THE
ONE ARTWORK
GALLERY

Mildred Sandall Scott Gallery 3

January 9 – May 15, 2026

In this intimate installation, visitors are invited to slow down and spend time with a single monumental work by Cree artist Kent Monkman. The Death of Adonis reimagines and challenges Alfred Bierstadt’s 1888 painting The Last of the Buffalo, exposing the colonial narratives woven into nineteenth-century representations of the North American landscape.

Bierstadt’s original painting, often read as a lament for a “vanishing” wilderness and its Indigenous inhabitants, conceals the true causes of the buffalo’s near-extinction and the displacement of Indigenous nations—settler expansion and resource exploitation. By linking the dying buffalo to the supposed fate of Indigenous peoples, Bierstadt reinforced the myth of a “vanishing race.”

Designed as a space for stillness and contemplation, this one-work gallery invites visitors to take a seat and look deeply. In The Death of Adonis, centuries of mythology, history, and art converge—opening a space for grief, tenderness, and renewal.

 

Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges.