Image: Garments by Jontay Kahm, from ‘Jontay Kahm: Personified Existence’. Courtesy Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University
The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University has opened ‘Jontay Kahm: Personified Existence,’ a solo exhibition of work by the Plains Cree designer and artist, on view in Auburn, Alabama, from August 18 through December 6, 2026.
The museum describes Kahm, who is from Mosquito First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, as approaching fashion through a combination of technical mastery and Indigenous ontology, working with feathers, beadwork, quills and fringe to make garments that range from expansive, vibrant compositions suggesting vitality and movement to darker, more intricate pieces evoking introspection and memory. The exhibition is framed by the museum as part of a wider shift in which fashion has become a significant form of visual art, with garments read as carriers of identity, cultural knowledge and philosophical ideas.
The show is guest-curated by Nancy Strickland Chavis of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where she is director and curator of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian. Chavis is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the 2025 recipient of the William Collins Smith Auburn Award for Advancing American Art.
Reporting by SoulGrown, which first covered the exhibition on July 28, describes it as the first museum presentation of Kahm’s work and says it features nearly 20 garments alongside mixed-media works and video, exploring themes of life, death and the hereafter. That account also notes that Kahm debuted his first collection in 2023, was subsequently featured in Vogue and completed graduate studies at Parsons School of Design, and that Kahm and Chavis are expected in Auburn on September 28 and 29 for public programs; the museum’s own events calendar does not yet list those dates.
The exhibition is one of several color-themed presentations with which the museum reopened this season, alongside shows of work by Anna Kunz and Doug Baulos. The Jule is at 901 South College Street in Auburn. General admission and all programs are free, and during the academic year the museum is open Tuesday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., though it closes to the public on football Saturdays in the fall.
