The Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired Seneca artist Randee Spruce’s (Heron Clan, Seneca Nation) recent work, Auntie’s Purse (2025), to feature in our upcoming reinstallation of our American art galleries. Titled A Nation of Artists, this combined reinstallation and special exhibition will open on April 12, 2026. With the curatorial collaboration of a group of five Native American and First Nations advisors, including Hayden Haynes (Deer Clan, Seneca Nation), these galleries will, for the first time, prominently feature the work of Indigenous artists. Including contemporary Native artists in our story of what it means to be an American artist is a vital part of showing the continuity, vibrancy, and resilience of art forms developed in the United States during times of conflict, oppression, and subsequent resurgence. The opportunity to acquire and display work by emerging contemporary artists like Spruce emphasize that these art forms are part of a continuum of creative flourishing in the past, present, and future.
We are honored and delighted to include Spruce’s Auntie’s Purse, which pays homage to generations of skilled Seneca beadworkers and matriarchs, as part of our installation, where it will be shown next to an ancestral beaded pincushion dated to around 1830-1860. These forms, sometimes previously referred to as tourist art, are now frequently described as “survival art” because they provided an economic resource for their communities. Spruce’s flat beadwork is unusual for Haudenosaunee artists today, who often work in a raised style, with larger modern beads. To complete the piece, Spruce repurposed size 14-22 antique beads and wampum from historic Mohawk beadwork.
[Submitted by Julia Hamer-Light, Barra Fellow in American Art]
