Rewriting the MET’s American Wing: Indigenous Artists Use Augmented Reality to Reclaim History

Oct 17

*Cass Gardiner in collaboration BirdxBird, “Skoden Warriors” (2025) over Jerome B. Thompson’s “The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain” (1858)*

This year, Indigenous Peoples’ Day brought an unexpected transformation to one of the most iconic art spaces in New York. Inside The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing — a place filled with romanticized visions of the early United States — visitors began to notice something new: digital layers revealing stories that had long been missing.

Seventeen Indigenous artists quietly launched ENCODED: Change the Story, Change the Future, an augmented reality (AR) project that overlays their own works onto 19th-century landscape paintings at The Met. Using a smartphone camera, visitors can now see figures, symbols, and messages from Native artists appear within the museum’s historic galleries — a poetic act of reclamation that fuses tradition, technology, and presence.

*An AR composition of Cannupa Hanska Luger, “Midéegaadi- Fire” (2021–) over Thomas Cole’s “View on the Catskills – Early Autumn” (1836–37) (all images courtesy Amplifier)*

Curated by filmmaker Tracy Renée Rector and an anonymous Indigenous curator, and developed with the design lab Amplifier, ENCODED began as an artist-led response to how American history is framed and who gets to define it. The team describes the project not as a protest, but as an expansion — a digital rewriting of the narrative.

In one scene, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Midéegaadi: Fire (2021–ongoing) superimposes a buffalo dancer onto Thomas Cole’s View on the Catskills – Early Autumn (1836–37), calling back the land’s original inhabitants. In another, photographer Josué Rivas transforms Thomas Sully’s Queen Victoria (1838) into a portrait of Umatilla jingle dress dancer Acosia Red Elk, who gently reminds viewers: “Be a good ancestor.”

*Josué Rivas, “Standing Strong featuring Acosia Red Elk” (2021) over Thomas Sully, “Queen Victoria” (1838)*

Through these interventions, the artists invite viewers to see what’s always been there — the people, the histories, and the relationships erased or idealized by colonial art.

“The unsanctioned nature of this exhibition is the work,” says Luger. “Acting without permission inside a space that defines ‘America’ through historical art is a reflection of our existence as Indigenous people — we’ve always existed without institutional consent.”

*Mer Young, “We’wah Lhamana” (2025) is seen over Childe Hassam’s 1918 painting “Avenue of the Allies” at The Met*

By coexisting with the museum’s collection, ENCODED creates a kind of parallel digital exhibition that visitors can experience by scanning the environment through their phones. What emerges is not just a critique, but a vision of how augmented reality can become a tool for cultural sovereignty — one that gives voice to artists and communities historically excluded from the frame.

*Nicholas Galanin’s “NEVER FORGET” (2021) transforms Jasper Francis Cropsey’s“Valley of Wyoming” (1865).*

For many, that’s the deeper resonance of launching this project on Indigenous Peoples’ Day — a date that honors the histories and contributions of Indigenous peoples and tribal nations across the Americas. ENCODED turns that spirit into a living, interactive artwork, asking what it means to see, remember, and imagine differently.