Following a ten-week decision process through the winter and spring quarters and a four-week advance research module in the fall, the Block Museum Student Associates (BMSA) are excited to announce the acquisition of two new works for The Block’s collection as part of its annual Student Acquisition program. The works are: TV Indians (2017) and Amber Morningstar (2020) by the acclaimed contemporary photographer Cara Romero (Chemehuevi).  

Of the artist, the student associates write, “Romero’s practice is a profound exploration of contemporary Indigenous identities through a lens that blends traditional cultural symbols with modern storytelling techniques” and that “Her work is characterized by its vivid use of color, meticulous staging, practical in-camera effects, and the digital manipulation of images to create layered, narrative-rich scenes.  

The museum’s fifth annual student acquisition, the pair of photographs are strikingly detailed and colorfully cinematic explorations of image-making and Indigenous identity laced with sly wit. In TV Indians, three women, a man, and a baby stand in Pueblo attire against an array of discarded cathode-ray televisions in an arid landscape. Under a cloudy sky that casts dramatic, golden-hour lighting on the subjects, the televisions depict images of cowboys, television static, and an explosion. In Amber Morningstar, from the series First American Girl, a woman stands in a baby blue box clad in a red ribbon dress, posed with bright yellow sunflowers in a basket, and surrounded by personal accouterments, as if a doll and accessories packaged in a colorful box. The theme for this year’s acquisition choices was “humor as an artistic strategy.”  

That theme challenged the BMSA cohort to reflect on positionalities and develop a shared language for thinking about humor. As part of the process, they consulted writings on humor in art and heard from a faculty member of Northwestern’s Department of Art Theory and Practice. The students wanted to be careful to choose art that “punches up” rather than “punches down” – referring to the position of humor within social hierarchies – said Erin Northington, Block Museum Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director, Campus and Community Education and Engagement.  

“It immediately raised questions of who gets to decide what’s funny,” Northington said. “Why, when, for whom, and what happens when something is humorous to a certain group but intended to be private, and how that changes when it then becomes part of a public museum.”  

2024 Student Acquisition Justification

All acquisitions to The Block Museum of Art’s collection require a formal justification presentation and documentation. In the below excerpts from those processes, Student Associates present an overview of the artwork and the justification process for selecting it. 

In her artwork, Romero challenges stereotypes and explores themes such as cultural privacy, representation, and the deep spiritual connection to landscapes. Her work recontextualizes Indigenous imagery within contemporary settings, offering nuanced commentary on consumerism, cultural identity, and the intersection of tradition and modernity, as seen through the attention drawn to the American Girl® doll and media representations of Indigenous people in the works we chose. Her photographs are more than just visual art; they are acts of reclamation and resistance against the stereotypical portrayals of Native peoples, providing a contemporary correction to historical misrepresentations in mainstream media. Through her dynamic compositions and the fusion of past and present iconography, Romero challenges viewers to reconsider their perceptions of Native American culture as static or antiquated, showcasing its vibrancy and ongoing evolution. Romero integrates traditional iconography with modern aesthetics to enrich viewers’ understanding of Indigenous cultures as dynamic and evolving entities (ArtsWA 2019; Romero 2023 “About”). 

The portrait sitters are Cara Romero’s friends and family members: from left to right, her daughter Crickett Tiger, Kaa Folwell, her son Santiago Romero, and Dina Devore holding her baby (Hood Museum 2017). The three women sit atop the televisions and seem to be looking directly into the camera, while Santiago Romero stands in the center with his hands on his hips and gazes away from the camera into the distance. Her son Santiago, in his primarily white beaded regalia, creates visual contrast with the three Pueblo women in their black-and-red patterned dresses. The sitters’ relaxed, confident stances and strong gazes create a powerful sense of presence and ease in posing for the camera. Romero utilized large strobe lights to achieve the dramatic, editorial lighting that illuminates her figures and enhances this powerful effect (Cara Romero, Zoom conversation with BMSAs, April 4, 2024).

Various depictions of Native people in American media seen on the television screens behind the figures are digitally rendered in post-production—a departure from the practical effects she typically prefers to deploy in her work (e.g. the corn in The Zenith (2022), the border of Amber Morningstar (2022)). For instance, to the left of Devore’s leg is the iconic photograph of the raising of the flag in Iwo Jima, Japan in 1945 by six US Marines, which included Ira Hayes who was Akimel O’odham Indigenous American, an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community (Romero 2018). Above Romero’s shoulder, the mushroom cloud recalls the U.S. government’s nuclear testing on Pueblo land. The televisions also display scenes from fictional American portrayals of Indigenous people, such as 1990 Western film Dances with Wolves, and an infamous caricature of an American Indian featured in anti-littering advertisements. 

