Wendy Red Star
Her Dreams Are True provides a new perspective on the role of archives, museum collections, and personal memory in Apsáalooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star’s prints and photographs. Throughout her large body of work, Red Star reconsiders and liberates archival photographs and materials from a fixed historical moment. This exhibition provides visitors with an opportunity to see the artist’s recent works that recontextualize hand-painted illustrations of artifacts in the Denver Art Museum’s Indigenous collection. Red Star juxtaposes these cultural belongings with her own photographs of the Crow Nation’s annual fair in Montana. Returning to her hand-written notes in the Bíiluuke series (2023), Red Star also provides a nuanced intervention with Apsáalooke heritage items from several public collections. More than a meditation on the past, Red Star’s archival work looks to the future and offers a new perspective on rematriation.
Wendy Red Star is this year’s recipient of Dickinson College’s prestigious Arts Award. The Dickinson College Arts Award honors an individual or group who has made an outstanding contribution to the creative or performing arts. The Arts Award was initiated by the faculty and endowed in 1959 by gifts from members of the board of trustees, notably C. Scott Althouse and Sumner Drayer, in honor of William W. Edel, president of the College from 1946 to 1959. Previous Arts Award recipients include Robert Frost, John Cage, David Mamet, and Toshiko Takaezu. As part of the award celebration, each recipient visits Dickinson College to share their work and ideas with the community.
On Nov. 7, 2025 at 7pm Dickinson College President John E. Jones III will present the Arts Award to Wendy Red Star in Rubendall Recital Hall in Weiss Center for the Arts. The public presentation will include a welcome by Amanda Cheromiah, Ph.D. (KawaiKa-Laguna Pueblo), Executive Director of the Center for the Future of Native Peoples, and an interview between the artist and Professor Darren Lone Fight, Proud Member, Three Affiliated Tribes; Citizen Mvskoke Nation and Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies.
Image: detail from, Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow), b. 1981), Set FL iítaashteeuuxe (buckskin dress), 2023, archival pigment print on Satin Photo Rag, edition 3 of 3, 16 x 35 in. Image courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York. Ó Wendy Red Star. The Trout Gallery, Purchase of the Friends of the Trout Gallery.