SARASOTA, FLA.- The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is presenting mixed-media visual artist Andrea Carlson’s first museum survey, Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky, organized by the Denver Art Museum (DAM). The exhibition features 16 works which are on view from May 30 through November 15, 2026, in the Keith D. Monda Gallery for Contemporary Art. Carlson (descended from the Grand Portage band of Ojibwe and European settlers, born 1979) creates works that challenge the colonial narratives presented by modern artists, museum collections, and cannibal genre horror films. Utilizing a combination of text and complex visual references to animals, art objects, and cultural belongings, Carlson creates prismatic landscapes that foil American landscape genre painting.
“The DAM has collected Indigenous arts for 100 years, emphasizing contemporary artistic expressions. Presenting A Constant Sky reaffirms DAM’s commitment to Indigenous communities, brilliantly celebrated by Andrea Carlson's art,” says Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum. “We are thrilled to bring this thought-provoking and exceptional exhibition from the DAM to Sarasota,” adds The Ringling’s Executive Director Steven High. “It is an honor to showcase Carlson’s work as part of our larger efforts to center Indigenous voices and perspectives at The Ringling.”
Known for her intricate, colorful works drawn and painted with many different mediums, Carlson recently expanded her practice to include sculpture. The DAM commissioned Columns for a Horizon (2024–2025), a large-scale sculptural work which, when placed in front of Carlson’s painted works, obscures her imagined landscapes and encourages viewers to contemplate ideas of access and denial.
“At first glance, Carlson’s works can feel fantastical and immersive. Look longer, however, and they begin to reveal deeper questions about history, storytelling, and who has the authority to shape cultural narratives,” says Ola Wlusek, The Ringling’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “By placing museum objects and symbolic imagery into her own imagined environments, Carlson challenges long-standing traditions of American landscape painting and the colonial histories that often underpin them.”
Carlson’s practice challenges assumed hierarchies, considers who holds the right of possession, and how power is retained through objects such as paintings. Her works challenge visitors’ perspectives and inspire questions about permission and refusal through carefully and beautifully painted objects in compositions that are visually and emotionally complex.
