Author: jeff

Curtis Zunigha remembers shedding tears when he heard the age of one Native American whose remains were part of a reburial ceremony in Ohio several years ago.

It was a girl, 11 when she died. Her young age, which reminded Zunigha of his granddaughter, along with the girl’s inclusion among the many Indigenous people throughout U.S. history who experienced indignities such as being moved from their homelands, left him shaken.

“I was emotionally distressed,” he said during a recent telephone interview.

Zunigha, cultural director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, said the experience illustrates the long-lasting effects of the country’s history and the ongoing importance of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which was passed in 1990. The law mandates that institutions receiving federal funding return Native American remains and cultural items to tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.

The Delaware Tribe of Indians expects the remains of nearly 200 ancestors to be reburied at the Pennsbury Manor near Philadelphia in the fall and thousands of belongings to be returned.

Nationally, there are almost 200,000 human remains of Native Americans that have been identified under the law, according to the National Parks Service. Remains have been uncovered in all 50 states and are now on display in museums, in university labs for anthropology research and tucked away in boxes in the back of closets across the country.

The Department of the Interior in July announced new proposed regulations for the protection and repatriation law to clarify the process as well as take the burden off tribes to initiate and complete the required steps. The federal government is consulting tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations about the new proposals and will open them for public comment in October.

The Delaware tribe has been working for…

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POUGHKEEPSIE – Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center presents a summer of art with exhibitions ranging from Robert Rauschenberg’s news-inspired screen prints and a related photo display, drawings by sculptor Harry Roseman, and a poignant commemoration of Juneteenth.

The Loeb Art Center also returns to regular public hours, every day (except Monday) from 11am to 5pm. As always, admission is free. For more information about accessing the Vassar campus, please refer to VassarTogether.

Summer exhibitions include:

Time Capsule, 1970: Rauschenberg’s Currents, an in-depth look at avant-garde artist Robert Rauschenberg’s famous 1970 series of politically charged screen prints, is on view from June 26 – September 19, 2021. In 1970 Rauschenberg superimposed stories, headlines, advertisements, and images clipped from newspapers and tabloids to produce Surface Series from Currents: eighteen large-scale screen prints that reflected the strident social and political change of the period. The series is both a technical feat of modernist printmaking and a chance to peer inside Rauschenberg’s time capsule and witness the cacophony of violence, warfare, and political backlash that defined world events of the time.

Organized by guest curator Calvin Brown, the exhibition also features two original collages on loan from the Rauschenberg Foundation as well as sixteen related works from the Loeb’s collection

Photo Currents: Media, Circulation, Spectacle, is on view upstairs in the Hoene Hoy Photography Gallery from July 10 – October 10, 2021. In light of the radical transformation of popular media with the rise of the internet, citizen journalism, and social media, this exhibition considers photography’s role as a mediator of collective experiences and memories of historical events.

Tilled Fields, a solo show by New York sculptor Harry Roseman, who taught at Vassar for 40 years, is featured in the Project and Focus galleries from July 3 – September 12, 2021. The exhibition engages viewers with eighteen striking…

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