A few days prior to the newest Covid “mini”-lockdown, we opened a new exhibition. The show “Posted! Reflections of Indigenous North America” is hosted by galerie KUB and jointly organized by Grassi Museum / State Ethnographic Collections Saxony and Karl-May-Museum Radebeul. The exhibit was designed by students of Ethnology and Curatorial Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. It presents posters from the US and Canada, either made by/for Indigenous communities, or directed at them, covering the period from the 1970s until today. The topics range from election posters, powwow and art show posters, to posters from information campaigns on public health, social issues, or the US census.

Here are links to the original exhibit at the Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt on Instagram and Facebook.

We are glad about this project for several reasons. We wanted to increase our collaboration with universities and give students better access to practical work at the museum. “Posted!” not only helps give the Frankfurt students’ work better visibility, it also helps us devise our own student projects. This leads to the next factor: As we are working to improve our museums’ networks with civil society and players in local culture, the arts, and civic engagement, working with galerie KUB helps prepare the ground for future projects with students and civil associations.

The current lockdown put events around the show on hold, but we have already started a school project with an English course at the nearby Kant Gymnasium high school that will interpret the posters and develop their own presentations on topics discussed in the show. Once the lockdown is lifted, we also hope to provide guided tours that had to be postponed for now. The tours will offer general information on Indigenous North America and on the exhibit, but there are also special themes, such as Indigenous politics and the 2020 presidential election in the US, or social issues, public health, and the Covid crisis.

The exhibition will be extended into January 2021. Exact dates will be provided soon at our Grassi museum program website and at the site of galerie KUB.