, you often get too much of it.) But Kent Monkman is very, very much not in that category. He produces big, colourful epics that dramatically mash up the visual idioms of Judeo-Christian historical tradition with Indigenous characters and narratives. And Monkman’s works well enough that he can charge $175,000 a pop, which is approximately $175,000 more than your average art-school grad. [More]

The Provocations of Kent Monkman: Hanky Panky

THE NEW REPUBLIC
By Nick Martin

The Cree artist has broken into mainstream success. His newest painting shows why that may be a problem.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on all fours, his shoulders grasped by a snarling woman in dark gray chinos, his ass cheeks being spread apart by a woman in a light blue tank top, her head thrown back in mid-laugh. There’s more to Hanky Panky, the latest controversial painting from Kent Monkman, a renowned artist and two-spirit Fisher River Cree Nation citizen.... This literal marginalization of the scene’s Indigenous women, as well as the painting’s notion that sexual violence should be repaid with sexual violence, broadly defines the critiques voiced by art historian Rowan Red Sky and poet Jaye Simpson and others since Hanky Panky’s online release last week. Anticipating the backlash, Monkman included a content warning when he unveiled the work on Instagram. [More]

Kent Monkman Auctions One of His Drawings to Support Toronto’s Indigenous Communities

HYPERALLERGIC
By Valentina Di Liscia

Kent Monkman, “kâ wâsihkopayicik (the ones who shine)” (2008), graphite on acid-free paper, 14 x 17 inches (all images courtesy Kent Monkman Studio)

A 2018 study by Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council (TASSC) found that there are between 45,000 and 60,000 Indigenous adults in Toronto — and 87% of them fall below Canada’s low-income cut-off. Kent Monkman, a Canadian artist of Cree descent, is auctioning an original drawing to benefit the advocacy nonprofit, highlighting the urgent needs of Aboriginal people during the pandemic and beyond. The sale is taking place entirely on Monkman’s Instagram account — no gallery, auction house, or intermediary. Interested potential buyers can place their bids directly on Monkman’s post in increments of at least $10. Since the sale went live on Monday, bids have steadily climbed, with the highest offer currently at $3,000. [More]

Cree Artist Kent Monkman Takes Us on a Tour of the Met to Show How Not to Depict Indigenous People

ARTNET NEWS
By Sarah Cascone

Kent Monkman, Welcoming the Newcomers (2019). Photo by Anna Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When visitors enter the Great Hall of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this month, they will be greeted with something unusual: a pair of monumental history paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman. The massive canvases—almost 11 feet by 22 feet—seek to do nothing less than turn conventional Western art history on its head. The exhibition, titled “mistikosiwak (Wooden Boat People),” comprises two massive paintings, Welcoming the Newcomers and Resurgence of the People. Both paintings star Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a representation of indigenous Two Spirit traditions. [More]

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK - Kent Monkman

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Cree artist Kent Monkman

We'd not heard of Kent Monkman until last week, but all it took was seeing one of his polemics to know we'd love to bring one of his realistic, grim but humor-filled landscapes back-home with us to  "Mike Pence's Indiana." Born in Canada in 1965, Monkman is a Cree artist who uses his gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle in superheroic roles to challenge accepted notions of religion, sexuality, and race. This week, The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled his commission "Wooden Boat People," and that makes Kent Monkman, our artist of the week.

Critic's Pick: A Cree Artist Redraws History at Metropolitan Museum of Art

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

A detail from Kent Monkman’s “Resurgence of the People” updates Delacroix’s pessimistic image by depicting a healthy baby in the arms of a same-sex Indigenous couple.

NEW YORK---Coonskin caps for Christmas! I was a kid in mid-20th-century America. The biggest cultural event I can remember from early childhood was Walt Disney’s gigantically popular “Davy Crockett: Indian Fighter” on TV. All this came back to mind when I saw “The Great Hall Commission: Kent Monkman, mistikosiwak (Wooden Boat People)” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The paintings are pretty stupendous. “I want to make the contemporary feel historic and the historic feel contemporary,” Mr. Monkman said in a 2017 interview for the Toronto Globe and Mail. That’s an excellent goal for the Met to shoot for too. [More]

Unveiled at the Met, Cree Artist Kent Monkman Asks Visitors to Confront North America’s Colonial Past

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

By Kate Taylor

Kent Monkman, (Canadian, b. 1965). Welcoming the Newcomers, 2019.

