PHOTO COURTESY OF TAMASTSLIKT CULTURAL INSTITUTE
“Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America” will open Saturday, March 14, at Tamástslikt Cultural Institute.
The exhibit features 20 skate decks, including examples from Native companies and contemporary artists, rare images and video of Native skaters. Opening Day is free to the public. The exhibition will be on view through May 25, before continuing on its 12-city national tour. “Ramp It Up” was previously on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York, as well as at the National Museum of American Indian in Washington, D.C.
Skateboarding is one of the most popular sports on Indian reservations, and has inspired and influenced American Indian and Native Hawaiian communities since the 1960s. This new exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, together with the National Museum of the American Indian, is designed to celebrate the vibrancy, creativity and history of American Indian skateboarding culture.
Exhibition highlights include a never-before-exhibited 1969 image taken by skateboarding icon C.R. Stecyk III, of a skate deck depicting traditional Native imagery and 1973 home-movie footage of Zephyr surf team members Ricky and Jimmy Tavarez.
For more information, visit the Tamástslikt website.
