Project Tag: Courtney Leonard

15
Jun
2026
COURTNEY M. LEONARD: BREACH: Logbook 26 | Convergence

COURTNEY M. LEONARD: BREACH: Logbook 26 | Convergence

Eat End Seaport Museum

P.O. Box 624
Greenport, NY

May 22 – November 1, 2026 

featuring Courtney M. Leonard

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

BREACH: Logbook 26 | Convergence brings the work of nationally recognized Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard to the East End Seaport Museum in a major new site-specific exhibition centering Indigenous perspectives on water, place, and continuity.

Part of Leonard’s ongoing BREACH series — conceived on the model of 19th-century whaling ship logbooks, in which each installation records a year of the artist’s engagement with environmental fragility and cultural resilience — Convergence takes its name from the oceanographic phenomenon of currents meeting: a zone where distinct forces, histories, and knowledge systems flow together and transform.

For this iteration, Leonard turns her lens to the waters immediately surrounding Greenport: the Peconic River, Gardiner’s Bay, and the harbor’s own edge. New site-specific video work explores Bug Light, Greenport’s deep history as a whaling port, and the former Oki-Do Oyster Factory — threading together Indigenous relationships to these waterways with the layered industrial and ecological histories that have shaped them. Ceramic and hanging works are installed in dialogue with the museum’s rare Fresnel lens collection, bringing Leonard’s material language of shell, whale, and sea into conversation with the navigational objects that once guided vessels through these same waters.

MORE ON COURTNEY M. LEONARD

04
Jun
2025
COURTNEY M. LEONARD | BREACH #2

COURTNEY M. LEONARD | BREACH #2

BREACH #2
edition 
2024
ceramic sperm whale teeth on a wooden pallet

RECENTLY ON VIEW

BREACH #2 | RECENTLY ON VIEW

Courtney M. Leonard in Weather and the Whale

Exhibition at Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
May 29, 2025 – March 8, 2026

Courtney M. Leonard: BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | SCRIMSHAW

Exhibition at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA
June 1 through November 3, 2024

Connect the Dots: Journey through the Lilley Museum Permanent Collection

On view permanently at the Lilley Museum of Art.
Photos courtesy of the Lilley Museum of Art.

COURTNEY M. Leonard: Logbook 2004-2023

Installation at The Heckscher Museum of Art
June 10, 2023 – November 12, 2023

ABOUT THE WORK

ABOUT

More on Courtney M. Leonard HERE

ABOUT BREACH #2

With works on on view at museums, historic sites and science institutes, Courtney M. Leonard continues to establish connections with collections and engage with local communities wherever her work is presented. The core of her practice involves deep research involving curators, scholars, and scientists during multiple site visits. Her multimedia installations are developed in response to what is learned along the way.

Throughout Summer 2025 in her Minnesota studio, Courtney completed new commissioned works and a series of Scrimshaw Studies, now available through Ferrin Contemporary.

Many of the current exhibitions feature one of Courtney’s most recognized works, BREACH #2. The ongoing, limited series of 13 sculptures began in 2015. Currently, seven are in public collections and on view in current exhibitions. Each sculpture features Leonard’s signature burnished ceramic whale teeth arranged on a wooden pallet to commemorate the whales that wash ashore in her nation’s home of Shinnecock, NY.

Follow links in the newsletter to learn more about BREACH #2, exhibitions, available works, and new acquisitions. We welcome visits to the gallery to learn more and see the new Scrimshaw Studies on view now.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Can a culture sustain itself when it no longer has access to the environment that fashions that culture?

Due to nation to nation agreements with the United States government as well as New York State, topics of sovereignty, imposed law and environmental issues impacting our nation, The Shinnecock Nation of what is now referred to as Long Island, NY, has and continues to struggle with access to the material of the whales as they wash ashore having been often struck by the shipping boats that pass our waters. As indigenous people in a nation to nation agreement with the United States Government we try our best to work with, advise and maintain our rights to such access and the impact of these current states as marine mammals are protected under federal law.

Through the work of BREACH and by having the opportunity to travel to and connect with other indigenous water communities throughout the world, I have been able to research and learn about our common struggles and unique narratives as they pertain to “access” and “understanding”. One example being the struggles many communities face regarding the regulation and discrepancy of the ivory industry as it pertains to indigenous patrimony and practice. Communities in portions of Africa are collecting heaps of Elephant Ivory taking them to a common location and setting them afire to burn as a response to poaching and an increase of the Elephant into aspects of “extinction”.

