Field Trip to the Johnson Museum: Storywork- The Prints of Marie Watt

Join us for a guided tour at the Herbert F. Museum of Art's exhibit Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt!

Multimedia artist Marie Watt is a storyteller. As a member of the Seneca Nation (one of six that comprise the Haudenosaunee Confederacy) with German-Scots ancestry, her stories draw from Native and non-Native traditions: Greco-Roman myth; pop music and Pop art; Indigenous oral narratives; Star Wars and Star Trek.

Watt reminds us of the stories told by her Seneca ancestors: how the world came to be; what we have to learn from animals; and our ethical obligations to the planet, as well as to past and future generations. She tells stories about humble, everyday materials and objects—blankets, quilts, corn husks, letters, ladders, and dreamcatchers—that carry intimate meanings and memories.

This retrospective exhibition traces the artist’s career in print from 1996 to the present. For the first time, Watt’s early work from Yale, and her collaborations with master printers at Crows Shadow Institute, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Tamarind Institute, and more recently Mullowney Printing Company are exhibited alongside the artist’s monumental textiles and sculpture. This exhibition also explores Watt’s evolving practice of convening sewing and printing circles with family, friends, and community members.

Marie Watt (born 1967) holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also has degrees from Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work is in museum collections across the United States including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and Renwick Gallery, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the Johnson Museum.