Preview the Exhibit
Organized by The Lenape Center with Brooklyn Public Library, BPL Presents, and Greenpoint Library
Lenapehoking is made possible in part with support from the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.
Lenapehoking is the first Lenape curated exhibition of Lenape cultural arts, both historic and contemporary, in the City of New York.
"Lenapehoking" is the Lenape name for Lenape homeland, which spans from Western Connecticut to Eastern Pennsylvania, and the Hudson Valley to Delaware, with New York City at its center.
Museum institutions have historically overlooked the Lenape genocide in favor of a trade and commerce narrative. Lenape Center has placed this exhibition at the Greenpoint Library exploring the library as a site for the intersection of beauty, knowledge, and diverse publics. At a time when society is constantly asking more from traditional museums, the library offers a democratic space free of the hierarchies of museum practice to experience Lenape art and culture within a community setting.
The exhibition features masterworks by Lenape artists past and present (beadwork, a turkey feather cape, and a culinary tapestry from the seed rematriation project) as examples of the survivance and beauty of Lenape culture. Bandolier bags from 1830 to 1850 are examples of the determination of our Lenape ancestors to continue their culture in a tumultuous time of forced removal and dispossession.
As part of the exhibition, Greenpoint Library’s rooftop teaching garden features Indigenous fruit trees that were cultivated by the Lenape in Manhattan, creating much needed continuity between ecological past and present. Original music, poetry and Lenape foodways by Lenape artists and friends will be incorporated into the programming during the run of the exhibition.
This will be an important and long overdue experience for all those who will visit this exhibition, facilitating deeper understandings and of Lenape culture and necessary awakenings of the place on which the library is situated.
--Curator Joe Baker, Delaware Tribe of Indians
Executive Director and Co-Founder of Lenape Center
For more information visit The Lenape Center.
VISITOR INFORMATION
*Gallery hours begin on Friday, January 21. While viewing the exhibition:
- Please maintain social distance of 6 feet in the space.
- Masks are required at all times.
- Please do not touch the artwork.
- No food or drink permitted in the space.