Celebrating Women’s History Month
MARCH is Women’s History Month, when The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.
This year we have much to celebrate with Kamala Harris being the first woman, the first African American and the first South Asian American to hold the office of Vice President of the United States. And currently, New Mexico’s own Congresswoman Deb Haaland is in the process of being confirmed as Secretary of the Interior; a massive win for women and Indigenous peoples.
Santa Fe/Taos-based artist Erin Currier has long portrayed women on the front lines of change.
Here, Currier pays homage to a classic masterpiece, while addressing the contemporary human rights issues that have long informed her work. Eugene Delacroix’s epic and revolutionary painting, “Liberty Leading the People,” provides the inspiration for her portrayal of Indigenous women on both sides of the Mexico/U.S. Border dismantling the border in “American Women III.”
“In my rendition, as in the era in which we find ourselves – an era that has seen a resurgence of Native Resistance movements – the vanguard of feminine strength and grace in action is in the form of an Indigenous woman.” Currier notes.