Image: Floating By 2020, blown glass with enamel, 13 x 9 ¾ x 9 ¾". Collection of the artist; courtesy studio e gallery, Seattle, Washington.
The Missoula Art Museum will present ‘Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky’, a career retrospective spanning four decades of work by the artist, from September 4 through December 31, 2026. Organized by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, the exhibition will bring more than 120 works to the museum, including prints, glass, weaving and ceramics.
Feddersen, born in 1953 and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, is described by the organizers as a nationally renowned artist. The survey ranges from intimate miniatures to wall-sized installations, assembling work across the varied media that have shaped his prolific practice.
According to the exhibition material, Feddersen transforms familiar subjects “with poignancy and humor” into juxtapositions that challenge how viewers see, use and treat the natural world. The works convey his belief in the power of landscape and in an interconnected relationship with it, linking the exhibition’s themes of earth, water and sky to questions of culture, community and environmental perception.
The exhibition is curated by heather ahtone, director of curatorial affairs at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, and Rachel Allen, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington. Ahtone is identified as Choctaw/Chickasaw Nation. The exhibition’s major support comes from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Teiger Foundation provided lead funding for the presentation at the Missoula Art Museum.
The opening on Friday, September 4, will form part of the museum’s First Friday programme. An opening reception will run from 5 to 7 p.m., with an artist talk by Feddersen scheduled for 5:30 p.m. The evening will also include music by Travis Yost, a no-host bar and Dreamy’s Soft Serve in the Art Park. Admission is free.
A further public programme is scheduled for Saturday, September 5, when ahtone will lead a curator talk from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., preceded by coffee and pastries at 10 a.m. The discussion will address the exhibition’s curatorial vision, Feddersen’s four-decade career and the themes connecting his work to landscape, culture and community. Admission to the talk is also free.
During August, the museum said that three of its four galleries would be closed while it prepared for the exhibition. Visitors could still see the Art Park, ‘Land and the Cosmic: Works from the MAM Collection’ and other works from the museum’s collection before the retrospective opens at 335 Pattee Street in Missoula.
