SVMoA Members are invited by the Museum’s curators for a preview and tour of the exhibitions In Conversation: Will Wilson and Portraits of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Past & Present prior to the Opening Celebration.

In Conversation: Will Wilson features tintype portraits Diné artist Will Wilson has made as part of his ongoing project Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX). A direct response to the work of 20th-century photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868–1952), whose photographs are also included in the exhibition, Wilson’s CIPX offers a critique of Curtis’s 20-volume The North American Indian (1907-1930), which was created to capture the supposed vanishing race of Native Americans. Curtis’ photographs simplified and romanticized Native American life. In contrast, Wilson has created rich, complex portraits that center Indigenous perspectives.

Portraits of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Past & Present explores portraits of members of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes made at the turn of the 20th century and today. In 1895, the Danish American photographer Benedicte Wrensted arrived in Pocatello, Idaho, where she established a photography studio. Among her clients were members of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes whose portraits Wrensted took until leaving Idaho in 1912. Unlike Edward Curtis, Wrensted invited her sitters to present themselves as they wished, and members of the Tribes appear in her photographs in both traditional regalia and settler dress. The exhibition also includes photographs made by photographers for the Sho-Ban News—Lori Edmo, Roselynn Yazzie, and Jeremy Shay—at events including the annual Shoshone-Bannock Festival.

In Conversation: Will Wilson was curated by Mindy Besaw, Curator