A Nation Takes Place

The western formation of the Americas was born through water. Facilitated by 15th-century seafaring patterns of imperial rule, conquest, and commerce, the modern landscape and waterways of the United States have been defined in part by racial exclusion and colonial control. A Nation Takes Place explores how artists, specifically American artists, draw attention to the intersections of water, geography, reimagined black ecologies, abolition, and the movements for land back, a movement to return land to Indigenous people. Interrogating and expanding maritime art beyond the traditional scenes of ships at sea, this exhibition includes historical artwork from some of today’s most respected museum collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This work is presented in conversation with contemporary artists who are revisiting our collective understanding of the complexity of the United States’ formation, created by settler colonialism and racial slavery, and unthinkable without waterways, conquest, and slave ships.  

Co-Curated by Tia Simone-Gardner and Shana M. Griffin

East Coast Convening | Mystic, CT:

• In-person registration for this event is closed
• Free Virtual. The event is free to attend virtually via Zoom. Click the link below to participate. The Zoom will begin 10am EST, 9am CST. Use code MMAM2025 to join.

Zoom Link

With additional support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Minnesota Marine Art Museum is co-hosting a series of national convenings as part of the A Nation Takes Place project, bringing together artists, writers, curators, scholars, community organizers, and art professionals at critical waterways in the United States to further discussion, knowledge sharing, and cultivating networks to address new and emerging scholarship, curatorial practices and artistic expression that centers Indigenous and Black voices within the marine art and maritime genre.

You can find more information and the schedule here.

Image: Sokari Ekine (b. 1949, English), Liquid, 2023. Photograph