In 2014, Prince William had wanted the monarchy to also make a stance and rid the entire royal collection of their ivory as his mother Princess Diana was so active in this regard during her lifetime as it pertained to the Elephant Ivory “industry”. This has yet to happen, however at or around the same time in 2014, Paris did a call-to-action act of collecting ivory on a blue tarp in a city courtyard and crushing the pile as a response. And yet, small coastal indigenous water communities that rely on our symbiotic relationship to our environment are constantly struggling to maintain our ways of life and connection to place and being.

We are placed within a lumped narrative that simply is not the same and often does not work. The indigenous youth from communities that still practice subsistence harvesting are often harassed and threatened while the suicide rates within our indigenous communities remain at the highest. These practices have everything to do with life and care and understanding. They are a way to maintain being of place and our responsibility as caretakers to that place. The works that form the BREACH: Logbooks and “BREACH #2” are also a simple visual response to a larger call to questioning, acknowledgement and potential understanding of ways of action that does not negate our individual responsibility.

The majority of whales killed per year (over 60%) are struck by shipping boats. And so while organizations such as Green Peace, PETA, and Sea Shepard fight against traditional subsistence harvesting, how many of these individuals carry cell phones, source their clothing and materials locally or are in fact a part of our mass ocean transit system of import/export and therefore the killing of whales?

BREACH #2 is an offering and account of one whale. About 48-60 teeth or the representation of the lower jaw of one sperm whale shipped and ready on a pallet for what ever may come next.

(Featured in the exhibition, “Without A Theme” at the Mashantuckett Pequot Museum, March 31 – November 2, 2017)

 

NEWS

NEWS

Speaker for the whales: Indigenous artist interprets endangered right whale’s legacy and meaning | May 2024 | Amherst Bulletin

“Leonard’s works for the BREACH exhibition explore the practical and symbolic connections between endangered right whales and her Indigenous community. They include ceramic sculpture, paper sculpture and a video installation.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

09
May
2025
COURTNEY M. LEONARD in: Connect the Dots | Journey through the Lilley Museum Collection

COURTNEY M. LEONARD in: Connect the Dots | Journey through the Lilley Museum Collection

Lilley Museum of Art

1664 North Virginia Street
Reno, Nevada

on view: permanent collection

INQUIRE FOR AVAILABLE WORK BY COURTNEY M. LEONARD

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

To “connect the dots” means to understand the interrelatedness of different facts or events. Connecting the dots is also a logic puzzle, and a fun game for kids. This installation is meant to encourage you to take a meandering journey, to explore the history of a broad and diverse collection, leaving room for contemplation and play. Pairings and installations around themes of place, people, and materiality compel us to think about the artists who made the work, the conditions and time periods the work was made, and our relationship to both.

There is a spirit of shared authorship throughout, with contributions and reflections from artists, scholars, and community members.

This exhibition brings together artworks from across the Lilley Museum of Art’s permanent collection. It includes recent acquisitions and loans from significant collections. Most of the works on display are on view for the very first time.

I hope this exhibition fosters curiosity and critical reflection about the places and things we care about, the objects and memories we collect, and the havoc and harmony we bring as humans while living on this fragile earth.

Stephanie Gibson, Director
John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art

ABOUT BREACH #2 | Now part of the Lilley Museum of Art Permanent Collection

The Breach #2 series began in 2014-5 in response to a 2005 event, when a 50-ton finback whale carcass washed up on a beach close to the Shinnecock Indian Nation’s territory on eastern Long Island. The mammal is vital to the tribe’s history and culture, but since treaty agreements are not recognized by the federal government, the whale was federally protected. Members from Shinnecock went down to perform ceremonies and pray for the whale’s spirit, but the remains of the animal were disposed of by the city.

The artist asks, “can a culture sustain itself when it no longer has access to the environment that defines it?”

This sculpture is made through a process of coiling, slipcasting, firing, and an acrylic glaze. Each piece is handmade and hand-sanded. The delicate porcelain is juxtaposed against a weathered shipping pallet, representative of an industry that is responsible for the fragility of the world-wide whale population. Each year thousands of whales are struck by container ships, like the one that was killed in 2005.

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Shinnecock, b. 1980
lives and works in Northfield, MN

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability. In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.

