Join Boston Public Art Triennial artist Nicholas Galanin and curator Tess Lukey ‘16 in conversation with Lisa Tung, MAAM Executive and Artistic Director. Offered in connection with MAAM’s current exhibition, Nicholas Galanin: Aáni yéi xat duwasáakw (I am called Land), this conversation invites us to consider Indigenous perspectives on kinship and artistic process; audience question and answer to follow. After the talk, head to MAAM to explore current exhibitions on view. 

In-Person and Virtual 

This event will be offered in-person as well as virtually via the Zoom webinar format. Select your attendance type when registering via Eventbrite. 

Meet the Speakers 

Examining the complexities of contemporary Indigenous identity, culture, and representation, Nicholas Galanin works from his experience as a Lingít and Unangax̂ artist. Embedding incisive observation and reflection into his oftentimes provocative work, he aims to redress the widespread misappropriation of Indigenous visual culture, the impact of colonialism, as well as collective amnesia. Galanin reclaims narrative and creative agency, while demonstrating contemporary Indigenous art as a continually evolving practice. Speaking through multiple visual, sonic, and tactile languages, his concepts determine his processes, which include sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance, and textile-based work. This contemporary practice builds upon an Indigenous artistic continuum while celebrating the culture and its people; Galanin contributes urgent criticality and vision through resonant and multifaceted works.

Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979, Sheet’ka (Sitka), Alaska) lives and works with his partner Merritt Johnson and their children in Sheet’ka (Sitka), Alaska. He earned a BFA at London Guildhall University (2003), an MFA at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (2007). Solo institutional exhibitions include Baltimore Museum of Art (2024-25); SITE Santa Fe (2023); and New York Public Art Fund (2023). Galanin will participate in Public Art Abu Dhabi (2024-25) and the Boston Triennial (2025), he is currently participating in the Toronto Biennial (2024). Public collections include Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of AmericaN Art, New York, NY; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.

Tess Lukey is an enrolled citizen of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah and serves as the Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Trustees of Reservations, where she is based at both Fruitlands Museum and deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum. Her curatorial practice centers on the intersection of historic and contemporary Native American art, with a specialization in pre-20th-century materials. Lukey’s expertise also spans NAGPRA, Mayan art history, and folk art. She holds an MA in Art History with a minor in Museum Studies from the University of New Mexico and a dual BFA in Ceramics and Art History from MassArt.

Lukey has contributed to exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—including Collecting Stories: The Invention of Folk Art and A Little Bit of the Southwest—and curated recent shows at Fruitlands titled Across Boundaries Across Barriers, Place of Intersection: Survivance in the American West, and A Surreal Place: Sky Hopinka and Cannupa Hanksa Luger, which prioritize Indigenous-led interpretation. Her work is shaping new strategies for museums seeking to engage Native collections through community-driven frameworks.

In addition to her museum work, Lukey is an independent curator for the Boston Public Art Triennial (May 2025), a city-wide exhibition of over 15 public art commissions accompanied by hundreds of community-based programs. She is also a traditional artist, continuing the ceramic and basketry techniques of her Wampanoag heritage, reflecting her commitment to cultural continuity through both institutional and creative practice.

 

Join us at Boston City Hall for the Opening Reception of the National Arts Program's sixth Boston edition, featuring 73 works by City of Boston employees and their families. The awards ceremony will recognize 14 awardees with selections made by a jury composed by Sophia Day, Operations Director of Gallery 263; Yolanda He Yang, Arts Engagement Manager at Pao Arts Center; and Beatriz Whitehill, Painting Studio Mentor at Artists for Humanity.

Directions: Please use the entrance located on Congress St, across from Faneuil Hall. Pass security and take the elevators to the 2nd floor. The Mayor's Neighborhood Gallery will be to your left. This exhibition will be on view through October 24, 2025. For more information please visit the city hall galleries page.

Launched in 2012 by Welcoming America and its members, Welcoming Week provides individuals and organizations with the opportunity to showcase their values through events and initiatives that foster connections and collaboration between immigrants and non-immigrants, as well as belonging for all.

Welcoming Week 2025 takes place from September 12 to 21. Every year, communities around the globe celebrate Welcoming Week by hosting local events that foster deeper understanding and connection among neighbors. This week-long campaign builds the awareness and energy that’s needed to sustain year-long welcoming efforts.

MOIA is proud to host Welcoming Week in Boston! Join one of its activations and share your story as part of the “Stories We Share” theme: 

• The Embrace Massó "¡Con Salsa!”, International Music Festival - September 13 in Boston Common
• Open Streets Dorchester - September 14, on Dorchester Avenue
• City Hall outdoor gallery - September 16, at City Hall Plaza
• Latinx Heritage Night - September 18, at the Museum of Fine Arts (use code CE-CC8RED to register)
• Market on a Mission Day - September 20, at the Boston Public Market

Follow MOIA on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to stay tuned about all the activations and get your stories reshared by using the hashtag #WelcomingWeekBoston! 

Ecosistema Urbano, Pao Arts Center, and the Greenway invite you to the opening celebration of PlanTable at Chin Park.  Bring the whole family to explore this unique installation that provides both a refuge from the heat for people, as well as pollinators also threatened by rising temperatures.  Enjoy climate and plant related interactive activities for all ages and meet the creators and partners of this project. 

Read more about PlanTable

Rain Date: Saturday, August 16 | 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Join us for a public conversation followed by a free public dinner.

In this upcoming discussion, Clint Smith and Juliet Hooker will explore the complex relationship between monuments and civic life, examining how these structures shape collective memory and identity. Together, they will navigate the tensions of commemoration and critique, questioning the role of monuments in promoting a more inclusive democracy. The conversation will encourage participants to reflect on the impact of public art in shaping societal values and the ongoing efforts to redefine civic spaces in ways that honor diverse histories and experiences.

Brandon M. Terry, the John Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University will introduce the event.

Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of two books of poetry, the New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground as well as Counting Descent. Both poetry collections were winners of the Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and both were finalists for NAACP Image Awards. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Clint has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and elsewhere. He is a former National Poetry Slam champion and a recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.

Juliet Hooker is Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science. She is a political theorist specializing in racial justice, Black political thought, Latin American political thought, democratic theory, and contemporary political theory. She has also written on racism and Afro-descendant and indigenous politics in Latin America. Before coming to Brown, she was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of several books, including: Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss (Princeton University Press, 2023), Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos (Oxford, 2017), Race and the Politics of Solidarity (Oxford, 2009), and editor of Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash, (Lexington Books, 2020). She has also published articles in a wide variety of journals, including: American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Theory & Event, Contemporary Political Theory, South Atlantic Quarterly, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Latin American Research Review and Journal of Latin American Studies.

Seating will be provided but please feel free to bring blankets in case the chairs fill.

Join us for a free public conversation.

The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University welcome you back to The Embrace for another season of public conversations on democracy, justice, memory, and values.

The series kicks off on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 5:15 p.m. and will be followed by a free public dinner and reception at 25 Winter Pl. Boston, MA 02108.

Distinguished legal scholars Aziz Rana and Noah Feldman will engage in a critical dialogue examining whether the Constitution can sustain democratic life amid today's challenges. They will explore how the document's promises contend with its historical compromises and limitations. This conversation confronts a fundamental question: does democratic renewal require reimagining our founding compact? Their contrasting perspectives offer important insights on the meaning of our constitution in our current crisis and beyond.

Brandon M. Terry, the John Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University will introduce the event.

Aziz Rana is the J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government. He joins Boston College from Cornell Law School, where he was the Richard and Lois Cole Professor of Law. His research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political development. In particular, Rana’s work focuses on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding of the country.

His first book, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Harvard University Press) situates the American experience within the global history of colonialism, examining the intertwined relationship in American constitutional practice between internal accounts of freedom and external projects of power and expansion. His latest book, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them (University of Chicago Press, 2024), explores the modern emergence of constitutional veneration in the twentieth century -- especially against the backdrop of growing American global authority -- and how veneration has influenced the boundaries of popular politics.

Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chair of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and religion, and the history of legal ideas.

A policy & public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Feldman also writes for The New York Review of Books and was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine for nearly a decade. He hosts the Deep Background podcast, an interview show that explores the historical, scientific, legal and cultural context behind the biggest stories in the news.

Through his consultancy, Ethical Compass, Feldman advises clients like Facebook & eBay on how to improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. In this capacity, he conceived and architected the Facebook Oversight Board, and continues to advise the company on ethics and governance issues.

Feldman is the author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken Constitution. Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America.

Seating will be provided but please feel free to bring blankets in case the chairs fill