Miss Chief Eagle Testickle

During a recent family visit with relatives from Northern California, we spent a few days walking our old neighborhoods in Connecticut and New York City. My sister-in-law was eager to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time. Before our arrival, she used her phone to ask Siri, "What's the most famous work of art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?" The answer surprised me. It was German painter Emanuel Leutze's massive 1851 painting - Washington Crossing the Delaware.

Emanuel Leutze ~ Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851

As we were leaving The Met through the first floor's Great Hall, we encountered a contemporary reinterpretation of Leutze's work by Cree Indian Kent Monkman, Resurgence of the People. Painted last year, it's described by the artist as an effort "to reflect, at least as an indigenous person, what this Colonial history has meant to us."

Kent Monkman ~ Resurgence of the People, 2019

In the painting, Monkman depicts himself in the heroic role of Washington, now in the persona of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, naked, mascara streaked, and in stiletto heels, reversing art history's Colonial gaze. Miss Chief or mischief?

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