View all films

Relevance of Place: Jeffrey Gibson, Heather Hart, Lindsey Hinmon, & Ben Pease

Shannon Jackson moderates a conversation about tradition, imagination, and accountability with artists Jeffrey Gibson, Ben Pease, and Heather Hart and with Tippet Rise co-director, Lindsey Hinmon. In this episode, these luminaries discuss their respective histories of creative practice as well as the role of fantasy and speculation in publicly-engaged art. Watch to hear them reflect about the social and aesthetic goals of their work as well as their hopes for Tippet Rise as a space of community engagement, artistic creation, and public accountability.

Filmed in May 2023.

Jeffrey Gibson

Artist Jeffrey Gibson smiles and looks off to the left of the image frame.

Jeffrey Gibson’s multimedia practice synthesizes the cultural and artistic traditions of his Cherokee and Choctaw heritage with the visual languages of Modernism and themes from contemporary popular and queer culture. His work is a vibrant call for queer and Indigenous empowerment, envisioning a celebration of strength and joy within these communities. Gibson’s work is included in the permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National museum of the American Indian.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College and lives and works near Hudson, New York. Gibson is a recipient of numerous awards, notably a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019), and was selected to represent the United States at the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most significant international arts events.

Heather Hart

Artist Heather Hart looks to the left of the camera.

Heather Hart, based in Brooklyn, is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the power in thresholds, questioning dominant narratives, and creating alternatives to them. She was awarded grants from Anonymous Was A Woman, the Graham Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation, NYFA, and Harpo Foundation. Hart co-founded Black Lunch Table and has won a Creative Capital award, Wikimedia Foundation grants, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and an Andy Warhol Foundation of Art grant with that project. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Storm King Art Center, The Kohler Art Center, NCMA, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and University of Toronto among others. She is an Assistant Professor at Mason Gross School for Art + Design, a member of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, an external advisor for AUC Art Collective, and a trustee at Storm King Art Center. Hart was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, studied at Skowhegan, Whitney ISP, Cornish College of the Arts, Princeton University and received her MFA from Rutgers University.

Ben Pease

Artist Ben Pease looks to the right of the camera frame.

Ben Pease’s artwork is well known for its unique and culturally relevant style, using historic photographic references while also touching on current events and issues simultaneously. Paternally, Pease is enrolled with the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. He is a member of the Crow Indian Reservation’s Valley of the Chiefs District and grew up in Lodge Grass, MT. He belongs to the Newly Made Lodge Clan and is a child of Newly Made Lodge. Ben is also a Night Hawks Dance Society member, Sweat-Lodge ceremony owner, holder of ancestral medicine paint, sponsor of Sundance, Sundancer, and War-Dancer, and has led the Dance of Seasons three times.

Ben has exhibited his artwork worldwide in Germany, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates. In 2022 Pease was awarded the Executive Editor’s Choice Award from the Western Art Collector Magazine in conjunction with the C.M. Russell Museum. In March of 2023, the New-York Historical Society Museum opened the major exhibition Nature, Crisis, Consequence featuring a masterwork from Pease alongside a seminal work from Albert Bierstadt. Ben and his family reside in Billings, MT.

Lindsey Hinmon

Tippet Rise co-director Lindsey Hinmon smiles with her dark hair flowing.

Longtime and close collaborators of Cathy and Peter Halstead, co-directors Lindsey and Pete Hinmon have managed the development of Tippet Rise since its founding, and jointly lead the art center’s team of colleagues. Lindsey oversees programming at the art center year-round, including the summer concert season and special events, education and community outreach, artwork acquisitions, and artist residencies. She leads engagement with external organizations and collaborators of Tippet Rise, including its sister organization, the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, and oversees all external communications about the art center. An avid outdoor enthusiast, and passionate about art, music, poetry, nature, and the history of the region, Lindsey enjoys living in Montana with Pete and their daughter.

Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson holds the Hadidi Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently serves as Chair of the History of Art Department. Jackson is a scholar and educator of cross-media art practice and of socially-engaged art. A Guggenheim fellow and award-winning author, she has published several books and online platforms, including Back Stages (2022), Public Servants (2016), The Builders Association (2015), Social Works (2011) as well as In Terms of Performance and Media Art 21. Jackson serves on the boards of several arts organizations, including Oakland Museum of the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Minnesota Street Project Foundation, and the Kramlich Art Foundation. As a guest program advisor to Tippet Rise, Jackson helped to create the Relevance of Place series of site-specific dialogues.

Related Films