Dyani White Hawk, Si Lewen

Episode No. 610 features artist Dyani White Hawk and curator Kelly Montana.

White Hawk is included in "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America" at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The exhibition presents new works that examine the question, "Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy?" The exhibition was organized by a six-person curatorial team and is on view through October 8.

White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) makes works multiple media that often foreground Lakota art forms and cultural knowledge and blend both Native American and non-Native interests and art histories. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston. She's also been in group shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and more.

Montana is the curator of "Si Lewen: The Parade" which is at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston through September 3. The Parade is an epic narrative that unfolds across 63 drawings. Lewen, a Polish-born immigrant who lived and worked in New York and Pennsylvania, witnessed the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 while serving in the United States Army. In the 1950s he published a graphic novel that responded to the horrors he encountered as part of his war-time experience. This exhibition is the first in the United States to bring together the complete set of works from The Parade.