SparkNight: Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache/Diné)
SparkNight is the free monthly art party at the museum inviting everyone to explore art, engage their creativity, and have fun! In December, join us for a musical performance by White Mountain Apache and Diné artist, Laura Ortman, in conjunction with her video work in the Zimmerli's current exhibition, Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always.
Free and open to the public. Complimentary light refreshments.
Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), is a soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, who creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Kronos Quartet, Martha Colburn, New Red Order, Martin Bisi, Demian DinéYazhi, and as part of the trio, In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Venice Biennale, Brooklyn Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, MASS MoCA, MCA Chicago, REWIRE Festival at the Hague, Baltimore Museum of Art, The Stone, SF JAZZ, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) and Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. In 2008, She founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.
Ortman is the recipient of the 2025 Pioneer Works Music Residency, 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts Fellowship, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists, 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, 2016 Art Matters Grant, 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency, 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency, and 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room. Ortman was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Special thanks to our campus and community partners.
Additional event information and parking pre-registration coming soon.
The Zimmerli’s operations, exhibitions, and programs are funded in part by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and income from the Avenir Endowment Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Endowment Fund. Additional support comes from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the donors, members, and friends of the museum.
Generous support for bilingual text was provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.
Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. For information on events, go to MiddlesexCountyCulture.com
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