Oct 29
Artist Talk: Maggie Thompson
This talk is sponsored by the Christopher U. Light Lectureship in the Arts
Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013. As a textile artist and designer she derives her inspiration from family history, Ojibwe heritage and the broader Native American experience. Skillfully and intuitively working with both natural and synthetic materials, Thompson’s multimedia artwork expands various textile traditions’ inherited ways of being and becoming.
Thompson had her first solo exhibition Where I Fit at All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis in 2014, and was most recently included in the 2024 exhibition Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include Intentions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM (2025), Loves Me, Loves Me Not, Mardag Gallery, Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN (2023); Just Friends, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2022), and Dakobijige/ She Ties Things Together, Watermark Center, Bemidji, MN (2021). She has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including at the Detroit Institute of Art, Plains Art Museum, Minnesota Textile Center, Walker Art Center, and Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Thompson has been awarded grants and awards, including the All My Relations and Bockley Gallery Jim Denomie Scholarship, Jerome Foundation Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and First Peoples Fund Seeding Cultural Treasures and Business Leadership Grants. Others have been awarded from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her work is collected by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota Historical Society, North Dakota Museum of Art, Hood Museum, Tia Collection, and Field Museum, among others.
In addition to her fine arts practice, Thompson runs a knitwear business known as Makwa Studio. She is also an emerging curator of contemporary Native art, and has worked on curating special exhibits in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, including at Two Rivers Gallery, the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.