Adams-Tillim Lecture: Wendy Red Star

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Wendy Red Star (b. 1981) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, and perhaps best-known as a photographer, Red Star’s practice also spans video, performance, textiles, and sculpture. Much of her work engages with cultural heritage and historical archives, which she “thoughtfully deconstructs to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialism’s unsettling effects on past and present.” Red Star received a BFA in 2004 from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. Her work is held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hood Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. In 2019, a mid-career survey of Red Star’s work was exhibited at the Newark Museum of Art. She is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

The Adams-Tillim Lecture was established in 1992 by the late David Beitzel MFA '83, in honor of former visual arts faculty members Pat Adams and the late Sidney Tillim, both of whom David studied with while at Bennington. Pat Adams and Sidney Tillim served as longtime faculty members; Adams from 1964 to 1993, and Tillim from 1966 to 1993. The annual lecture brings leading visual artists, curators, and critics and art historians to campus.