Seattle, Wash. — At its September annual conference, the Western Museum Association presented the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture with the 2026 Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence. The award recognized the museum’s recent exhibition, Woven in Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving. Board members from the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center served as co-curators, working in collaboration with Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Burke Museum Curator of Northwest Native Art and institutional curator for the exhibition.
“Working alongside the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Board to create this exhibition was an extraordinary experience, and seeing the work recognized with this award is incredibly meaningful, said Melissa Kennedy, Burke Museum director of interpretation. “As the most significant industry honor an exhibition can receive in the West — and a first for the Burke — we're so proud and grateful,” she said.
Woven in Wool showcased both historical and contemporary woven items, including blankets, tunics, hoods, and skirts, and guided visitors through the seasonal cycles of weaving. Ancestral weavings, some on loan and returning to Coast Salish territory for the first time in a century, were also included, along with 14 new creations.
Haməkʷitən Kelly Sullivan, executive director of the Port Gamble S’klallam tribe and member of the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center said, “The CSWWC was honored to be part of the partnership of Woven in Wool with the Burke Museum for the past several years. We are driven to preserve and promote Coast Salish wool weaving, and this exhibit achieved all our goals. Our relationships were formed in true fashion in conference rooms, living rooms, and around dinner tables together, providing us a genuine understanding of each other.”
“This award, along with the 2026 Excellence in Exhibits award from the Washington Museum Association, reflects the important work the museum is doing to ethically co-curate exhibitions with artists and Indigenous knowledge keepers,” said Bunn-Marcuse. “On our team, everyone had a role. Skokomish weaving teacher Subiyay Bruce Miller said, “Don't teach all of our children exactly the same things,” or we won’t all need one another. To create this exhibition we needed the weavers, their vision, and their ancestral teachings. We also needed museum staff. By respecting and trusting each other’s knowledge and skills, we wove this exhibition together.”
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About the Exhibition
The lead curators of Woven in Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving were the six board members of the nonprofit Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center — all weavers from Salish communities — working in collaboration with Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Burke Museum curator of Northwest Native Art and institutional curator for Woven in Wool. Their vision was facilitated by the Exhibits department under the leadership of Director of Interpretation Melissa Kennedy, with the Bill Holm Center for Northwest Native Art at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