Amber Morningstar (2022) is a photograph from Romero’s series First American Girl. This series depicts Native American women from different tribes, posed like dolls in life-sized constructed boxes. Before each photograph is taken, the sitter works with Romero to select clothes to wear and cultural accouterments to surround them in their “doll box.” Romero began the series in response to several personal experiences with dolls and action figures, and the reflections they prompted about depictions of Native people in products like the American Girl® line of dolls which was originally released in 1986 by Pleasant Company. These dolls portray eight- to fourteen-year-old girls of intended to represent various ethnicities, faiths, nationalities, and social classes throughout different time periods throughout history.

At the time of this acquisition, the trademark is owned by Mattel Inc., an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company. Romero recalls looking at American Girl dolls with her young daughter, and the only Native doll being a Plains Indian (Cara Romero, Zoom conversation with Block Museum Student Associates, April 2024). Romero was disappointed by this lack of representation, which obscures the vibrant breadth and diversity of Indigenous cultures. Additionally, Romero’s husband is an avid collector of G.I. Joe dolls, military action figures primarily marketed to boys, with carefully constructed and historically accurate props (Cara Romero, Zoom conversation with Block Museum Student Associates, April 3, 2024). Romero reflected on what it would mean to have dolls for young Native girls like her daughter, with the same level of care, individuality, and period accuracy as the G.I. Joe figures. She decided to create a series that imagined iterations of these dolls, utilizing real Indigenous women as portrait sitters. Each image is composed with attention to cultural detail and attempts to display the diversity of Native peoples. 

“When we were going through this, we wanted to make sure that we were also representing Cara Romero’s individual ways understanding of humor, and I think that when we were going through the photos with her, she said explicitly, ‘you guys get my sense of humor.’ I think that that is really validating in our process, because we can move forward with this process and understand that we’re representing her humor in a way that she also gives us the stamp of approval for. That was a good feeling.”

– Mayán Alvarado-Goldberg, Neuroscience + Global Health, 2024

In speaking about cultivating a tight relationship with Indigenous women as portrait-sitters, such as Amber Morningstar and the three women featured in TV Indians, Romero explains that it was crucial “because it meant that young women trusted me and Native women trusted me, and the way that I’m photographing and what I’m doing with some of my editorial work in Indian country. Our women are exploited. They’ve been objectified, they’ve been stolen, and we have a big epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. But there’s also a way to do figurative art and to empower ourselves in a right way” (Minneapolis Institute of Art 2019).

In early conversations the importance of where the amusement or comedic nature of a photograph was coming from and how it was being received was established. In particular, the cohort spent time discussing terms like ‘punching up’ and ‘punching down.’ These are metaphors for different positionality in relation to humor, where in the instance of punching up, someone with less social power makes jokes about someone with more power. For example, a person making fun of a corporation. Punching down refers to a person using humor to ridicule another person or group with less power than they do, reminiscent of mean-spirited bullying. The BMSAs considered these kinds of questions of positionality as part of their discussions and used language to describe why a work of art was found funny and how each artist used humor in their practice. Finally, the cohort acknowledged that the definition of what is considered “humorous” varies from person to person and does not always result on the production of laughter in everybody.  

Blending culture and humor in her work, Romero sees humor as medicine; accessible and yet potent. “It really does keep us safe from exploitation and this need to have insight into our cultural privacy or our ceremonies or traditions” (Waldstein 2023). We might locate the humor in TV Indians and Amber Morningstar in various ways. As an ironic farce, TV Indians juxtaposes Native people against the improbable and incongruous blend of caricatures and technological ruins. As satire, both TV Indians and Amber Morningstar criticize Edward Curtis’s self-assured yet dubious ethnographies through their accurate portrayals of their Indigenous subjects, executed with attention both to historical detail and sitters’ individual identities. Yet humor, most importantly, functions for Romero as a universal way to connect with non-Native audiences while at the same time protecting the culture of the people she chooses to represent from exploitation or manipulation. By using irony to point out inaccuracies in how Indigenous people have been represented in popular culture in her work, she features and emphasizes the importance of authentic cultural representations to deconstruct flawed perceptions of Indigenous people. She is able to add a layer of complexity to the theme of “humor” by also intersecting it with education about the diversity of Native cultures; she calls out and testifies against distorted and homogenous narratives placed onto Indigenous people. 

How does this work relate to The Block’s collection?

Some of the artworks in The Block’s and University’s collections do not present truthful representations of Indigenous people, but provide a useful juxtaposition for works by artists such as Cara Romero and Rosalie Favell, among others. 