Leonard’s work is in the permanent public collections of the United States Art In Embassies, the Crocker Art Museum, the Heard Museum, ASU’s Art Museum and Ceramic Research Center, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of the North, the Mystic Seaport Museum, and the Pomona Museum of Art.

Leonard has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies that include The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Rasmuson Foundation, The United States Art In Embassies Program, and The Native Arts and Culture Foundation.

30
Apr
2025
COURTNEY LEONARD in: Making in Between: Indigenous Americans

COURTNEY LEONARD in: Making in Between: Indigenous Americans

American Museum Of Ceramic Art (AMOCA)

399 N Garey Ave
Pomona, CA

May 24–November 30, 2025

INQUIRE FOR AVAILABLE WORK BY COURTNEY M. LEONARD

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This project is the third and final exhibition in AMOCA’s “Making in Between” series, which brings together works by artists who explore identity, culture, and community.

In 2020, Making in Between: Contemporary Chinese American Ceramics featured works by six first- and second-generation artists who shared themes of cultural heritage, identity, language, politics, migration, and displacement. In 2023, Making in Between: Queer Clay shifted the lens to consider influences on identity, centering queerness as an unapologetic presence and featuring works by historical artists whose identities have remained largely unseen alongside contemporary makers.

Making in Between: Indigenous Americans exhibits works by Mercedes Dorame, Anita Fields, Courtney M. Leonard, and Cannupa Hanska Luger, artists who embrace their heritage and explore boundary-pushing themes of identity, culture, history, and community. MIB: IA introduces a breadth of unique narratives from these trailblazing artists and complicates viewers’ expectations of what constitutes contemporary Indigenous art.

The exhibition is accompanied by catalog featuring full color images and new essays by Kendra Greendeer, Larissa Nez, and Isabella Robbins.

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Shinnecock, b. 1980
lives and works in Northfield, MN

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability. In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.

Leonard’s work is in the permanent public collections of the United States Art In Embassies, the Crocker Art Museum, the Heard Museum, ASU’s Art Museum and Ceramic Research Center, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of the North, the Mystic Seaport Museum, and the Pomona Museum of Art.

Leonard has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies that include The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Rasmuson Foundation, The United States Art In Embassies Program, and The Native Arts and Culture Foundation.

20
Jan
2025
Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses

Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

EMILY COLE: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses places the art of Emily Cole (1843-1913), daughter of Thomas Cole, into conversation with eight internationally-celebrated, 21st-century artists within the Cole family’s historic home and studio.

Emily Cole was an esteemed professional artist in her own right, who painted dynamic botanicals on porcelain and watercolors on paper. She exhibited and sold her art in New York City and the Hudson Valley, received critical acclaim, traveled internationally, studied at the National Academy of Design, and was a founding member in 1892 of the New York Society of Ceramic Arts, an organization that advocated for ceramics to be exhibited in museum galleries.

The exhibition will include the largest display of original painted porcelain and works on paper by Emily Cole ever shown since the 19th century. Her work will be presented alongside, and in conversation with, contemporary works that span ceramics, sculpture, installation, painting, and photography. The contemporary artists are Ann Agee, Jacqueline Bishop, Francesca DiMattio, Valerie Hegarty, Courtney M. Leonard, Jiha Moon, Michelle Sound, and Stephanie Syjuco. 

The exhibition’s curators are Kate Menconeri, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Contemporary Art, and Fellowship at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and Amanda Malmstrom, Associate Curator at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. The project was developed in conversation with the featured artists and the following advisors: Jenni Sorkin, PhD, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in contemporary art and material culture; Amy Meyers, PhD, former Director of the Yale Center for British Art, specializing in art and science in the transatlantic world; the artist Kiki Smith; Lisa Sanditz, artist and Bard College teaching faculty; and Nicole Hayes, practicing ceramics teacher and graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. 

 

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site preserves and interprets the home, and studios of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of painting, the formative 19th-century art movement of the United States. Cole’s profound influence on America’s cultural landscape and the historic context of his work inspires us to engage broad audiences through innovative educational programs that are relevant today.

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

b. Shinnecock, 1980
lives and works in Northfield, Minnesota

More on Courtney M. Leonard

Courtney M . Leonard, "BREACH | Logbook 21 | CONVOKE | Abundance Basket and Contour", 2021, multi-ply birch wood and acrylic, coiled and woven earthenware, coiled micaceous clay, oyster shells, ~ 6 x 15 x 15" (basket), 2.5 x 40 x 48" (wood contour form), John Polak Photography.

