“Never Broken: Visualizing Lenape Histories,” on view now through January 14th, 2024, at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, considers the power of art to create, challenge, and rewrite history through a dynamic display of contemporary art by Lenape (also called Delaware) artists in conversation with historic Lenape ceramics, beadwork, and other cultural objects and representations of Penn’s Treaty by European American artists.
The exhibition interrogates prints, paintings, and decorative arts that incorporate imagery from Benjamin West’s iconic painting Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (1771-72), appropriated by Bucks County painter Edward Hicks (1780-1849), depicting a treaty of peace between William Penn and Tamanend, Chief of the Lenni-Lenape Turtle Clan.
The treaty was praised by Anglo-Americans as an agreement that was “never broken” and went viral in a pre-internet age, appearing on textiles, fine porcelain, and other printed material in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Surrounding the installation of a carved and painted Big House post, central to the Lenape belief system, will be paintings by Joe Baker and the sculpture Bloodline by Holly Wilson, which explore the artists’ lineage and tribal identity.
Large-scale abstract paintings by Ahchipaptunhe, newly commissioned for the exhibition, respond to the geometric forms and shapes inscribed on Lenape pottery and decorated splint wood baskets borrowed from the New Jersey State Museum.
Nineteenth century bandolier bags and contemporary beadwork by Joe Baker underscore the continuing legacy and evolution of Lenape visual expression and cross-cultural exchange. A video and sound piece by Nathan Young commissioned for the exhibition will explore the events of the Walking Purchase, in which William Penn’s sons defrauded the Lenape out of millions of acres of land in Eastern Pennsylvania.
For more info visit michenerartmuseum.org.
PHOTO CAP: Artist Unknown (Delaware), Bandolier Bag, 1850s. Cotton, wool, silk, and glass beads. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum).