Tacoma Art Museum’s 2004 exhibition “Lewis & Clark Territory: Contemporary Artists Revisit Place, Race, and Memory” recently received honors from two prominent, professional museum advocacy organizations: Washington Museum Association, and Western Museums Association.

“Lewis & Clark Territory” was honored with the “Award of Exhibit Excellence” by Washington Museum Association, at the WMA Annual Conference in June 2005. The exhibition also received Honorable Mention for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies/Western Museums Association for Exhibition Excellence last month, and was publicly acknowledged at the Annual Meeting on September 30.

Western Museums Association recognized “Lewis & Clark Territory” for its contribution to the study of the American West. A comment from the panel of reviewers praised the exhibition for its “refreshing insight for a new generation of learners…” and “superbly crafted, even poetic exhibit text.”

“Lewis & Clark Territory” was curated by Tacoma Art Museum Curator Rock Hushka, to commemorate the bicentennial of the historical Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806. The exhibition features nearly eighty contemporary artworks in a wide range of media by thirty living artists, and uses three overarching themes from Lewis and Clark’s journals – place, race, and memory – to explore present-day conditions of the American West.

After its debut at Tacoma Art Museum in February 2004, “Lewis & Clark Territory” traveled to Billings, Montana for presentation at Yellowstone Art Museum and then to The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A full-color catalogue accompanies the exhibition, and includes essays from Hushka and Thomas Haukaas, exhibiting artist and scholar of contemporary Native American art. The catalogue was produced by Tacoma Art Museum in association with the University of Washington Press, and is available for purchase in the Museum Store.