This article is part of the Fine Arts & Exhibits special section on the art world’s expanded view of what art is and who can make it.
Just inside the lobby of the History Colorado Center — in front of the familiar “Welcome to Colorado” sign — stand two tepees.
One is erected in Cheyenne style, the other Arapaho style, with doorways facing east to greet the morning sun.
They sit atop an aerial map of Colorado, occupying the tribes’ traditional homelands.
A visitor to the museum, in Denver, might wonder whether these tepees are just an empty symbol, pointing to a people who have been wiped out, leaving behind nothing but their homes and the objects they made — their voices and contemporary selves absent.
Organizations:
Fine Arts, History Colorado
Locations:
Colorado, Denver