Courtney M. Leonard On View June 10 through Nov. 12

Exploring intersections of Indigenous cultural viability, ecology and history

The Heckscher Museum of Art presents Courtney M. Leonard’s first retrospective, and the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the greater New York metropolitan region. Leonard (Shinnecock, b. 1980) is among the most original and compelling voices in American contemporary art. Her work amplifies Indigenous knowledge and expresses reverence for the earth and sea while advocating for their protection. It engages with Long Island’s history, breaks new ground in the disciplines of ceramics and installation art, and underscores the importance of dialogue between indigenous knowledge, marine biology, and other sciences.

Courtney M. Leonard “Logbook 2004–2023” will be on view at The Heckscher Museum of Art, June 10 through Nov. 12. During summer 2023, Leonard will also have work presented by Planting Fields Foundation at their location in Oyster Bay. Leonard is the Planting Fields Foundation 2023 Catalyst artist, and as such will be creating a site-specific outdoor installation, located in the Taxus Field at Planting Fields, from summer 2023 to summer 2024. Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.

The Heckscher Museum exhibition also includes a site-specific installation. The exhibitions at The Heckscher Museum and Planting Fields both explore themes of food and cultural sovereignty, as well as ongoing ecological issues that endanger the Shinne- cock Nation and Long Island as a whole.

Leonard is an enrolled member of Long Island’s Shinnecock Indian Nation and creates immersive installations that encompass ceramic sculpture, painting, and video. Informed by historical research and drawing on cross-cultural art traditions including wampum beadwork, scrimshaw, and blue and white Delftware, her work champions environmental sustainability and Indigenous cultural viability.

The show extends Leonard’s ongoing project Breach, which she began in 2014. Conceived on the model of records kept by eighteenth-century whaling ships, each “logbook” of Breach records— in ceramic, paint, and video —one year of the artist’s experiences of “environmental fragility, shift- ing adaptations, and/or the ability to simply become anew.”

The exhibition is organized by The Heckscher Museum Curator Dr. Karli Wurzelbacher in dialogue with the artist. A publication and related programs accompany the exhibition.

—Submitted by the Heckscher Museum of Art