Exhibitions
Kent Monkman: Death of Adonis is a focused exhibition centered on a single monumental painting by contemporary Cree artist, Kent Monkman. The work responds directly to The Last of the Buffalo by Albert Bierstadt, created between 1888 and 1889 and now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
Bierstadt’s painting perpetuated romanticized narratives about the disappearance of the buffalo and the fallacy that Native peoples across the American West were vanishing. Monkman disrupts that narrative by introducing figures tied to the fur trade and colonial economies. These elements shift the scene from myth to critique.
At the center of Monkman’s composition, a fallen nude male figure recalls Adonis from Greek myth, a subject frequently depicted in European painting. Around him, white hunters on horseback pursue buffalo across a sweeping landscape. Monkman inserts his gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, into the scene. She stands poised and self-possessed, redirecting the viewer’s gaze and asserting Indigenous presence within a genre that historically excluded it.
The painting reveals how images of the American West have obscured the realities of colonial expansion and ecological destruction. Through scale, theatrical composition, and a reworking of 19th century tropes, Monkman reclaims the visual language of European and American painting and redirects it toward a critical retelling of history.