Romero has said that ["Water Memory", a large-format 2015 photograph] was inspired by a catasrophic event in Native History: the construction...of the Parker Dam on the Colorado River...And much of what's in this show is, explicitly or not, about the Indigenous struggle to retain control over use of water and land.
[The exhibit is in a fine arts museum, not an anthropological one, so there are plenty of gorgeous objects, like] a pile of what looks like shiny, hollow, whale teeth on a weathered dock. That piece, by the Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard, is one of Norby's favorites...
"They glow. They're beautiful. They're pearlescent. You want to almost want to reach out and touch them because of their their smooth texture," she said. Then she laughed. "But we highly recommend that people do not do that here at the museum."
