About
The virtual exhibition Indigenous History & Art at Good Little Water Place is a collaboration between Preservation Long Island and the New York State Museum
Preservation Long Island advances the importance of historic preservation in the region. Our mission is to celebrate and preserve Long Island’s diverse cultural and architectural heritage through advocacy, education, and stewardship of historic sites and collections.
The New York State Museum serves the lifelong educational needs of New Yorkers and visitors through its collections, exhibitions, scholarship, programs, media and publications in science, history, anthropology, and art. The Museum explores and expresses New York State’s significant natural and cultural diversity, past and present.
EXHIBITION GUEST CURATORS
Jeremy Dennis (b. 1990) is a contemporary fine art photographer and a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY. In his work, he explores indigenous identity, culture, and assimilation. Dennis was one of 10 recipients of a 2016 Dreamstarter Grant from the national non-profit organization Running Strong for American Indian Youth. He was awarded $10,000 to pursue his project, On This Site, which uses photography and an interactive online map to showcase culturally significant Native American sites on Long Island, a topic of special meaning for Dennis, who was raised on the Shinnecock Nation Reservation. He also created a book and exhibition from this project. Most recently, Dennis received the Creative Bursar Award from Getty Images in 2018 to continue his series Stories—Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams and Myths. Inspired by North American indigenous stories, the artist staged supernatural images that transform these myths and legends to depictions of an actual experience in a photograph. Dennis holds an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, and a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY. He currently lives and works in Southampton, New York on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation.
Dr. Gwendolyn Saul curates the Ethnology Collections and the Contemporary Native Art Collection at the New York State Museum (NYSM). She earned her doctorate in cultural anthropology at the University of New Mexico (UNM) while working with the ethnographic collections at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM. In addition to teaching in the anthropology department and museum studies program at Northern Arizona University, she has conducted ethnographic research as part of multi-method projects in applied anthropology, museum studies, and a community based oral history project on the Navajo Nation. In 2018 she co-curated "Community and Continuity: Native Art of New York" at the Samuel Dorsky Art Museum, SUNY New Paltz. Currently, she works with Indigenous communities and Nations across what is now New York to curate and develop the state museum’s contemporary Native American art collection, and to decolonize attributions of historic material culture in the collections.
THANK YOU
Humanities New York Preservation Long Island New York State Museum Southold Indian Museum Jeremy Dennis Gwendolyn Saul Lucinda Hemmick Tecumseh Ceaser David Bunn Martine Tohanash Tarrant Lydia Wallace-Chavez Durrell Hunter Camille Seaman Courtney M. Leonard Faye Lone Ed Jolie (Mercyhurst University)