Galleries open 6–6:30 p.m.
Talk in the lobby 6:30–7:30 p.m.
At the heart of “Tell Clyfford I Said ‘Hi’” are the voices and perspectives of Colville children who served as co-curators of the exhibition. In this reflective conversation, exhibition co-organizers Bailey Placzek (CSM curator of collections), Nicole Cromartie (CSM director of learning & engagement), and curatorial consultant Michael Holloman (Colville Confederated Tribes) will discuss their experience working in partnership with Colville youth and the ways the young curators’ contributions shaped the exhibition.
The program will explore the relationship between Clyfford Still and the people of the Colville Confederated Tribes, the Museum’s evolving practice of co-curating with children, and the importance of collaboration and community voice in curatorial work at the Still.
The program is $5 for the public, free for CSM members, and registration is required to attend in person at the Clyfford Still Museum. Registration will open soon.
About the Presenters
Bailey Placzek is the Clyfford Still Museum’s curator of collections and catalogue raisonné research and project manager. She has been engaged in CSM’s curatorial program and collections research since before the Museum’s opening in 2011. She has given numerous talks at CSM—including The Secret Lives of Clyfford Still’s Paintings (2022)—as well as at various local and national conferences like the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the National Art Education Association (NAEA). Other curatorial projects include Clyfford Still, Art, and the Young Mind (2022), A Decade of Discovery: Clyfford Still in Denver (2021–22), and Still: Elemental (2019). Placzek’s work is focused on advancing access to collections, promoting art’s ability to foster connections among humanity across time, and deconstructing museum work to make it more transparent, collaborative, and fun. Placzek received dual BA degrees in Art History and Art from the University of Kansas and a MA in Art History from the University of Denver.
Nicole Cromartie is the director of learning and engagement at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado. Her research interests include museum evaluation, sharing authority with children, fostering equitable museum–school partnerships, and understanding the impacts of museum experiences on our youngest visitors, from birth to 14 months. As a Getty Museum Scholar in the spring of 2025, she began work on a book about young children’s engagement with the arts in museums, which is currently in progress. In 2021, Routledge published her first book, Evaluating Early Learning: Planning for Our Youngest Visitors, which presents developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant practices for engaging young children and their families in museums. Nicole is currently pursuing an EdD in Leadership for Educational Equity, Early Childhood Education at the University of Colorado Denver. She earned her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts and her BA in Art History from the University of Florida.
Michael Holloman, parent, artist, curator, and fine arts professor, is an enrolled member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Native American art history and the studio arts at Washington State University while maintaining duties as the college’s coordinator for Native Arts, Outreach and Education. His scholarship addresses the historic issues and visual record of Plateau settler colonialism and Native adaptation and self-assertion—regarding Clyfford Still, Holloman stresses the aesthetic dimension of his work as being infused with a spiritual power that sustains familial and communal memory while offering inspiration for a new generation.