The Art of Healing: Stories, Stitches & the Sacred Fashion Show

The stories in the regalia

The Art of Healing: Stories, Stitches & the Sacred Fashion Show is the fourth annual presentation marking the culmination of Healing Ribbons’ year-long Art of Healing program. The show features regalia created by program participants; their choices of color, fabric, ribbon and design reflect connections to personal journeys, identity, family and culture.

Healing Ribbons is a Native American women-led nonprofit whose work centers holistic well-being, cultural revitalization and positive cultural identity among Native American women across generations, Two-Spirit relatives and families. The fashion show offers a public setting for work made through that program.

Further reading: The Art of Healing: Stories, Stitches & the Sacred Fashion Show   | Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha ↗

A gallery conversation about beadwork

In a separate part of the museum, an Art Cart in Merriam Gallery J8 offers conversation, looking activities and hands-on materials related to regalia in Prairie as Pattern: Native American Beadwork. The cart has a window before the show and another later in the afternoon; it is distinct from the runway presentation in Witherspoon Hall.

Prairie as Pattern brings together beadwork on objects including moccasins, vests, handbags and cradleboards. The museum places these works in the context of daily life, ceremony and celebration, and developed the exhibition in conversation with knowledge bearers and beadwork artists.

The exhibition connects two periods of history: its objects date from after Native peoples were forcibly removed to reservations, while the artistic traditions and knowledge of materials behind them reach back before colonization. Joslyn also describes how artists made glass beads and metal embellishments introduced through European trade their own, while materials such as shells point to Indigenous trade connections between the prairies and distant coasts.

Further reading: The Art of Healing: Stories, Stitches & the Sacred Fashion Show   | Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha ↗ · Prairie as Pattern: Native American Beadwork | Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha ↗