Indigenous Canadian painter Kent Monkman, a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation, presents his exhibition "Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors" at the Akron Art Museum, on view through August 16. The show features over 30 large-scale paintings that mimic 19th-century landscape works by settler artists like Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church, but inserts Indigenous figures who were historically romanticized, stereotyped, or omitted. Monkman uses his two-spirit alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle to challenge colonial narratives and reverse the artistic gaze. The exhibition was organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, with co-curators John Lukavic and Léuli Eshrāghi.
This exhibition matters because it directly confronts the Eurocentric art historical canon by reclaiming visual authority for Indigenous perspectives. Monkman's work critiques how museums have traditionally told the story of North America, and his large-scale paintings imbue Indigenous experience with the same gravitas and weight historically reserved for European art. By blending camp, humor, and historical critique, the show offers a powerful model for decolonizing museum narratives and invites audiences to reconsider whose stories are told in art institutions.