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Museum of Wisconsin Art exhibitions showcase Native American identity, history, veterans

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Native American Art Gallery

Over the past few weeks, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend has opened two new exhibitions by indigenous artists to the public. 

On July 23, the museum opened Ho-Chunk photographer Tom Jones’s first major retrospective, which features 120 photos from sixteen bodies of work over 25 years. 

Starting October 7, the Museum of Wisconsin Art will show work examining “essential conflicts surrounding Native American identity” at its satellite location in Milwaukee. This will include more work from Antell, and work from artists Sky Hopinka and Chris Cornelius. 

Curator Graeme Reid says MOWA has worked with Jones for the past 13 years, and that a constant thread in Jones’ work is the interaction between white and Indian culture. Jones’ series “Studies in Cultural Appropriation” examines the fashion industry’s use of Native American designs. It includes an image of a white man and white woman, with  the outline of the man’s clothing cut out. The space is filled in by laying the card over Native objects such as beadwork, cloth and weavings.

“There’s something that a friend of mine said once,” says Jones, a professor of photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “She came to a show, and she’s like, ‘Your work is so beautiful, but then when you really look at it and get up o

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