DENVER, CO.- The Clyfford Still Museum’s new collaborative exhibition, “Tell Clyfford I Said ‘Hi’”: An Exhibition Curated by Children of the Colville Confederated Tribes, co-curated with youth from the Colville Confederated Tribes Reservation in Washington, is on view until May 10, 2026. Installed in all nine of the Museum’s galleries, the exhibition highlights the perspectives of Colville children on Still’s depictions of their home and ancestors, and the artist’s abstract works. Tell Clyfford also explores themes identified by the co-curators, including Family & Culture, Connection, Imagination, the Outside, Love, and Paint & Color.
For the past three years, the Museum’s curatorial and educational staff collaborated with young children (ages three to fourteen) and Colville teachers from partner schools on every level of the exhibition, including artwork selection and arrangement, object interpretation, gallery text, and interactive spaces.
“We’ve found that deep collaboration with communities brings vital new context to our understanding of Clyfford Still’s artwork, advancing the Museum’s potential to facilitate a shared, richer view of history,” said Bailey Placzek, the Museum’s curator of collections, catalogue raisonné research and project manager. “Colville Tribal children have a direct connection with Still’s art, and they offer valuable perspectives that we are thrilled to share with wider audiences. Our collaboration extends the living legacy of dynamic exchange between the Colville Confederated Tribes and Clyfford Still that began nearly a century ago and hopefully forges a more equitable, shared way forward. It’s an exciting milestone in our partnership with the Tribes.”
Clyfford Still spent three summers with the Colville community in the mid-1930s as a young art professor at Washington State College (now Washington State University). After visiting the Reservation together in 1936, Still and his faculty supervisor, Worth Griffin, co-founded a summer art program in the area the following year. Still formed relationships with the Colville Tribal people and the landscape, creating more than one hundred sketches, paintings, and photographs during the summers of 1937 and 1938.
Museum staff began working with Colville Tribal representatives in 2021 to learn more about this part of the collection from their perspectives and explore partnership opportunities. “Tell Clyfford is a result of Tribal leaders’ desire for the Still to collaborate with Tribal youth on an exhibition,” said Nicole Cromartie, director of learning and engagement. “It also continues the Museum’s efforts to foster engagement with its collections by sharing authority on Still’s work with the Museum’s extended communities.”
Museum visitors may discover expanded exhibition content in the free digital guide, available online or on the Bloomberg Connects app. The guide begins with a welcome and introduction from the Colville children curators and the exhibition’s organizers. Additional content includes videos and audio featuring the co-curators, Tribal leaders, images from visits to the Colville Reservation, behind-the-scenes development of the interactive experience, and more. In addition to the videos and audio content in the digital guide, the Museum will feature several videos on screens in the exhibition galleries.
Tell Clyfford also features a hands-on interactive Weaving Wall experience developed by the co-curators and artist Carly Feddersen (Okanagan/Lakes; born Wenatchee, Washington, in 1982). Her weaving techniques and the colors Clyfford Still used to paint PH-796, which one co-curator likened to a woven blanket, inspired the experience.
The Museum’s hands-on art studio, The Making Space, will offer new activities during Tell Clyfford, including portrait creation and photography exploration.
