The Facts
The Whitney Museum of American Art announced on July 30, 2026, that it will present "Sonya Kelliher-Combs: TITIQ/MARK," the artist's first solo museum exhibition in New York. The show, a mid-career survey, spans nearly two decades of Kelliher-Combs's work exploring history, cultural continuity, self-determination, and land use through inventive approaches to artmaking. An Iñupiaq and Koyukon artist based in Anchorage, Alaska, Kelliher-Combs (b. 1969) creates paintings, sculptures, and installations using materials such as marine mammal gut, hair, fabric, animal hide, and acrylic polymer. The exhibition is co-organized by the Whitney and the Anchorage Museum and co-curated by Jennie Goldstein, Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Curator of the Collection at the Whitney, and Julie Decker, Director/CEO of the Anchorage Museum, with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney.
The Signal
The exhibition marks the first mid-career survey of an Indigenous artist at the Whitney, underscoring the museum's commitment to presenting a fuller picture of contemporary American art. By foregrounding Kelliher-Combs's use of repetition and seriality across ongoing bodies of work such as "Curls," "Remnants," "Idiot Strings," and "Secrets," the show highlights her grounding in traditional methods like gut processing and sewing. For collectors and curators, this institutional recognition signals a growing emphasis on Indigenous contemporary art within major museums, potentially elevating market interest in Kelliher-Combs's practice and that of other artists from the Bering Strait region.
- Artists: Sonya Kelliher-Combs
- People: Jennie Goldstein, Julie Decker, Rose Pallone
- Museums: Whitney Museum of American Art, Anchorage Museum
- Locations: New York, Anchorage
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