In this hands-on workshop for all ages, participants will create clay beads, each a symbol of the survival and regeneration of the bison across North America. The beads are an integral part of the Bison Bead Project initiated by the artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, winner of MAD’s 2018 biannual Burke Prize for contemporary art. With the goal of crafting 20,000 beads, representing every Plains bison managed as wildlife across the continent, the project stands as a testament to the power of collective action. Utilizing social collaboration to humanize large data, the resulting clay objects will become part of a new installation in honor of the Buffalo Nation.

This program is presented in partnership with Public Art Fund, which recently debuted Luger’s site-specific installation, Attrition, in Lower Manhattan’s City Hall Park. Learn more about the installation, inspired by the history of the bison’s survival, and future dates for Bison Bead Project workshops in New York City.

About the artist

Cannupa Hanska Luger (b. 1979, Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota) is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota—an identity that deeply informs his works in sculpture, installation, performance, and video. Luger’s work is currently on view as a part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial; he was a 2023 Soros Award Fellow, 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize, among others.

Image: Bison Bead Project workshop for Colgate University’s Picker Art Gallery Artist in Residence with Cannupa Hanska Luger, April 9, 2022, Hamilton, NY. Photography by Andrew Daddio.