The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., will open “Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe” on November 25, 2025, running through January 2027. This is the first major retrospective of Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk) artist Truman Lowe (1944–2019), featuring nearly 50 sculptures, drawings, and paintings from public and private collections, including 28 from the museum’s own holdings. The exhibition is organized around four themes—Moving Water, The Land Holds Memory, Woodland Structures, and Memory and Shared Knowledge—highlighting Lowe’s use of natural materials like willow branches and feathers to evoke the waterways and woodlands of his Wisconsin upbringing.
This retrospective matters because it brings long-overdue recognition to a significant Indigenous artist whose work bridges environmental consciousness, cultural memory, and formal sculpture. By centering Lowe’s Hoocąk heritage and his exploration of place, family, and tradition, the exhibition contributes to the broader effort to elevate Native American voices in major art institutions. It also offers visitors a rare chance to see a cohesive body of work that reflects on human relationships to landscape and ancestral knowledge, reinforcing the National Museum of the American Indian’s role in preserving and presenting Indigenous art.