Victoria Sunnergren was in Santa Fe, N.M., last August, attending the centennial of the Santa Fe Indian Market — the world's largest juried Native American art show — when she got a phone call from an 802 area code. It was Shelburne Museum, offering her a job in its curatorial department as the inaugural associate curator of Native American art.

In October, Sunnergren joined the staff in that role. A 29-year-old art historian, she’s completing her dissertation at the University of Delaware. Sunnergren will guide the museum’s interpretation and exhibition of Native American art. In this effort, she’ll work with Indigenous community members and consultants to “understand our collection better and determine what kind of exhibits and displays we should be doing in the future,” Sunnergren told Seven Days.

Her first curatorial project is an exhibit of Pueblo pottery that will open in the summer. “Built From the Earth: Pueblo Pottery From the Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection” features 25 pieces of pottery from New Mexico that date back to the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The items are on loan to the museum from the collection of the late Tony Perry, a Vermont restaurateur who ran the Perry Restaurant Group.



Shelburne Museum’s collection of Native American art precedes the 1947 founding of the museum, director Thomas Denenberg said. The year before Electra Havemeyer Webb began the museum, she purchased the contents of artist Louis Comfort Tiffany’s so-called “Indian Room” from his Long Island, N.Y., estate. The original plan for the museum called for a Native American gallery in the southwest corner of the campus that was never built, Denenberg said.

In addition to the Tlingit baskets acquired from Tiffany, the museum’s collection of Native American material includes beadwork, textiles and carved pieces. The items were removed from display and put in storage in the 1990s, when museum officials determined that their exhibition could be “culturally insensitive,” Denenberg said.
In recent years, the museum researched its collection of Native American art — which Denenberg termed “important” — in consultation with a national advisory council and a group of scholars. Following the research, Denenberg said he advised the board that the museum should transfer the collection to another museum or establish a program for the interpretation and exhibition of the material.

The museum opted for the latter choice and received funding from the New York City-based Henry Luce Foundation. While the initial funding for Sunnergren's position is from the foundation, the museum is committed to the new curatorship and will seek to endow the position, Denenberg said.

“Once Victoria knows the collection, we will be organizing exhibitions and partnering with other museums and Indigenous people moving forward,” he said.

Sunnergren was born in England and raised in Florida, where she earned her undergraduate degree at Florida State University. She was in New Mexico researching her dissertation on gender and Pueblo pottery before she accepted the Shelburne Museum position.

“I’m delighted to be working with this team,” Sunnergren said. “Everyone’s so welcoming and so curious about the work I’m doing — and so eager to work together on this project.”