Charles M. Russell in Blackfeet Country | The 21st Annual Petrie Institute of Western American Art Symposium

Charles M. Russell in Blackfeet Country: a symposium beyond the Western artist

Charles M. Russell lived and worked on the ancestral lands of the Amskaapii Pikanii, people he often represented in his art. At Charles M. Russell in Blackfeet Country, Denver Art Museum invites speakers to consider his work alongside Indigenous knowledge and the histories of exchange, language and storytelling that shaped its context.

The country behind the pictures

Russell moved to Montana as a teenager and spent the rest of his life there. The museum’s exhibition guide says he primarily interacted with the Amskaapii Pikanii, also known as the Blackfeet or South Peigan, and regularly traveled through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

The 21st annual Petrie Institute of Western American Art symposium approaches that history through speakers as well as images. Emily Burns, a professor of art history and Charles Marion Russell Memorial Chair, is listed alongside Iva Croff and Nina Sanders, curator of Indigenous collections at the Montana Historical Society. The museum also lists a panel with Medicine Spring Library director Aaron LaFromboise, Blackfeet artist John Isaiah Pepion and visual artist Terran Last Gun.

LaFromboise and Pepion were also advisers to Storytellers: The Blackfeet Nation and Charles M. Russell, the exhibition associated with the symposium. That connection brings the gallery project and the day’s discussion into conversation, though the museum has not published individual talk topics or a detailed timetable.

Further reading: Charles M. Russell in Blackfeet Country | The 21st Annual Petrie Institute of Western American Art Symposium ↗ · Storytellers Guide | Denver Art Museum ↗

What an object can tell

Storytellers pairs Russell’s paintings, watercolors and bronzes with ancestral works from the Blackfoot Confederacy. The exhibition includes beadwork, hide-tanning and saddle making among the contributions of Blackfeet women, offering context for considering both Russell’s representations and the people whose knowledge informed them.

One work is a dress yoke made by an Amskaapii Pikanii artist around 1900. According to the gallery guide, its beaded designs refer to the Milky Way and Morning Star; traded bugle beads and a flour sack from government rations are also part of its materials. The yoke brings cultural knowledge and the history of exchange into the same object—the kind of layered context the symposium sets out to explore.

The gallery guide also examines Russell’s 1899 painting Waiting and Mad critically. It identifies the figure’s pose with a Euro-American visual convention and argues that the image perpetuates stereotypes about Indigenous women. Visitors interested in the symposium’s wider perspective can encounter both appreciation and critique in the exhibition.

Further reading: Storytellers: The Blackfeet Nation and Charles M. Russell | Denver Art Museum ↗ · Storytellers Guide Gallery 1 | Denver Art Museum ↗ · Charles M. Russell in Blackfeet Country | The 21st Annual Petrie Institute of Western American Art Symposium ↗