Museum to focus on Native American art created for tourist trade

Bridgeport’s Housatonic Museum of Art”™s Spring Speaker Series is launching with “Making Sovereignty: Native American Tourist Art” on March 28 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Manon Gaudet, a PhD candidate in the history of art at Yale University, will discuss Native North American artworks created for the tourist market. According to the museum, the lecture will show “how Indigenous artists interacted with a market for Native American goods in the nineteenth-century and the significance of making as an act of sovereignty.”

The lecture will also include a presentation of Native American art from the museum”™s collection, which is currently on view in the Elizabeth Fray Gallery.

Tickets are $50 per event or $135 for all three lectures in the Spring Speaker Series. Ticket sales support educational programming and exhibitions at the museum.

Photo: The Hopi-Tewa potter Nampeyo, showing off her ceramics in a 1900 photograph.