FEATURING

“BREACH | Logbook 21 | CONVOKE”
2021
multi-ply birch wood and acrylic, coiled and woven earthenware, coiled micaceous clay, oyster shells
various dimensions
John Polak Photography

JACQUELINE BISHOP

JACQUELINE BISHOP

b. 1971, Kingston, Jamaica
lives and works in New York, NY

More on Jacqueline Bishop

FEATURING

“Fauna (Tea Service)”
2024
digital print on porcelain, gold lustre, Tea Set with Teapot, Cup, Saucer, Cream Pitcher, Sugar Pot, Rectangular Plate, Oval Plate; Teapot
various dimensions
John Polak Photography

PROGRAMMING

EXHIBITION OPENING
Free and open to the public. Saturday, May 3 | 4-6pm

Emily Cole Talk by Amanda Malmstrom, exhibition co-curator
Saturday, June 7

Artists’ Panel with Kate Menconeri (exhibition co-curator), Ann Agee, Francesca DiMattio, Valerie Hegarty, & Jacqueline Bishop
Saturday, September 20 | 2pm

CURATOR TOURS: “Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses”

Friday, June 13, 2025
Friday, August 15, 2025
Friday, October 10, 2025

Tour Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses” with the curators.

PRESS

Ann Agee, Valerie Hegarty and Francesca DiMattio were inspired to make new works, while Jacqueline Bishop, Courtney M. Leonard, Jiha Moon, Michelle Sound and Stephanie Syjuco made site-responsive installations. These are all in lively conversation throughout the house and studio with Emily Cole’s china wares (originally produced and exhibited in the same studio where her father once worked).

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Emily Cole, Daughter of Hudson River School Icon, Shines in Overdue Museum Show

The exhibition at Thomas Cole National Historic Site showcases her porcelain paintings alongside work by contemporary women artists.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

PUBLICATIONS

Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses

2025 | Published by Thomas Cole National Historic Site

This 60-page, full-color illustrated publication accompanies the 2025 special exhibition EMILY COLE: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses. The book is edited by curators Kate Menconeri and Amanda Malmstrom and is published by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. It includes an in-depth essay on Emily Cole by Amanda Malmstrom; a critical essay on ceramics and women’s labor in the nineteenth century by Jenni Sorkin, and an essay and conversation with the contemporary artists by Kate Menconeri. Additionally, it features excerpts from Misty Cook’s Medicine Generations and special full-page color plates of individual artworks and site-responsive installations within the 19th century artist’s home and studio.

Published by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 60 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches.

PURCHASE THE CATALOG

02
Nov
2024
COURTNEY M. LEONARD in: Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

COURTNEY M. LEONARD in: Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

The Block Museum of Art | Evanston, IL

January 25–July 13, 2025

Featuring Courtney M. Leonard

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Through the perspectives of four collaborating artists with connections to Zhegagoynak—Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Tribe of Pottawatomi/Ottawa), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) —Woven Being explores confluences that are continuing to shape Indigenous creative practices in the region and beyond.

The Chicagoland region is a longstanding cultural and economic hub for Indigenous peoples, including the Council of Three Fires— the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa—as well as the Menominee, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Illinois nations. People from many Indigenous nations call the region home today, and the city of Chicago has the third-largest urban Indigenous population in the United States.

Despite this rich history, Indigenous voices have often been excluded from Chicago’s art histories. This silence is harmful. Guided by Indigenous collaborations, priorities, and voices, the exhibition foregrounds the perspectives of Indigenous artists currently based in the city and those from nations forcibly displaced from the area in the nineteenth century.

Collaborating artists have partnered with The Block to create “constellations” of their own artwork and historical and contemporary artworks, primarily by Indigenous artists of the region. Overall Woven Being will present more than 80 works by 33 artists that speak to the diversity of Indigenous art, materials, and time, including several new and commissioned works and installations. Selections highlight themes we have identified in dialogue with diverse project advisors: kinship between materials, relations across regional landways and waterways,  and the weaving together of past, present, and future.

Seen together, the exhibition works form intimate and interwoven stories that resist monolithic storytelling. Instead of a comprehensive overview of regional art, Woven Being integrates four Indigenous perspectives of Chicagoland’s layered art histories. Such perspectives are central not only to understanding Chicago and its region, but also to understanding the widely interconnected Indigenous stories that have been, and continue to be, woven across the entirety of Turtle Island (North America).

