Seattle’s free art museum has a joyful new reason to visit First Hill this fall. An Indigenous Present opens at the Frye Art Museum on November 7, 2026, and runs through February 14, 2027, bringing together significant groupings of work by fifteen Indigenous artists who use abstraction to tell personal and collective stories, evoke specific and imagined places, and build on cultural and aesthetic traditions.
The exhibition is co-curated by artist Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, and independent curator Jenelle Porter. It grows out of their landmark 2023 publication of the same name, and it is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. The Frye’s presentation is organized by Curator Georgia Erger, with Curatorial Assistant Alexis L. Silva.
Visitors will meet a lively continuum of elders and emerging makers, including Teresa Baker, Raven Chacon, Sky Hopinka, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, George Morrison, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Mary Sully and Kay WalkingStick. Baker’s Knife River (2024), made with yarn, buckskin, artificial sinew and willow on AstroTurf, shows how inventive and warm this abstraction can be — familiar materials transformed into a rich, generous landscape of color and memory.
Admission to the Frye is always free, making this an easy, uplifting outing to share with family and friends in the heart of Seattle.
Photo: Ruben Diaz. Teresa Baker, Knife River, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery, New York, via the Frye Art Museum.
