Opening & Activation: Returning Home

Location: Bard College Montgomery Place Historic Estate

Address: River Road, Red Hook, NY 12571

Date: 6 Apr

Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation:

Registration required. Doors open at 1pm.

“Once and still upon this land (For Montgomery Place)”: A Poetry Reading with Bonney Hartley

Bonney Hartley is a ’25 MFA-Creative Writing candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts and holds an MSocSci in International Relations from University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and serves as a Tribal repatriation specialist. She is a founding member of Mohican Writers Circle and has forthcoming work in the Boundless exhibit catalogue (Smith College Mead Museum), The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press), and North Berkshire Landscapes: A Celebration (Tupelo Press &Williamstown Rural Lands). Bonney lives within Mohican homelands in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Artist’s Statement:
My piece is offered to foreground and activate Returning Home with an archaeological reflection through layers of home, the land, inhabitation, removal, memory, and continuance.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program; Center for Indigenous Studies; Montgomery Place.

About the Exhibition:

Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck and The Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College proudly host Returning Home, an exhibition curated by Rethinking Place Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Olivia Tencer and Rethinking Place Administrative Coordinator Melina Roise, open from April 6th to April 12th, 2024. This groundbreaking exhibition will feature works by four contemporary Indigenous photographers, Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi Indian Tribe), and Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow)), along with a written commission by Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), and archival records of local land transfers and the United States’ Indian boarding school history. The exhibition, centered around narratives of Indigenous families, particularly women and children, will delve into the experiences of Native peoples facing settler colonialism, focusing specifically on Indigenous child removal practices and policies.

Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the U.S., forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.

The exhibition will fill various rooms within the historic Montgomery Place mansion, situated on Bard College's 380-acre estate. While the estate is renowned for its ties to the Livingston family, Montgomery Place is committed to exploring marginalized histories, including the forced removal of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and the estate's use of enslaved African American labor.

On the exhibition, Tencer writes: “This will be the first exhibition in the mansion, and the first exhibition on campus that will discuss the forced removal of the Stockbridge-Munsee peoples on current Bard lands or the Livingston’s history as one intertwined with the land dispossession of Native people in the Hudson Valley and other land bases in the East Coast. Positioned as an intervention, Returning Home disrupts preconceived notions of Native people, specifically Native women, and makes visible purposefully erased historical narratives of land and wealth accumulation in New York State. ”

Exhibition Viewing Hours:

April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - registration required)

April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm

Schedule of Events:

April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley. Registration required, doors open at 1:00pm.

April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite

April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.