Jeremy Frey Passamaquoddy baskets at Stanford’s Cantor Art’s Center
The Cantor Arts Center presents Jeremy Frey’s major solo exhibition, Jeremy Frey: Woven, opening on March 26, 2026. The Cantor is the only West Coast venue and final stop for the traveling exhibition, which was organized by the Portland Museum of Art in Maine and subsequently traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Bruce Museum in Connecticut. This iteration is organized by Cantor Director Veronica Roberts and will showcase a striking new basket that the Cantor recently acquired—Presence (2024). Admission to the Cantor is free. The presentation will remain on view through July 20, 2026.
This is the first solo museum exhibition of works by the 47-year-old Passamaquoddy basket maker, presenting over 30 objects, ranging from early point baskets and urchin forms to baskets that feature meticulous porcupine quillwork portraits of animals, as well as a new video, prints, and large-scale woven sculpture. Basketry represents a core mode of cultural expression for Passamaquoddy people, whose tribal nation is one of four federally-recognized tribes that form the Wabanaki Confederacy, “People of the Dawnland.” Frey has characterized the exhibition as “thousands of years in the making,” referencing the ancestral knowledge passed down to him through generations of Wabanaki basket weavers.
A seventh-generation Passamaquoddy artist, Frey learned to weave from his mother, Gal Frey, and was influenced by generations of ancestors who made baskets primarily from black ash, known locally as brown ash. When Frey started seriously pursuing basket weaving in 2000, following a career as a chef, the tradition was at risk of disappearing. His entry into the field corresponded with a larger push to revitalize the practice, including the creation of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance in 1993 by Theresa Secord, with whom Frey took classes. His talent was evident, and he began showing at the acclaimed Santa Fe Indian Market, winning “Best in Show” in 2011, the first time in nearly 100 years of the market’s history that a basket received this distinction.
Renewed appreciation of the practice is due in part to Frey’s technical skill and innovations in the medium. He is known for his vibrant color palette and patterns and his development of complex double-walled baskets. Frey also diverges from historical gender norms for Wabanaki basket weaving, where men historically have created utility baskets used for fishing and hunting and women have produced colorful, more elaborate baskets for sale.
The works in this exhibition, created over the past 25 years, demonstrate the extent to which he continues to probe the possibilities of this woven art form. Many of his works reflect the Passamaquoddy hallmark of the porcupine (or point) weave, the distinctive spiky protrusions. Frey gathers and harvests every material that he uses—black ash, sweetgrass, cedar, spruce root, birch bark, and porcupine quills. The strips of black ash that Frey whittles down to different widths and gauges to make his baskets derive, remarkably, from growth rings that he loosens from the tree. His works take motifs and shapes from the landscape around him, including imagery of bears, loons, and wolves and, most notably, his celebrated Urchin series. Informed by both the history of the natural world and his ancestors, these works hold deep knowledge about cycles of life and the importance of preservation. As threats to ash trees loom, due to an invasive species of beetle, Frey aims to celebrate an endangered art form and preserve its legacy for future generations.
Coming on the heels of Frey’s MacArthur Fellowship award in 2025, this presentation recognizes his extraordinary contributions to contemporary art and Indigenous cultural preservation. His work has not only elevated basket weaving within museums and collecting contexts but has also transformed the market for the medium, increasing both visibility and valuation for basket makers today. Jeremy Frey: Woven offers a rare opportunity to experience the evolution of an artist who has helped secure the future of a historically endangered tradition while radically expanding its possibilities. His work demonstrates that there is no substitute for the human hand and the power of reclaiming a tradition to create new futures for inherited knowledge.
Programming will include the following curator-led tours and public events:
Artist Talk —Thursday, April2, 2026, 6 p.m. (The John L. Eastman, ‘61 Auditorium)
The Cantor Arts Center will host a conversation between artist Jeremy Frey and co-curator of Jeremy Frey: Woven, Ramey Mize (Susan G. Detweiler Associate Curator of American Art at the Philadelphia Art Museum). The two will discuss and reflect on cultural agency, resilience, and the artist’s commitment to honoring this ancestral art form through breathtaking formal innovations and his unique artistic vision. Space for this program is limited, so advanced registration is encouraged. RSVP here to secure a spot.
Lunchtime Curator Talk — Thursday, April9, 2026, 1to 2 p.m. (Halperin Gallery)
Veronica Roberts, the John and Jill Freidenrich Director of the Cantor Arts Center, will lead a special highlights tour of Jeremy Frey: Woven. Space for this tour is limited, so advanced registration is encouraged. RSVP here to secure a spot.
For more information, visit the Cantor Arts Center website here.
ABOUT JEREMY FREY
Jeremy Frey (b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, Maine) is one of the foremost Passamaquoddy artists of his generation. Working with customary materials such as brown ash and sweetgrass, Frey introduces new materials, unique forms, and fine weaving techniques while maintaining a strong connection to the traditional roots of his practice.
The first solo show of Frey’s work was held at Karma in New York in 2023. Frey’s work is held in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford; the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, among others.
Frey won Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2011, marking the first time a basket maker achieved this honor in the market’s ninety-year history. That same year, Frey won Best of Show at the Heard Museum Indian Guild Fair and Market in Phoenix, Arizona, which he would repeat in 2015. In 2024, Frey became the first Indigenous artist to win the prestigious Rappaport Prize, and in the past year was announced as a 2025 MacArthur Genius Award Fellow and received an honorary doctorate from Bowdoin College in Maine.
Frey’s work has been featured in recent major group exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2024); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2024); Baltimore Museum of Art (2024); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2024); Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC (2022); and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2022).
ABOUT THE CANTOR ARTS CENTER
Serving the Stanford campus, the Bay Area community, and visitors from around the world, the Cantor Arts Center provides an outstanding cultural experience for visitors of all ages. Founded when the university opened in 1891, the historic museum was expanded and renamed in 1999 for lead donors Iris and B. Gerald Cantor. The Cantor’s collection spans 5,000 years and includes more than 40,000 works of art from around the globe. The Cantor is an established resource for teaching and research on campus. Free admission, tours, lectures, and family activities make the Cantor one of the most visited university art museums in the country.
