Art, Empire and the Islands at America's Margins

Brett Stadelmann, Unsustainable Magazine, October 30, 2026

On conventional maps of American history, islands often appear at the edges. Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas moves them deliberately to the centre.

Now on view at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, the exhibition brings together approximately 50 works by more than 40 artists. Its paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, textiles and installations examine what the familiar story of American expansion leaves out: living cultures shaped by colonial rule, migration, militarisation, contested sovereignty and environmental change.

Yet curator Jessamine Batario did not set out to impose one account of those experiences. Artists helped form the exhibition through convenings held in 2022 and 2024. Conversations over shared meals led to a section on foodways and food sovereignty, while discussions of land, spirituality and military occupation created space for perspectives that can be contradictory as well as connected.