Moving Tradition into the Future

July 10 – October 5, 2025    

The exhibition came into being through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with a matching grant from Windrose Fund of Common Counsel Foundation. It allowed the Museum to commission Native American artists from, or connected to, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, and Manitoba, Canada. This commission asked the artists to examine what it means to be a Native artist living in contemporary times, what beliefs they want to pass along, and how visual language remains alive today. The commission helps create the visual history of today, which will then become the knowable past for future generations.

Each artist was able to interpreted the theme as they chose, and in any medium they decided. They decided what Moving Tradition into the Future meant to them and this is their interpretation. All works will become part of the Museum’s Permanent Collection.

Programming:

LIVE WEBINAR with the Artists from Moving Tradition into the Future.
Dr. Cynthia Lindquist, Director of Tribal Initiatives & Collaboration, UND, moderated the discussion. The Webinar was free and open to the public. 

ELAINE MCKENZIE MEMORIAL LECTURE
Teresa Baker, participating artist in Moving Tradition into the Future, presented the lecture, Pulling up the Prairie.

Born in North Dakota, Baker is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in western North Dakota. Through a mixed media practice combining artificial and natural materials, Baker creates work that explores place, identity and land guided by her Mandan/Hidatsa culture.

Lecture recording will be posted here shortly. Check back later.

Artists include:

Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota / Diné) is a visual artist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She earned her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Charley began her artistic journey in the realm of ledger art, a traditional Native American art form historically practiced by Plains Indian tribes. In time, Charley transitioned to oil paintings, centering Indigenous women within modern settings, reflecting the vibrancy of her people’s culture.

Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa, B. 1985 Watford City, ND) currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Baker has had recent solo exhibitions at de boer, Los Angeles, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ; Pied-à-terre, San Francisco; and Interface Gallery, Oakland; Group exhibitions include Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Marin MoCA, Novato, CA, and Anthony Meier, Mill Valley, CA. She will be included in the upcoming edition of Made in LA: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Baker is a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellow

Mikayla Patton (b. Pine Ridge Reservation) is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation and mixed media artist. Through the interplay of recycled paper-making and earth elements, Patton creates sculptural objects that explore Indigenous intimacies, personal narratives, and the transformative power of repurposing materials. While utilizing her Lakota knowledge of creative methodologies and adornment, Patton aims to address shared themes of healing, growth, and renewal. In 2019, Patton obtained a BFA with a focus in Printmaking from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work exhibited at the Texas Tech School of Art (Lubbock); All My Relations Gallery (Minneapolis); and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.

Keith BraveHeart is an Oglala Lakota visual artist and arts educator. He is citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD), and received his BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe, NM) and MFA from the University of South Dakota (Vermillion, SD). His work within art and community is diverse and includes exhibition curation, arts and culture programing, and community-engaged arts initiatives. He currently serves as Associate Professor of art at Oglala Lakota College. BraveHeart is committed to enriching and encouraging a tribal arts continuum across the Northern Plains region, and expresses a sincere acknowledgment of being a “good relative.”

Terran Last Gun / Saakwaynaamah’kaa (b. 1989, Browning, MT) is a Piikani (Blackfeet) citizen and visual artist. Last Gun’s work centers around the process of color exploration and visual documentation of nature, cosmos, cultural narratives, and recollections of home. Often employing geometric aesthetics, he is contributing to an ancient Indigenous North American narrative through various media that include ledger drawing, printmaking, painting, and photography. Last Gun received his BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. He is a recipient of awards from the First Peoples Fund, 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship, and the Santa Fe Art Institute, 2018 Story Maps Fellowship. Most recently, he was named one of the 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in Southwest Contemporary (formerly THE Magazine). He currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Delia Touché was born in Devils Lake, ND and is part of the Spirit Lake Nation. They are a Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Assiniboine artist based in the Midwest. They have exhibited at the M Contemporary Art (Ferndale, MI), Plains Art Museum (Fargo, ND), The Art Galleries at Austin Community College (Austin, TX), Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), BULK Space (Detroit, MI), Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Minneapolis, MN) among others. Delia holds a BFA in Drawing from Minnesota State University Moorhead and a MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art where they received the Gilbert Fellowship.

Angela Babby, born in Everett, Washington, is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She received her BFA in Fine Art (Painting) from Montana State University-Billings. Babby’s artwork has been featured in professional publications including Glass Art Magazine and First American Art Magazine and is housed in permanent museum collections in South Dakota. Her kiln-fired enameled glass mosaics have won numerous awards at Santa Fe Indian Market, the Red Cloud Art Show in Pine Ridge, Best of Show at the Native Pop Art Show in Rapid City and at the Northern Plains Indian Art Market in Sioux Falls, South, Dakota. She’s won best of class at the Heard Indian Art Market in Phoenix, Arizona. She is currently part of the “Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass”; the first Museum Group Show of Native Americans working in the medium.

The multimedia works of Maggie Thompson (Ojibwe) expand various textile traditions. Thompson, of Minneapolis, MN, skillfully and intuitively works with natural and synthetic materials to address personal and universal experiences of loss, grief, and love. She was selected to participate in the Renwick Invitational at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2023, and has exhibited at the Plains Art Museum and the Minnesota Textile Center. Her solo exhibitions include Just Friends at Bockley Gallery (2022) and Dakobijige / She Ties Things Together at the Watermark Center in Bemidji, Minnesota (2021). She has been awarded grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and her work is collected by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and the Minnesota Historical Society, among other public institutions. Thompson holds a BFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design (2013). In addition to her art practice, she is a curator, and owns and operates Makwa Studio, a creative space and brand creating wearables that incorporate Native textile designs. Thompson’s work was acquired through a NDMOA matching grant purchase.

Ben Pease, born in 1989, is a native Montanan artist of Tsitsistas and Apsáalooke descent. He belongs to the Newly-Made Lodge clan from the Valley of the Chiefs District on the Crow Indian Reservation. Pease’s educational background includes studies at Minot State University, Montana State University, and Little Big Horn College.

Pease uses his work to seek understanding and perspective as an Indigenous person, as reflected in his diverse projects and collaborations. His work is currently featured in major exhibitions at museums such as the Field Museum of Chicago and the New York Historical Society. His works are collected worldwide and are represented in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Whitney Western Art Museum and the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Montana State University, and the Mulvane Art Museum.

Additional support for this exhibition provided by the following individuals:
Allan and Hazel Ashworth
Martin Brown