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION

• Josef Albers (American, born Germany)
• Rick Bartow (Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians)
• Frank Big Bear (White Earth Ojibwe)
• Roy Boney (Cherokee Nation)
• Andrea Carlson(Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent)
• Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné)
• Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi/Ottawa)
• Woodrow Wilson Crumbo (Citizen Potawatomi)
• Nancy Fisher Cyrette (Grand Portage Ojibwe)
• Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe)
• Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee)
• Teri Greeves (Kiowa)
• Denise Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe)
• Mark LaRoque (White Earth Ojibwe)
• Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock Nation)
• Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe)

• Agnes Martin (American, born Canada)
• Wanesia Misquadace (Minnesota Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe Fond du Lac Band)
• George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe)
• Barnett Newman (American)
• Daphne Odjig (Odawa/Potawatomi)
• Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Chris Pappan (Kaw [Kanza]/Osage/Lakota)
• Cherish Parrish (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi/Ottawa)
• John Pigeon (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi)
• Jason Quigno (Saginaw Chippewa)
• Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black)
• Sharon Skolnick (Fort Sill Apache/Lakota)
• Rhiannon Skye Tafoya (Eastern Band Cherokee/Santa Clara Pueblo)
• Lisa Telford (Haida)
• Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi)
• Joe Yazzie (Navajo)
• Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo/Korean)

EXHIBITION PUBLICATION

A 160-page multi-authored publication centers Indigenous voices and explores the exhibition’s expansive themes and questions. This book will be available midway through the exhibition run to document the installation and represent the constellations of artwork and thoughtful juxtapositions

Following an introduction by the exhibition’s co-curators, contributors Blaire Morseau (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), Denise Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), John Low (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), and Anne Terry Straus and Jacqueline Lopez expand on the collaborating artists’ contributions from their own disciplinary and personal vantage points,   These chapters are interspersed with poetry and prose, including by Heid Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), Mark LaRoque (White Earth Ojibwe), and Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), a resource guide focusing on Chicago’s Indigenous-led arts organizations, and installation views of the exhibition.

The Woven Being book is published by The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, produced by Marquand Books, Seattle , designed by OTAMI, Montreal, and distributed by the University of Washington Press (Forthcoming in Spring 2025.)

 

ORDER HERE

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Courtney Leonard Artist Portrait

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability.

In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.

20
Sep
2024
COURTNEY M. LEONARD in Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology along the Hudson River

COURTNEY M. LEONARD in Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology along the Hudson River

Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology along the Hudson River

Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University | New York, NY

October 5, 2024 – January 12, 2025

Featuring Courtney M. Leonard

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Shifting Shorelines brings together historic and contemporary art, visual culture, and environmental science to engage the history of human existence, commerce, and industry along the Hudson estuary. Focusing on the river’s edges from Albany southward to its flow into the Atlantic Ocean, the exhibition foregrounds the impact of local industry on the natural environment, highlighting the history of the river’s distinctive ecological features such as brackish and salt marshes, mudflats, and beaches, along with the docks, factories, and buildings that crowded them out. Through visual and material evidence, Shifting Shorelines demonstrates the various cycles of exploitation, damage, and reclamation.

Shifting Shorelines actively engages in a critical dialogue with images of the river as a natural paradise by showing these seemingly hegemonic portrayals alongside contrasting representations that consider the exploitation and environmental damage to the river that has accompanied many of the human endeavors along its shores. In so doing it offers a counter reading of the received art historical narratives—narratives overwhelmingly grounded on the work of white male artists—that aims for a rich and complex understanding of the legacy, life, and livelihoods along the river informed by the voices and experiences of a broad range of creators.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication as well as academic and public programming.

Installation view of Courtney M. Leonard: Intermodal at the Pomona College Museum of Art, January 22 - May 19, 2019

ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION

Henry Ary • Victor Gifford Audubon • Alvin Baltrop • Gifford Reynolds Beal • Julie Hart Beers • George Bellows • Daniel Putnam Brinley • Johann Hermann Carmienke • Frederic Edwin Church • Thomas Cole • Glenn O. Coleman • Samuel Colman • Thomas Commeraw • John V. Cornell • Jasper F. Cropsey • Henry Golden Dearth • Aaron Douglas • Joellyn Duesberry • Ernest Fiene • Kryn Frederycks • Reva Fuhrman • Emil Ganso • Marie-François-Régis Gignoux • Shi Guorui • David Hammons • Joost Hartgersz • Palmer Hayden • Edward Hopper • Donna Hogerhuis • Every Ocean Hughes • William Henry Jackson • Yvonne Jacquette • David Johnson • Abraham Leon Kroll • Athena LaTocha • Ernest Lawson • An-My Lê • Courtney M. Leonard • Marie Lorenz • George Benjamin Luks • John Marin • Reginald Marsh • Gordon Matta-Clark • Alex Matthew • Alan Michelson • Charles Frederick William Mielatz • Jacques Gerard Milbert • Thomas Moran • William H. Moschett • Ruth Orkin • Anthony Papa • Lisa Sanditz • Henry Schnakenberg • Jean-Marc Superville Sovak • Alfred Stieglitz • Joseph Vollmering • John Ferguson Weir • Worthington Whittredge

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Courtney Leonard Artist Portrait

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability.

In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.

07
Jan
2024
RIVERS FLOW/ARTISTS CONNECT

RIVERS FLOW/ARTISTS CONNECT

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

In Rivers Flow / Artists Connect, American artists from the 1820s to the present day explore and illuminate our profound, symbiotic relationship with significant rivers across the globe, from the Hudson and the Susquehanna to the Indus and the Seine.

The cultural, societal, and spiritual significance of rivers is universal, as proven by their lasting presence in art and our collective imagination. In Rivers Flow / Artists Connect, American artists from the 1820s to the present day explore and illuminate our profound, symbiotic relationship with significant waterways, such as the Hudson River, the Susquehanna, and the Missouri, as well as symbolic representations.

The Hudson River Museum’s new West Wing galleries, basking in a dramatic view of the Hudson River and the Palisades, are an opportune setting for this exhibition. It features works by more than forty exceptional artists exploring various aspects of river subject matter from diverse perspectives and heritages. Together, the artists demonstrate—through painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, and video—their role in recalling and reinforcing our instinctive connection with rivers.

The exhibition considers these bodies of water through aesthetic, functional, spiritual, and ecological lenses. The Allure of the River section addresses the interrelation of scenic beauty and our attraction to rivers. In Sustainer of Life, artists investigate the essential need for access to rivers for water, food, and transportation—our daily infrastructure—as well as profound sacred connections. Finally, Endangered Rivers: A Call to Action reflects on urbanization, industry, and the critical need for continued conservation and activism.

RIVERS FLOW/ARTISTS CONNECT

At the Hudson River Museum | Yonkers, NY | Feb 2 – Sep 1, 2024

Paul Scott, Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Jason Walker, "Osprey" (right pedestal), Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Jason Walker, "Osprey", Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Courtney M. Leonard, "BREACH: Logbook 24 | CONVOKE", 2024, Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

In many ways, the artists and the rivers they depict are kindred spirits. Just as rivers shape the land and surmount obstacles on their inexorable journey to the sea, artists also boldly confront barriers and challenges, from land access to environmental change. Their creative expressions help us see rivers with new eyes, and perhaps even a renewed sense of wonder, connection, and purpose, as we consider our own community’s rivers and our own responsibility for stewardship.

The exhibition is co-curated by Laura Vookles, Chair of HRM’s Curatorial Department, and guest curator Jennifer McGregor.

FEATURED ARTISTS

Norman Akers • Joe Baker • James Bard • Bahar Behbahani • Karl Bodmer • Daniel Putnam Brinley • Lorenzo Clayton and Jacob Burckhardt • James & Ralph Clews • Samuel Colman • Betsy Damon • John Douglas • Joellyn Duesberry • Robert S. Duncanson • Elaine Galen • Scherezade Garcia • John Hill and William Guy Wall • Daniel Ridgeway Knight • Courtney M. Leonard • Rejin Leys • Maya Lin • Mary Fairchild Low • Ellen Kozak • John Maggiotto • James McElhinney • Frances McGuire • Alison Moritsugu • Tammy Nguyen • Don Nice • Jon Louis Nielsen • James Prosek • Winfred Rembert • Alexis Rockman • Shuli Sadé • Charlotte Schulz • Madge Scott • Paul Scott • Francis Augustus Silva • Joseph Squillante • Jerome Strauss • William Villalongo • Jason Walker • Mansheng Wang • Susan Wides • Tom Yost

