Saint Louis Art Museum purchases works by Native American women artists: Kay WalkingStick and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
The Saint Louis Art Museum has acquired works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick, deepening the museum’s commitment to Native artists with the addition of three critical pieces to the collection.
The acquisitions address gaps in the museum’s collection of works by contemporary Native American artists and leave a significant legacy at the museum for the recent exhibition “Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s-1970s,” an important presentation of modern Native art and the first exhibition of this size at SLAM.
Kay WalkingStick, American and Cherokee, born 1935“Personal Icon”, 1975;Acrylic, wax, and ink on canvas; 42 x 48 inches;Saint Louis Art Museum, The Siteman Contemporary Art Fund, and funds given by Barbara and Andy Taylor, the Werner Family, John and Susan Horseman, Christine Taylor-Broughton and Lee Broughton, Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, Pam and Greg Trapp, Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wolff, Dottie and Kent Kreh, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Suzy Besnia and Vic Richey, Clare M. Davis and David S. Obedin, Yvette Drury Dubinsky and John Paul Dubinsky, in memory of Pauline E. Ashton, and Kiku Obata;© Kay WalkingStick
“We are in a moment of heightened visibility for Native artists across the country but especially in St. Louis,” said Min Jung Kim, the museum’s Barbara B. Taylor Director. “Adding these works to our collection is a way to continue to shed light on these vital artists, whose art speaks to both personal histories and wider cultural concerns. These acquisitions are also essential to the continued diversification of both our collection and our programming, ensuring that we provide our community with opportunities to see and experience the fullest view of human creativity from many different cultural and aesthetic traditions.”
One of the works—WalkingStick’s “Personal Icon”—was recently featured in the final gallery of the museum’s summer 2023 exhibition, “Action/Abstraction Redefined.” “Personal Icon” is among the last major works available from a pivotal era in her career. During the mid-1970s, WalkingStick turned away from figuration and experimented with different media while also investigating Native history for the first time. The 1975 painting repeats a low, swelling arc against a gridded frame of red encaustic; these experimental forms and materials shaped her practice subsequently.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Enrolled Salish, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, MT, born 1940;“State Names Map: Cahokia”, and “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange”, 2023;Saint Louis Art Museum, The Siteman Contemporary Art Fund, and funds given by Barbara and Andy Taylor,The Werner Family, John and Susan Horseman, Christine Taylor-Broughton and Lee Broughton, Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, Pam and Greg Trapp, Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wolff, Dottie and Kent Kreh, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Suzy Besnia and Vic Richey, Clare M. Davis and David S. Obedin, Yvette Drury and John Paul Dubinsky, Judith Weiss Levy, Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Lowenhaupt, and Mary Ann and Andy Srenco;© Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York;Image courtesy of Counterpublic, Photograph by Jon Gitchoff
Using collage and gestural painting, Quick-to-See Smith’s “State Names Map: Cahokia” reconfigures the United States map, using text with only those state names based on Indigenous words. In “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange,” the artist created the frame of a canoe using wood from an Osage Orange tree, and inside the canoe are cast-resin objects—mirrors, guns, liquor and a beaver—that highlight the destructive qualities of European trade goods on Indigenous peoples.
Both “State Names Map: Cahokia” and “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange” are new works that were featured in Counterpublic, a triennial civic exhibition that showcased contemporary art in locations across St. Louis from April through July. Nearly one-quarter of the artists in the 2023 Counterpublic cited Native heritage.
Quick-to-See Smith’s work has appeared in more than 90 solo exhibitions across the country, most recently “Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. SLAM’s collection includes the mixed media painting “I See Red: Migration” and a suite of prints produced at Washington University’s Island Press including “Celebrate 40,000 Years of American Art.”
SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM
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