The name intersections occurred to me as I was looking through the collection part of the process as a curators, to see what we have, to display that are similar, that intersect in a lot of regarding a lot of different themes.

These 44 works of art that make up the exhibit intersections are very serious, yet many have a sense of whimsy and are quite contemporary, yet have a sense of the traditional.

All are visual reflections of the artist's experiences as native people.

As I think of my own background, as a native person who grew up on a reservation.

I'm very familiar with a lot of the themes that these artists, are grappling with.

There are 18 artists and intersections, not including an installation above by local artist Jonathan Thunder.

It was a big task, you know, to see what what's out there in our collection, both through a database and then also going through the collection itself and seeing which types of works I could focus on to include in this exhibition.

We wanted to focus specifically on Minnesota native artists.

After consulting with Jim Denham, who is one of the artists in the exhibition and who gave us advice and, about what he felt we should focus on for this exhibition.

We kind of narrowed it down to probably about four different themes that were that a lot of the artists, if we were to categorize and break them down, that's what we came up with.

The list of artists is a who's who collection from around the region.

The four themes present throughout the exhibit are nature, animals, cultural traditions, and social justice.

So, Doctor Isaacs, if you would please, tell me what attracted you to this painting, please.

Well, the first thing I noticed was all the bright colors.

I'm a fan of color, and, I always loved Jim denims use of color in his.

In his paintings.

This one, you know, the size as well as 12ft by seven.

And we had this special wall built specifically for this painting.

It's a diptych.

It's a two part sort of different types of imagery, similar but different.

There are basically essentially two worlds here.

You notice the real practical world on the bottom, where all these distractions are that sort of hinder the artist's creativity.

And then as the artist is in the creative oven, he this is another world here, which is the the creative world.

So it's, according to Jim, it's a place where all the artists go to, become inspired.

I've always been a fan of George Morrison, so anything that George Morrison does, is amazing to me.

Danny White Hawk, we acquired a beautiful new work from from her recently for this exhibition.

So, what can you tell me?

What, drew you to this, painting of Donny White Hawk?

Yeah, it's, a newer series that she's been working on, and, what always draws me to her work is that she.

She blends or merges, sort of, you know, traditional tribal design with abstraction.

If you look closely, you can see that it's, representative of Quill work.

It really sends a message.

A statement about what Danny White Hawk, as the artist believes, is important in terms of her artwork.

If you look very closely, you'll see the very meticulous nature of of Danny.

And, you know, every little brushstroke is is quite impressive.

Even though Doctor Isaacs use the term traditional in talking about the works of art, there is a distinction to be made.

I think the word traditional is actually not appropriate.

I think historical is more appropriate because it sort of breaks down that dichotomy of traditional versus contemporary.

When in reality, I think a lot of native art artists, past and present, have always sort of blended or merged sort of this historical aspect of tribal culture, native culture, native history, native art, and merged it with something that they come up with themselves as individuals.

You know, while still having this, this responsibility to their communities.

It's always it's always ongoing.

Well, in looking at our collection and who we have, I think the hardest part was, choosing a smaller number, of native artists, all of whom we have in the collection is there's a reason why we collect them is because they're all talented artists.

It was hard to say to keep it within the state boundary of Minnesota when when, you know, boundaries are are not real.

So it's it's hard to exclude, you know, Wisconsin artists and I'm from Wisconsin.

So I know a lot of these artists as well.

I think the artists in this region have very distinct voices and visions, authentic voices and visions and, it's it's a great time to be able to collect these works and to be able to to show them to to others and share them and have people become educated through their visual imagery and the narratives that they have to tell.

So we're very lucky that we have that.

We've had the capacity to collect artwork, as the largest collecting instit