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

b. Shinnecock, 1980
lives and works in Northfield, Minnesota

More on Courtney M. Leonard

Courtney M. Leonard, "BREACH: Logbook 24 | CONVOKE", 2024, Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Courtney M. Leonard, "BREACH: Logbook 24 | CONVOKE", 2024, Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Courtney M. Leonard, "BREACH: Logbook 24 | CONVOKE", 2024, Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024

PAUL SCOTT

Paul Scott, Artist Portrait, 2022

English, b. 1953
lives and works in Cumbria, UK

More on Paul Scott

Paul Scott, Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Paul Scott, "Picturesque Views, Newburg, Hudson River", Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Paul Scott, "Vegetable Dish, Near Fort Miller", Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024

JASON WALKER

American, b.1973, Pocatello, ID
lives and works in Cedar City, UT

More on Jason Walker

Jason Walker, "Osprey", Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Jason Walker, "Osprey", Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024
Jason Walker, "Osprey", Installation at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, February 2 – September 1, 2024

PROGRAMMING

Gallery Talk with Artist Courtney M. Leonard

Sunday, June 16, 2024 | 1:30pm

This event is free with museum admission

Join artist Courtney M. Leonard for an in-gallery discussion of her practice and work, including her BREACH series on view in Rivers Flow / Artists Connect. Constructed from ceramic fish-basket forms and oyster shells collected from the Hudson River, BREACH questions how a culture sustains itself when its way of life is threatened. The series is part of an ongoing research project that brings to the fore critical issues that the Shinnecock community faces, while at the same time highlighting the policies that obstruct sustainable practices.

Simultaneous ASL interpretation will be provided.

06
Jan
2024
COURTNEY M. LEONARD | BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO

COURTNEY M. LEONARD | BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO

Courtney M. Leonard:
BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO

University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMASS | Amherst, MA
February 14 – May 10, September 19 – December 9, 2024

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The artist Courtney M. Leonard, a citizen of the Shinnecock Nation of Long Island, explores marine biology, Indigenous food sovereignty, migration, and human environmental impact through visual logbooks that investigate the multiple definitions of the term “breach.”

BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO is the result of a multi-year artist residency initiated by the UMCA in collaboration with the UMass College of Natural Sciences and partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The installation will fill the UMCA’s Main, East and West Galleries. It includes paintings, sculptures, and video exploring the life and kinship ties of Staccato, a North Atlantic Right Whale killed by a ship strike in 1999, whose remains are housed in the UMass Natural History Collections.

BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO was created in partnership with the UMass College of Natural Sciences and is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Office of the Provost, The Class of 1961 Artists’ Residency Fund, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the UMass Natural History Collections and the UMassFive College Credit Union. Significant research and exhibition contributions came from Kathrine Doyle, staff in the UMass Biology Dept and Vertebrate Collections Manager for the UMass Natural History Collections, Tristram Seidler, Curator of the UMass Herbarium, and Michelle D. Staudinger, Ph.D., UMass Department of Environmental Conservation. Emily Volmar, a UMass undergraduate Natural Resource Conservation major, was a summer Art & Science research assistant for this project. Her work and that of UMass Postdoctoral Researcher Amy Teffer was supported by the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

View the press release HERE

Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art
Courtney M. Leonard, "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato", Installation at the University Museum of Art, UMASS, Amherst, MA, 2024, Photos courtesy of UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art

EVENTS

OPENING RECEPTION:

Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts lobby & UMCA, Amherst, MA 01003
umass.edu/umca

Opening Reception & Talk: Wednesday, February 21 | 5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts, 151 Presidents Drive, Amherst MA

Free and Open to All

5:00 p.m. Artist Talk in Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall 
All are invited to hear from artist Courtney M. Leonard in conversation with poet Abigail Chabitnoy, Assistant Professor, UMass MFA program for Poets & Writers, in the Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall.

6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Reception in Bromery Lobby and UMCA
Enjoy appetizers in the Bromery Lobby and chat with the artist. Meet the scientific team from the UMass College of Natural Sciences who worked on this multi-year collaboration and visit the exhibition in the museum.

RE-OPENING RECEPTION:

September 19, 5:30-8:30pm

5:00pm Artist Talk in Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall 
UMCA and Bezanson Recital Hall

MORE INFO HERE

UMASS ART & SCIENCE CONVENING with COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Tuesday, November 12, 2024 | 5:30-7:30 pm

Join artist Courtney M. Leonard and a panel of UMass scientists for a thought-provoking discussion on the intersection of art and science. Leonard’s exhibition, BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO, currently on view at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, showcases the results of her collaboration with university researchers.

