RAM Showcase: Indigenous Baskets

December 10, 2025 – April 18, 2026
at RAM’s Wustum Museum

Dawn Walden
Random Order Anishinaabe, ca. 2005
Cedar bark and cedar root
51 x 23 inches diameter
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Danielle and Norman Bodine
Photography: Jon Bolton

Often passed down from one generation to the next, Indigenous basketry techniques reflect deep cultural knowledge and regional identity. Traditionally made using natural materials gathered from a tribe’s surroundings, baskets are geographically rooted. Depending on material, artists may coil, plait, or twine to create the basket structure. In addition to serving utilitarian purposes such as storage and transport, they also metaphorically hold spiritual and cultural significance for the communities that create them. Today, Native artists simultaneously draw on traditional practices and expand the boundaries of what is an Indigenous basket.

RAM Showcase: Indigenous Baskets presents a selection of Native American and First Nations baskets from across North America, including a piece by Wisconsin-based artist Liandra Skenandore. Spanning from the twentieth century to the present, some included works exemplify traditional materials and techniques, while others incorporate unconventional materials or innovative approaches.