The Cree artist Kent Monkman stood under the soaring ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall this week wielding a laser pointer. With its beam, he indicated historical characters on the huge canvas behind him, stopping briefly on the figure of a beaver with an olive branch in its mouth as he decoded his latest painting for the assembled media. Europeans came to this continent seeking beaver pelts, he reminded them. Toronto-resident Monkman, a member of Manitoba’s Fisher River Band, is one of a trio of international artists given an unusual assignment by America’s pre-eminent museum: The Met has asked them to address its encyclopedic collection by creating new art for its most prominent spaces. [More]

'Big, Bold, Audacious' Kent Monkman Artworks 'at Home' at the Met, Says Curator

CBC NEWS
By Jessica Wong

Cree artist Kent Monkman discusses his two monumental new paintings installed in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Tuesday. (Sean Conaboy/CBC)

A bold commentary on North American history is one of the first things visitors to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will see for the next few months — and it comes courtesy of renowned Cree artist Kent Monkman. Monkman, a member of the Fisher River First Nation in Manitoba, was in Manhattan Tuesday to help unveil two massive new paintings in the Met's main entrance. Commissioned by the New York museum, the artworks are part of a series which invites contemporary artists to create new pieces inspired by art in the Met's collection. Monkman is the inaugural artist to be featured in the Great Hall. [More]

Painting the Horrors of Colonialism, Kent Monkman Gets Met Spotlight

THE OBSERVER 
By RM Vaughan

Kent Monkman with one of the paintings included in his current exhibition, “Shame and Prejudice.”

Kent Monkman is having a big year. A very big year. The Canadian multimedia artist, who is of Cree First Nations heritage, is still crisscrossing North America with his touring show of paintings, “Shame and Prejudice,” a journey which will continue well into 2020, and his new works are appearing in group shows from Duke University to Des Moines. But his next project catapults Monkman into monument-maker status: think Picasso’s Guernica monumental, or Tate Turbine Hall scale. On December 19, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art will unveil mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People), a massive diptych (both 22 feet long) that will fill the Met’s Great Hall. [More]

Ken Monkman's Great Hall Commission Opening on December 19

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

"Study for Celestial Beings" ( 2018), Acrylic on canvas16” x 20”

Kent Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples. On December 19, two large-scale commissions by Kent Monkman's will hang in the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Born in Canada in 1965, Monkman is a Cree artist who explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance, and installation.

Long Sidelined, Native Artists Finally Receive Their Due

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
By Susannah Gardiner

The Confirmation by Julie Buffalohead (Ponca), 2009 (NMAI) 

Museums are beginning to rewrite the story they tell about American art, and this time, they’re including the original Americans. Traditionally, Native American art and artifacts have been exhibited alongside African and Pacific Islands art, or in an anthropology department, or even in a natural history wing. But that has begun to change in recent years. Paul Chaat Smith, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is one of the curators of “Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting,” a new exhibition at the NMAI’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York City. The show pushes to the foreground questions of where Native American art—and Native American artists—truly belong. [More]@SmithsonianMag

Kent Monkman's "Honour Dance"

TWITTER

Honour DanceKent Monkman2019Acrylic on canvas36" x 56.5"

Metropolitan Museum of Art Invites Artists to Make New Art for Fifth Avenue

THE ART NEWSPAPER
BY Victoria Stapley-Brown

Kent Monkman has been selected to create two monumental paintings for The Met's Great Hall. Monkman, born in Canada in 1965, is a Cree artist widely known for his provocative interventions into Western European and American art history.

Nine months since he took over as director, Max Hollein is indeed making his mark at the New York institution. Hollein’s commitment to integrating Modern and contemporary art at the Met’s Fifth Avenue building is evident in the upcoming exhibition program, most notably, the fulfillment of his promise of new annual commissions for two public spaces. The Cree Canadian artist Kent Monkman, whose practice is “a new idea of modern history painting”, Hollein said, will make monumental paintings for the Great Hall (19 December-12 February 2020). And the Kenya-born artist Wangechi Mutu, who makes pieces with “fantastic otherworldly narratives”, Hollein said, has been chosen for the first-ever project for the empty sculptural niches on the Fifth Avenue façade. [More]

So Etwas Sah Man Noch Nie

DER FREITAG DIGITAL
By Timo Feldhaus

Kent Monkman: The Deluge (2019); Courtesy Private Collection, Canada

Nun beginnen sehr bald „unsere“ 20er Jahre, deren Vorgänger aus dem letzten Jahrhundert sich als so berühmt und berüchtigt und exzessiv und erschütternd eingeprägt haben, in denen in Deutschland die Saat gelegt wurde, welche, als sie aufging, dann Republik und Demokratie zerbröselte und vor deren Wiederholung heute einige im Spiegelbild der Zeitgeschichte erneut warnen. Denn es begann ja damit, dass eine kleine, rechtsradikale Splitterpartei von München aus Antisemitismus und Fremdenhass schürte und plötzlich massiv Wahlen gewann, es endete im Nationalsozialismus und mit 80 Millionen Toten. Was bedeutet es, wenn am Ende der nun beginnenden 20er Jahre des 21. [More]

