“Designed to Be Red”: Poster House opens the first major exhibition for Native American designers

The Poster House museum in New York has opened the exhibition “Designed to Be Red: Native American & Indigenous Poster Works”, as Hyperallergic reports — the first major survey of more than a century of poster design by Native American and Indigenous artists, open to the public until Feb 21, 2027.

The exhibition is curated by Brian Johnson (Monacan Indian Nation), who was invited to create the show after giving a lecture at Poster House in November 2022. Johnson has also written the companion book “Designed to Be Red: Native American & Indigenous Graphic Works”, now on sale in the museum shop.

The exhibition covers more than 100 years of visual history: the protest posters of the ’70s, such as “Indian Power” (1971) and “Alcatraz Proved a Point” (1972) by Joseph “Indian Joe” Morris (Blackfeet Nation), posters against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and works raising awareness of murdered and missing Indigenous women. But, as Hyperallergic writes, Indigenous life is not defined only by struggle: the exhibition also shows a festive ’90s census registration campaign and an Indigenous homage to the Marvel cinematic universe.

Five sections structure the exhibition: “Indigenous Joy”, “Creative Sovereignty”, “Resistance and Protest”, “It’s Complicated” and “Extractive Marketing” — the last, with the most problematic posters (including a frame from the infamous 1971 “crying Indian” television advertisement), is separated from the rest, and visitors are deliberately redirected to “Indigenous Joy” after seeing it.

Contemporary art is represented by names such as Kent Monkman (Fish River Cree Nation), Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee) and SIYO-WIN (Dakota Sioux/Mexican). “Until recently, we were seen mainly as producers of crafts and ethnographic objects,” Johnson tells Hyperallergic. “This exhibition stands out because Native Americans are still here. We are designing.”