2025 Yaseen Lecture: Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds

The Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts bring acclaimed scholars and artists to the Neuberger Museum of Art and Purchase College, SUNY to discuss their work as it relates to contemporary ideas and issues.

On November 5, 2025, the Museum welcomed Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, an internationally recognized artist and advocate for Indigenous communities, for a lecture on the enduring presence of Native histories and the role of contemporary art in advancing social justice. The program highlighted his site-specific outdoor sculpture Reclaim, first created for the Neuberger’s 1997 Biennial Exhibition of Public Art, which transforms the authority of a highway sign into a call to reconsider whose stories are inscribed on the land.

Heap of Birds also reflected on his multidisciplinary practice, which spans public art messages, large-scale drawings, paintings, prints, glass works, and monumental steel sculpture. His work has been exhibited at major institutions worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the British Museum.

About the Artist

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds is an artist and an advocate for Indigenous communities worldwide. His work includes multidisciplinary forms of public art messages, large-scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints, works in glass, and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture. The tribal elder serves as an instructor/painter in the traditional Cheyenne Earth Renewal Ceremony at Concho, Oklahoma and is one of the leaders of the Cheyenne Elk Scraper Warrior Society.

Heap of Birds’ artistic creations were shown in the 2007 Venice Biennale. While representing Indigenous communities his art focuses first on social justice, and on the personal freedom to live within the tribal circle as an expressive individual.

His work has been exhibited at some of the most renowned institutions in the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Orchard Gallery, Northern Ireland; the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations Reservation in Oklahoma; Site Santa Fe Museum, New Mexico; Grand Palais in Paris, France; National Institute of Education Gallery, Singapore; and Documenta in Kassal, Germany. His art holds a place in the collections of many museums, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Most recently, his work was acquired for the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; Forge Project, Hudson, New York; Tia Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico; the British Museum and Tate Modern in London; Anchorage Museum in Alaska; LACMA in Los Angeles; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

In 2012, he was named USA Ford Fellow, and in 2014 he was honored as a Distinguished Alumni from the University of Kansas. During 2020, the artist was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2025 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received grants and awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, Bonfil Stanton Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trust, AT&T, Lila Wallace Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Sharing his expertise and talent with the next generation of artists, Heap of Birds has taught at Yale University, University of Capetown, South Africa, and the University of Oklahoma. Now retired from teaching at the University of Oklahoma, after 30 years of service, he is Professor Emeritus.

Heap of Birds received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas. The artist’s master of fine art degree is from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He has also completed graduate-level study at the Royal College of Art in London. He has been awarded honorary doctor of fine arts and letters degrees from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada, and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

About the Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts
This lecture series, which began in 1974, was endowed by the late Leonard C. Yaseen and his wife Helen, former residents of Larchmont, New York, who financed a similar series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featured speakers have included Gordon Parks, Claes Oldenburg, Maya Angelou, Faith Ringgold, Chuck Close, John Shearer, Hank Willis Thomas, and Purchase College alumnus Fred Wilson. The legacy of the Yaseens’s gift continues today through the support of Roger Yaseen and his family in honor of his parents. The Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts Fund is stewarded by The New York Community Trust.