The Canadian Cree Artist Remixing History in the Met’s Great Hall

VULTURE MAGAZINE 
By Jarrett Earnest

There are two paintings. In the first, we see settlers arriving on the shores of North America and being welcomed by the First People. Miss Chief is there, helping people ashore. For the second painting, Miss Chief is in a boat, posed like Washington Crossing the Delaware, along with a variety of indigenous people piloting this boat through a stormy sea.

Isn’t a time-traveling, gender-fluid, indigenous sex goddess exactly what art needs right about now? The Met seems to think so and has commissioned the Canadian Cree artist Kent Monkman, whose work often features his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, to produce a pair of 11-by-22-foot paintings titled mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) for its Great Hall (opens December 19). Monkman, 54, gave up abstraction to communicate ideas about the history of colonial settlement in North America to a more mainstream audience, and somehow, as a result, he has become “about as famous as a living painter can be” in Canada (according to The Globe and Mail).  [More]

The Desert X Biennial Opens in the Coachella Valley With Art Scattered Across 55 Miles

ARTNET NEWS
By Sarah Coscone

Cara Romero, Jackrabbit, Cottontail & the Spirit of the Desert (2019). Photo by Lance Gerber.

The second edition Desert X has touched down in the Coachella Valley of California, with site-specific work by 18 artists selected by artistic director Neville Wakefield and co-curators Amanda Hunt and Matthew Schum (Each artist had a $25,000 budget for his or her piece). The biennial gives new meaning to the word sprawling, with works scattered about an area of around 55 miles, in eight of the nine cities of the Coachella Valley. Much of the work alludes to aspects of life in the desert that aren’t immediately apparent, such as the rich heritage of the region’s indigenous communities, the growing effects of global warming, or the power of the wind. Desert X is on view in the Coachella Valley, California, February 9–April 21, 2019. [More]

Gregory Huebner reflects on physical, spiritual, and mental harmony in society

"Ritual 14" (2017) by Gregory Huebner. 36" x 36" on view at the Arts Council of Indianapolis

In Native American ritual, a shaman will call upon elements in the spirit world and make the unseen visible through expressions like song and dance to bring forth healing to an individual or society. Gregory Huebner approaches his paintings with a similar lens. During his years as a professor of Art at Wabash College he became a student of ritual while preparing a class he taught for twenty years entitled: The Spirit visualized: Ritual Objects and Native American Culture. Along with the study of ritual, Huebner is interested in the “unseen” versus the natural world. For this reason abstraction has been his main means of visual expression for all his adult life.

What does the remarkable shortlist for the 2017 Sobey Art Awards say about the changing Canadian Art scene?

ARTNET NEWS
By Sarah Brown

Ursula Johnson's "Hot Looking" (2014). Photo: Michael Wasnidge. Courtesy Sobey Art Award

The Sobey Art Award is one of the most coveted prizes in Canada, comparable in status and sum to UK’s Turner Prize. This year’s Sobey Award offers a larger sum of money than ever before: the prize money has been increased to $110,000, with $50,000 going to the winner and $10,000 to each shortlisted artist. According to the award’s press material, the list focuses on artists who question and challenge preconceived ideas around diversity, identity, and performance. These include Ursula Johnson, whose work reflects her Mi’kmaw First Nation heritage. Raymond Boisjoly is an Indigenous artist of Haida descent. Divya Mehra, who works between New York, Winnipeg, and Delhi. [More]

Exhibit showcases the earliest stirrings of American religious diversity

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
By Adelle M. Banks

Quotes from Jonathan Edwards, left, and Omar ibn Said in the “Religion in Early America” exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

WASHINGTON---Enter the “Religion in Early America” exhibit and there are objects you expect to find: Bibles, a hymnal and christening items. But on closer inspection, a broader picture of faith in the Colonial era emerges: a Bible translated into the language of the Wampanoag people, the Torah scroll of the first synagogue in North America and a text written by a slave who wanted to pass on the essentials of his Muslim heritage. The exhibit, which closes June 3 next year, is part of a larger initiative by the museum to feature religion in a variety of dimensions, including theater and musical presentations. [More]