On Tuesday, November 12, they will delve into their collaborative process and share insights into using art as a powerful tool for scientific research and dialogue, particularly concerning climate change and marine biology.

This event is sponsored by the Women for UMass Grants program, dedicated to advancing initiatives that support students and empower women.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about how art can influence pressing environmental issues!

Great Hall, Old Chapel
Amherst, MA

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Courtney Leonard Artist Portrait

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability.

In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.

02
Jan
2024
COURTNEY M. LEONARD | BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | SCRIMSHAW

COURTNEY M. LEONARD | BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | SCRIMSHAW

Courtney M. Leonard:
BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | SCRIMSHAW

New Bedford Whaling Museum
New Bedford, MA

June 14 through November 3, 2024

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock, b.1980) is a multi-media installation artist, ceramicist, and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. In collaboration with museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of Indigenous food sovereignty, marine life, and human environmental impact.

Leonard’s largest body of work to date, titled BREACH, is an ongoing exploration of the historical and contemporary ties between place, community, whales, and the maritime environment. The various iterations of the project, created for individual institutions and settings, investigate the multiple definitions of the term “breach.” A “breach” is a break, a gap in a wall, a river overflowing to breach its banks. Legally, breach means the failure to abide by the law or observe an agreement; it is a violation or infraction, a breach of trust. Breach also describes the act of a whale breaking the surface to rise above the open water. To “step into the breach” implies moving into the unknown. BREACH is an ongoing artistic exploration of these multiple meanings, engaging environmental vulnerabilities and the settler state’s failure to uphold relations and treaties with coastal Indigenous nations.

Leonard’s works conjure the remains of whales, waterfront industrial infrastructure, and oyster shells, evoking community ties to water, Shinnecock scientific knowledge, and current practices for mitigating coastal erosion and water contamination. Such works enact healing and celebrate resiliency and joy on unceded lands and waters. Leonard will produce an entirely new body of work for the installation at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which continues her interest in coastal communities and historical whaling, while engaging the museum’s history, collections, and community partnerships with culture bearers from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, also known as the People of the First Light.

BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW will be opening with the twined exhibition “The Wider World and Scrimshaw,” which takes the Museum’s scrimshaw collection (objects carved by whalers on the byproducts of marine mammals) and places it in conversation with carved decorative arts and material culture made by Indigenous community members from across the Pacific and Arctic.

Courtney M. Leonard:
BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | SCRIMSHAW

New Bedford Whaling Museum | New Bedford, MA
June 14 through November 3, 2024

EVENTS

Exhibition Opening Reception
Friday, June 14, 2024 | 5:00-7:00 pm

Members and invitees of the New Bedford Whaling Museum only
RSVP required
Members who would like to RSVP to the opening reception can email membership@whalingmuseum.org or call Gillian Fournier at 508-717-6853

BECOME A MEMBER OF THE NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM

CONVERSATION WITH ARTISTS COURTNEY M. LEONARD AND HOLLY MITITUQ NORDLUM

Friday, October 4, 2024 | 6pm
$10 for museum members, $20 for non-members

Join the New Bedford Whaling Museum on Friday, October 4 for a special edition of the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s First Friday series, featuring an artist talk, full access to the museum, a lite reception and more.

Presented in conversation with the exhibition, BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW on view June 1 to November 3, 2024. Q&A to follow.

Leonard will be joined by artist HOLLY MITITQUQ NORDLUM, an Iñupiaq artist working to revitalize the tradition of Inuit tattoo in Alaska. Nordlum trained with Maya Sialuk Jacobsen, an Inuit tattooist from Greenland. A growing cadre of Indigenous female practitioners see the reclaiming of tattoo as a way to heal from colonization and as a statement of pride and cultural affiliation. Many are mentored through Nordlum’s Tupik Mi apprenticeship program.

Presented in conversation with the exhibition, BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW on view June 1 to November 3, 2024. Q&A to follow.

The BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW exhibition catalogue includes perspectives from both Nordlum and Leonard and will be available for purchase.

Special Tour & Book Launch at 4:00pm

Reception starts at 5pm

Artist talk starts at 6pm

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

PRESS

Scrimshaw Takes Over the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Summer Exhibitions

The Wider World & Scrimshaw and Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard’s BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW explore sites of encounter and exchange across the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.

New Bedford Whaling Museum,

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Courtney Leonard Artist Portrait

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability.

In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.