The Department of Art History, in conjunction with the Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University, will present a multidisciplinary conference, "Re-imagining Iroquoia: A Cross-Disciplinary Examination of Indigenous Representation and Museum Practice," tomorrow and Saturday in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

The conference was inspired by the curatorial process initiated in a Castellani exhibition titled "Across Borders: Beadwork in Iroquois Life." For the exhibition, on display through tomorrow, the curators considered issues in visual culture, gender equity and political economies.

During the conference, leading artists, art historians, anthropologists, curators, ethnologists, political historians and philosophers will consider the intersection of indigenous thought and representation.

Participants will include Gerald McMasters, deputy assistant director of the National Museum of American Indian, Smithsonian Institution; John Mohawk, director of the Indigenous Studies Program at UB and co-director of the Center for the Americas; Taiaiake Alfred, director of the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria, British Columbia; Sandra Olsen, director of the Castellani Art Museum; Yvonne Dion-Buffalo of the UB Indigenous Studies Program, and Jolene Rickard, UB assistant professor of art history.

In addition to the Department of Art History and the Castellani Art Museum, conference sponsors are the Canadian Embassy, the New York State Council for the Humanities, and the Modern Museum Studies Program, the Department of Art, the Center for the Americas and the Institute on Research for Women and Gender (IREWG), all at UB.