The Akron Art Museum is presenting Kent Monkman: History Is Painted by the Victors, a mid-career survey of the internationally recognized Cree artist whose monumental paintings challenge colonial narratives and celebrate Indigenous, queer, and Two-Spirit identities. The exhibition runs April 11 through August 16, 2026, and marks the only Midwest stop on the touring show, which was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Denver Art Museum.

Monkman (b. 1965, a member of ocêkwi sipiy Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, Manitoba) works across painting, film, performance, and installation. His alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle — a gender-fluid time traveler — appears throughout the work as a mechanism for disrupting and reclaiming canonical art historical imagery. The Akron exhibition includes loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and private collections, bringing together paintings that address the climate crisis, government policies affecting Indigenous peoples, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism.

The exhibition was curated by Léuli Eshrāghi, Curator of Indigenous Practices at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and John Lukavic, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum. The Akron Art Museum noted its location on traditional Indigenous lands in framing the significance of hosting Monkman’s work. The survey represents one of the most substantial presentations of the artist’s two-decade practice to reach a Midwest audience.

Source: Art & Object