Designed to be Red: Native American & Indigenous Poster Works recenters Indigenous voices in the history of graphic design by highlighting the vibrant, complex, and powerful visual storytelling of Native artists, designers, and collectives. For too long, the presence of Native Americans in design history has been shaped through a colonial lens—reduced to caricatured branding in consumer products and stereotyped imagery that advanced capitalism rather than culture. Representations of Native figures are prevalent in poster designs used to brand and market products from baseball to butter, Fords to football, however, these reductive depictions of the “noble savage” occlude the rich history, culture, language, and creativity of Native Americans. This has overshadowed the real and resilient creative practices of Indigenous artists. Designed To Be Red turns this imposed, stereotyped narrative on its head. It recognizes Indigenous designers not as subjects of design but as shapers of it—innovators who have created dynamic, subversive, and joyful work despite centuries of cultural erasure, land theft, and socio-economic marginalization. This exhibition upends those dominant narratives by celebrating the resistance, pride, humor, joy, and innovation embedded in Native-made printed matter.
Spanning nearly two centuries and featuring artists from over forty tribes and nations, Designed to be Red brings together posters, prints, ephemera, and related materials. From war bond posters to environmental protest prints, illustrated language broadsheets to billboard-sized messages, Native artists like Anna Tsouhlarakis, the New Red Order, Crystal Worl, and Kent Monkman make work that is both timely and timeless. They speak to critical issues of sovereignty, cultural erasure, extraction, racism, and assimilation while also radiating pride in ancestral knowledge, Two-Spirit identity, language revitalization, and Indigenous joy.
Works in this exhibition are chosen not only for their visual impact, but for their power to teach, move, and connect. Each featured artwork resonates with celebration or protest, and often the poignant space in between. This exhibition encourages viewers to consider: does the work transcend its intended audience? Does it invite engagement and understanding without translation? Does it live on in ancestral memory? Taken together, Designed to Be Red affirms that Indigenous design history is not lost—it is living, resonant, and vital.
ITINERARY
CO-ORGANIZER
The exhibition originates at Poster House in New York and will be on view from September 25, 2026 through February 21, 2027. Poster House is dedicated to presenting the impact, culture, and design of posters, both as historical documents and methods of contemporary visual communication. Through temporary exhibitions, a growing permanent collection, and educational events, Poster House explores the enormous impact of posters on society and culture, and how they have been adapted to contemporary use. As the first poster museum in the United States, Poster House provides a space for inquiry for all those interested in design, advertising, and public interventions, with the aim of improving design literacy among the general public.
GUEST CURATOR
Brian Johnson is an award-winning designer and partner of Polymode studio where he focuses on amplifying marginalized and forgotten voices through poetic research, learning experiences, and impactful design. He has guest lectured and hosted workshops at the School of Visual Arts, the Walker Art Center, AIGA’s National Design Conference, and his alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. He is also one of the founders of the groundbreaking online educational platform BIPOC Design History. As a curator, his most recent exhibition, Reverberations: Lineages in Design History appeared at the Ford Foundation Gallery in Spring 2025. He is a member of the Monacan Indian Nation and is deeply invested in the production of good design without the expense of sacrificing our humanity or environment. He extends these values to his clients, including The New York Times Magazine, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MIT Press, A24, Nike, Airbnb, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, Huntington Library, the Art Institute of Chicago, Hauser & Wirth, Dia Art Foundation, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Johnson is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Hyperallergic Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators where he focused on Native-made works to combat erasure and decolonize design. He is a contributor to Gatherings: New Directions in Indigenous Book History, the forthcoming publication with the University of Pennsylvania Press with his essay “What If The Designer Was Native?”
PUBLICATIONS
Designed to be Red is accompanied by a free educational brochure developed by the AFA. The scholarly book Designed to be Red: Native American and Indigenous Graphic Works, authored by Guest Curator Brian Johnson and distributed by DelMonico Press/D.A.P., is available from your local bookseller.
CREDIT
Designed to be Red: Native American and Indigenous Poster Works is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and Poster House. This exhibition is curated by Brian Johnson.
BOOKING
For booking information, contact Dr. Katharine Wright, Curator, at kwright@amfedarts.org