In the early stages of its massive $190 million expansion and renovation project, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has revealed it will introduce new dedicated galleries for Indigenous American art and has appointed Siera Hyte (Cherokee Nation) as the first Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art.
Siera Hyte (Photo courtesy Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)
Though the opening of the VMFA’s new wing is planned for 2028, Hyte’s work at the museum began in August, and she says the Indigenous American art galleries, works and the stories they reveal, will be central to the presentation of these forthcoming spaces.
Hyte is a recent hire from the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, where she served as manager of programs and fellowships at the school’s Lunder Institute for American Art. A curator, writer and artist, she holds a Master of Fine Arts from The University of Texas at Austin.
When considering the position at the VMFA, she learned that Lynette Allston, Chief of the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia, is president of the museum’s Board of Trustees. She was also compelled by local programming hosted at the VMFA.
“It’s humbling to assume this position,” Hyte says. “As a newcomer to the VMFA and to Richmond ... it’s a top priority for me to meet with and to collaborate with local Indigenous community members.”
Citing the seven federally recognized Indigenous tribes whose homelands intersect with present-day Virginia and the commonwealth’s four additional state-recognized Indigenous tribes (Virginia currently has 11 state-recognized tribes), she says, “I’m looking forward to connecting with tribal members and learning more about the artistic and place-based traditions of these communities.”
She’s also dedicating considerable time to evaluate the VMFA’s collection of works by Indigenous artists, with an eye towards its strengths, opportunities for growth and continued compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.
Virginia’s history with its first peoples is long and fraught. Their presence continues in the names of the rivers, geographical points and towns, in addition to the recognized tribes who still live here.
Hyte intends to “holistically represent both local and national contemporary Indigenous artists and Indigenous art histories in the VMFA’s galleries.” She also notes the importance of grappling with Virginia as a place both of early contact between Indigenous and European peoples and as a crucible of the Civil War.
But the past is prologue, and Hyte is interested in presenting the work of Indigenous artists on their own terms. She explains how it’s crucial for them to be afforded exhibitions, demonstrating the works’ complexity and nuance and viewed beyond the frame of U.S. history.
Hyte emphasizes how cultural institutions, such as museums, have perpetuated the dispossession of and harmful beliefs about Native people and oftentimes neglect to consider the unique differences between tribes and regions.
“With that in mind, when I’m planning in my work, I’m always thinking about Native museumgoers and the kinds of experiences that I hope to help facilitate in the museum space,” she says. “I think about what my grandfather might have liked to see — he loved art. I think about Native student groups, aspiring Native artists, etc., and how I hope they will walk away from the museum with a sense of wonder, cultural pride or curiosity about the ideas they encountered.”
Hyte feels that most VMFA guests can come to learn and to see a window into someone else’s experience of the world.
