SALEM, MASS.-The Peabody Essex Museum opens today All of My Life, Contemporary Works by Native American Artists, a small, dynamic exhibition drawn from the Peabody Essex Museum’s noted collection of Native American art.

The sculptures and paintings in All of My Life embrace the experiences and worldviews of nine contemporary Native American artists who call upon and reinterpret both Native American painting and sculpting traditions that are thousands of years old as well as those of modern art. Artists such as Mateo Romero and David Bradley have chosen oil painting and social realism as their means of tackling the political landscape of being Native American in today's changing world. Truman Lowe interprets the Eastern shorelines in sculpting an abstracted, suspended structure in willow. Other artists represented in the exhibition include Barbara Cerno, Tammy Garcia, Dan V. Lomahaftewa, Judith Lowry, Rick Rivet and Kathleen Wall.

This installation of 10 works completed in the past decade provides opportunities to expand our understanding and knowledge about how contemporary Native American artists are reinterpreting traditions and challenging conventions. All of My Life opens Aug. 6, 2005, and will remain on view as part of the museum’s permanent collection program.

Native American art collection, Peabody Essex Museum - The Native American art collection of the Peabody Essex Museum is one of the oldest ongoing collections of its kind in the nation and is recognized internationally for the exceptional quality of the more than 20,000 works from the western hemisphere that it includes. The museum continues to acquire important contemporary works by living artists of Native descent from the Americas. Through exhibitions, scholarship, public programs and interpretation, the Native American curatorial program provides a forum for exploring multifaceted aspects of identity, tradition, and innovation for Native artists and their communities.