August 23, 2023 - January 2024

Drawn Over: Reclaiming Our Histories centers the museum’s world-renowned collection of Native American Ledger drawings, guest-curated by Dr. Jacki Thompson Rand (citizen, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma); Associate Vice Chancellor for Native Affairs, Associate Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Native American ledger art is a Plains Indian style established in the last third of the 19th century. Ledger drawings were an expressive form through which the artists told stories, memorialized achievements, and located events in time. Employing the tools and materials of a foreign culture, including crayons, pencils, and paper, these artists expanded on the Plains Indian artistic tradition of renderings of battles, heroic deeds, ceremonies, and everyday customs on buffalo hide robes and tipi covers. Pictographic representations of their Native-language names (“name glyphs”) and detailed depictions of their regalia conveyed meanings that were readily identifiable to community viewers.

_{Image caption: Courting: Man, Woman, Horse, from page 51 of the Old White Woman Ledger, 1880-1890. Gift of Gerald and Hope Solomons, 2010.37. Southern Cheyenne.}

The curatorial cohort of advisors that supported Dr. Rand include Erica Prussing (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa); Jennifer New (Community Engagement Specialist); Mary Young Bear (Meskwaki, Traditional Artist); Patricia Trujillo (Ojibwe/Meskwaki, Museum Professional, Retired); Phillip Round (Professor Emeritus, English/Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Iowa).

Drawn Over: Reclaiming Our Histories is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art with additional support from John S. and Patricia C. Koza.