Many older works in The Block’s collection represent Indigenous people in a manner that leads to incomplete or false representations of Indigenous people typical of the time . The Block holds a portrait by Frank Laroche titled Alaska Indian Woman, 126 Years Old dated c. 1910, where the only identifiable information comes from the title, and does not tell us about the portrait-sitters or setting. Similarly, September: Indian, from the Chicago Society of Artists calendar by Gregory Orloff is a wood engraving from 1936 of a calendar that shows some days of the week at the bottom, along with the word “September.” Above that, we see the engraving of a man, where the only descriptor is the word “Indian” below the engraving. Both of these works present representations of Indigenous people, but in a way that does not provide much context or information other than the connotation of antiquity, and label of “Indian.” 

Romero’s work delves into the portrayal of contemporary Native Americans and the question of how to represent them with authenticity, love, and care. Other works in the Block’s collection grapple with some of these same concerns. Rosalie Favell’s portraits of Indigenous artists featured in the Fall 2023 exhibition Rosalie Favell: Indigenous Artists Facing the Camera (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2023) is only a series of many examples. Together, these collections spark dialogues on themes such as representation, visibility, and the accuracy, or lack thereof, of historical documentation. The idea of historical resignification also allows for connections to Chris Pappan’s Definition 1 (2018). In this work, Pappan draws the head of a Native American man over colonial tools, like maps and municipal ledger paper. In doing this, he highlights practices developed by Indigenous people of the Plains region, but also asks viewers to consider the removal of Native Americans from their homelands, prompting reflections about what Native futures could look like. This connection is especially beneficial in the understanding of the expanding landscape of TV Indians. 

“Edward Curtis’s work often involves native people as within the archetype of a vanishing race, and so in response to that, Cara Romero’s approach has been to kind of assert Native American intuition of pop culture and to reframe native people away from just a historical context, but also in a deeply contemporary context.”

– Roy Zhu, Environmental Science and Creative Writing, 2025 

What is the potential use in teaching and research? 

Romero’s work deals with history, popular culture, geo-politics, and so much more in very unique and profound ways. These themes are seen not just in the subject of Romero’s work, but also in its process and Romero’s ethics and ways of thinking. Cross-curricular connections can be explored through the acquisition of Romero’s TV Indians, a piece that evokes reflections on time, media, and modern representations of Indigeneity. Within the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program, students can take classes that span all departments, ranging from JOURNALISM 367: Native American Environmental Issues and the Media to ANTHROPOLOGY 390: Indigenous Anthropology which both touch on the themes of Indigenous representation, connections to land, and histories that Romero mentions in TV Indians. 

Romero also has shared a post to Instagram of her process for creating Amber Morningstar, saying “Here are some behind the scenes from one of my “First American Girls” photoshoots. Amber Morningstar represents her Chahta (Choctaw) heritage. Reimagining a world where our beauty is celebrated and our diversity is acknowledged” (@cararomerophotography, April 3, 2022). Whereas one may assume that the photograph was digitally constructed, the adornments and the frame itself are a product of manual processes, detailed in her post. This aspect of her artistic process and its examination could be extremely enriching to the Art Theory and Practice (ATP) department, as the piece serves as an example of a multi-modal creation and can and should serve as a springboard for further integration of Indigenous artistic practices into the Art History and ATP departments. 

How does this work connect with The Block Museum’s mission? 

Romero’s work supports The Block’s commitment to broadening the perspectives represented through and within the collection with an emphasis on global modern and contemporary art and to collecting work by artists with diverse identities and perspectives. Most poignantly, her work supports The Block’s emphasis on collecting work that builds awareness of underrepresented histories or practices through highlighting underrepresented artists, subjects, and histories.

Acquisition research and report contributed by: Mayán Alvarado-Goldberg, Neuroscience + Global Health, 2024 Júlia S. R. Azevedo, Industrial Engineering, 2024 Solome Bezuneh, Communication Studies and Sociology, 2024, Ethan Bledsoe, Environmental Science, 2026, Gabrielle Bliss, Chemical Engineering, 2025, Kevin Foley, Gender & Sexuality Studies, 2024, Madeleine Giaconia, Radio/Television/Film + Art History, 2024, Symone Harris, Social Policy, 2026, Zeki Ülgür Hirsch, Art History, 2024, Jaharia Knowles, Journalism, 2025, Rowan McCloskey, Computer Science + Political Science, 2025, Nozizwe Msipa, Communication Studies, 2024, Meena Sharma, Learning Sciences, 2025, Tamara Ulalisa, Journalism and Political Science, 2024, Joyce Wang, Economics, and Radio/Television/Film, 2024, Bobby Yalam, Comparative Literary Studies and Economics, 2024, Roy Zhu, Environmental Science and Creative Writing, 2025