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Virtual Student Guide Tour: Confronting the Colonial Gaze

In this photomontage, a smiling young woman with dark hair appears to hold a large color photograph. It depicts a seated Native American woman, dressed in brightly colored traditional clothing, in an autumnal landscape scene, with a lake and a snow-capped mountain in the background. A deer is to the woman’s left and a cow skull is to her right.
In this photomontage, Jacqueline Zoeller holds up Wendy Red Star’s Indian Summer (2006), one of the works she will discuss on the tour. Archival pigment print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2018.188.4. © Wendy Red Star.

Tour

Online

This event was recorded. Please view the talk on our Vimeo or Youtube channel.

On this tour commemorating Native American Heritage Month, Jacqueline Zoeller ’23 will discuss Native American portraiture, including art both of and by Native individuals, to examine the tensions between subject and object revealed by these portraits. Stops on this tour will include Charles Bird King’s portrait of Winnebago leader Hoowanneka (Little Elk) (1824), Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson’s RED POWER (2021), and Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star’s photographic series Four Seasons (2006).

Jacqueline Zoeller has collaborated with the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP) for this program’s land acknowledgment.

In collaboration with HUNAP, the Ho Family Student Guides have created a digital collection of some of the works at the Harvard Art Museums that speak to the Native American experience. This collection will help spur further conversations about Native American representation at the museums.

This interactive tour will take place online via Zoom. To join, click the following link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/93291985760 (free admission; no pre-registration required).

Virtual Student Guide Tours offer a chance to explore the collections of the Harvard Art Museums through the eyes of a Harvard student. Drop in and join the conversation!

Read these instructions on how to join a meeting on Zoom. For general questions about Student Guide Tours, email am_register@harvard.edu.

This program is supported by the Ho Family Student Guide Fund.

The Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums trains students to develop original, research-based tours of the collections. These tours, designed and led by Harvard undergraduates from a range of academic disciplines, focus on objects chosen by each Student Guide and offer a unique, thematic view into the collections.

The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at am_register@harvard.edu at least 48 hours in advance.