George Morrison Exhibition @ The Met, NYC - "The Magical City: George Morrison’s New York"

The Magical City 

George Morrison’s New York

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

July 17, 2025 – May 31, 2026

GEORGE MORRISON

The Antagonist (detail), 1956 

Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 × 50 1/16 in. 

(86.7 × 127.2 cm)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 

Gift of Mrs. Helen Meredith Norcross 57.26 

© Estate of George Morrison

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents The Magical City: George Morrison’s New York. Born in Chippewa City, a remote Native American village on the shore of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, George Morrison (Wah-wah-ta-ga-nah-gah-boo and Gwe-ki-ge-nah-gah-boo, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, 1919–2000) overcame innumerable challenges—poverty, a life-threatening childhood illness, social isolation, racial and cultural barriers—to become a leader of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, which he collaboratively defined both publicly and behind the scenes.

“George Morrison’s life and work has inspired generations of artists,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO. “Anchored by works from his time in New York, this meaningful exhibition celebrates Morrison’s creative achievements and explores how his American Indigenous perspective shaped his unique cultural legacy.”

George Morrison’s influence on the American Abstract Expressionist movement began in September 1943, when he arrived in New York City by train to study at the Art Students League on a fine arts scholarship. Immersing himself in the city’s vibrant cultural scenes, Morrison studied painting and drawing, contributed to numerous exhibitions and publications, and openly challenged the mainstream art establishment of his generation. He also formed important connections with peer artists including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Lois Dodd, and Louise Nevelson, among others. Morrison’s deep appreciation for urban life—specifically industrial landscapes, jazz, and literature—shaped his artistic practice and imagery and permanently impacted the trajectory of the New York School.

Technically trained in figure drawing, portraiture, landscape painting, and graphic arts, George Morrison shifted to abstract approaches in his New York years, specifically automatism, propelling his unique visual language—a fusion of his interest in the subconscious, Ojibwe aesthetic sensibilities, and ties to his homelands. The artist’s involvement with the rise of Abstract Expressionism enhanced the movement’s broader “American” context by imbuing it with a distinctive Indigenous perspective. Between 1943 and 1970, George Morrison lived and worked in New York and regularly exhibited in group shows and solo exhibitions. His work was consistently noted by well-known art critics. A 1953 Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the University of Aix-Marseilles in France—followed by a John Jay Whitney Fellowship the same year—earned him international recognition.

Morrison’s prolific career lasted until 2000, long after his return to Minnesota from New York. It culminated with his famous Horizon Series, a suite of small-scale oil and acrylic paintings that synthesized his technical skill and creative imagination with his love for his home on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, along the north shore of Lake Superior.

Patricia Marroquin Norby (P’ urhépecha), Associate Curator of Native American Art in The Met’s American Wing, said: “This celebration of George Morrison’s work at The Met is long overdue. We are thrilled to honor the artist’s major contributions to the New York School with this exhibition and publication. Morrison strongly impacted the development of the American Abstract Expressionist movement as well as the work of his professional colleagues—artists who respected him as a leader and a voice for their generation. This exhibition offers an important opportunity to engage deeply with Morrison’s evolving practice, supported by rarely seen archival materials that reveal the depth and complexity of his artistic journey.”

The exhibition asserts Morrison’s significant contributions to the New York School and explores his urban aesthetic inspirations that were rooted in his love of New York, which he called a “Magical City.” Featuring 35 of his paintings and drawings, including a number of generous loans from the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the exhibition culminates in his Horizon Series. It also features rare archival material that places George Morrison at the heart of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. The exhibition debuts two works recently acquired by The Met: White Painting (1965), the first oil painting by George Morrison to enter the Museum’s collection, in 2021, and Construction in Fantasy (1953), a gouache and ink drawing that the artist created in France on the Côte d’Azur, acquired by The Met in 2023.

The Magical City: George Morrison’s New York is curated by Patricia Marroquin Norby (P’ urhépecha), Associate Curator of Native American Art in The Met’s American Wing.

The exhibition is accompanied by the summer 2025 issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, with contributions by historian Dr. Brenda Child (Red Lake Ojibwe), artist Hazel Belvo, and art historian Dr. Laura Joseph (Director of Cultural Affairs, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum).

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 746 North, 

The Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery, The American Wing

1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

metmuseum.org

Jeffrey Gibson @ The Broad, Los Angeles - "the space in which to place me" Exhibition

Jeffrey Gibson 

the space in which to place me

The Broad, Los Angeles

May 10 - September 28, 2025

Jeffrey Gibson 

BIRDS FLYING HIGH YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL, 2024 

Mural, acrylic on Polytab, 

12 ft. 6 ¾ in. × 26 ft. 5 ¾ in. (382.9 × 807.1 cm)

The Broad presents Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, a special exhibition of the artist’s multidimensional work, adapted from its original presentation at the U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, where Jeffrey Gibson was the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo exhibition. Gibson’s first single-artist museum exhibition in Southern California, The Broad’s presentation includes over thirty artworks joyously affirming the artist’s radically inclusive vision. The exhibition highlights Gibson’s distinct use of geometric design and saturated color alongside references to 19th and 20th century foundational American documents and modern music, critiquing systemic injustices and imagining a more equitable future.

Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me borrows its title from the Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s poem “Ȟe Sápa,” which contemplates Indigeneity using a playful geometric format. Like Long Soldier, Gibson probes the visceral feeling of belonging. Across ten paintings, seven sculptures, eight flags, three murals, and one video installation, Jeffrey Gibson honors the multiplicity of identity. Museum galleries morph into kaleidoscopic environments of Gibson’s paintings.

Jeffrey Gibson 

THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY 

GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE 

OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG, 2024 

Acrylic on canvas, glass beads, plastic beads, 

inset in a custom wood frame

244.8 x 194cm (96 3/8 x 76 3/8in)

The Broad has acquired Gibson’s 2024 painting THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG, which was first presented at the Venice Biennale. Incorporating his signature use of patterned text, radiating color, and glass beads, the painting directly quotes a letter written in 1902 by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to a school superintendent in Central California, urging Native school children to cut their hair and assimilate into white Eurocentric modes of dress and appearance. The painting transforms historical oppression into both an opposition to tyranny and a celebration of cultural identity.

The Broad’s presentation includes two additional artworks first displayed together in Gibson’s 2020 Brooklyn Museum exhibition, When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks. A monumental bronze from the museum’s collection by Charles Cary Rumsey titled The Dying Indian (1900s) wears newly commissioned moccasins by John Little Sun Murie titled I’M GONNA RUN WITH EVERY MINUTE I CAN BORROW (2019). The Roberta Flack lyrics featured from the 1971 song See You Then are also spelled in the beadwork on the moccasins. These works speak to overarching themes in the space in which to place me, whether directly engaging in America’s past and present, paying tribute to histories of resistance, and boldly celebrating belonging, while bringing into this dialogue the topic of monumental sculpture as a mode of US historytelling.

“Jeffrey Gibson imbues unabashed radiant color into his paintings, murals, sculpture and video installations, signaling through his art that frank examination of difficult truths can be affirmative expressions of hope, identity and beauty,” said Joanne Heyler, Founding Director of The Broad. She added, “We are proud to be bringing this groundbreaking work to Los Angeles, directly from the Venice Biennale, where for the first time an Indigenous artist represented the United States, and we hope our audiences will be dazzled by the joy they convey and the belief in the resilience of community the works represent.”

Gibson’s practice celebrates individuals and communities who have maintained their dignity and traditions in impossible circumstances. His work reflects his admiration and respect for the generations of Indigenous makers who have come before him, situating his work within art histories that have previously excluded Native artists, and in the footsteps of postwar painters and printmakers such as Corita Kent, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Andy Warhol. Jeffrey Gibson uses recognizable language and images and unsettles the beliefs that might typically be associated with them.

“Developing this project for the Venice Biennale made me interrogate my relationship with the United States as an Indigenous person,” said Jeffrey Gibson. "I wanted to showcase that complexity while celebrating the resilience and joy present in the liberation stories and legacies of Indigenous makers. The show is about turning margin and center inside out, putting topics and people who have been pushed aside in the spotlight. I’m excited for the project to reach audiences in Los Angeles—in a way it’s coming home, from representing the country on an international stage to speaking to histories that are part of our lived experiences here in the U.S.”

“Across the exhibition’s diverse media, Jeffrey Gibson engages a wide range of texts, from foundational legal documents to quotes from civil rights activists, poems by Indigenous authors, and pop song lyrics,” said Sarah Loyer, Curator and Exhibitions Manager. “Kaleidoscopic colors and geometric forms are combined with these references to create an installation that at once pays tribute to histories of resistance in the United States and expresses the relational nature of identity and belonging, all articulated in a style that is vivacious and optimistic.”

On view are towering ceramic sculptures like WE WANT TO BE FREE (2024), made with colorful nylon fringe, tin jingles, and steel. Standing at nine-feet tall, the figure’s torso spells out its title in beads as a political demand, referencing the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first federal law to define citizenship and claim all citizens equal under the law. Alongside its companion sculpture The Enforcer (2024), the two figures possess an ancestral presence to serve as protective guardians.

The Broad’s exhibition also includes geometric mixed-media paintings in Gibson’s distinct and internationally celebrated style. The large-scale mixed media painting ACTION NOW ACTION IS ELOQUENCE (2024) references Congressman Emmanuel Celler’s words to his fellow representatives during a session of Congress in 1964 when they were voting on the Civil Rights Act. The landmark civil rights legislation was signed into law that day, and outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in the United States. The surface is adorned with a beaded, heart-shaped bag and sash made by an Indigenous Columbia River Plateau or Crow artist, acknowledging a lineage of unnamed Indigenous makers and extending a living Native art history.

The mural BIRDS FLYING HIGH YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL (2024) borrows lyrics from the song Feeling Good, originally composed by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse and made famous by the American singer Nina Simone in 1965, an anthem for freedom and justice during the Civil Rights era. Synchronized, abstract avian shapes are centered between the title’s geometric text and a glowing yellow sun in the background. This mural exemplifies Gibson’s ability to demonstrate how history informs our present, locating significant moments of collective power, persistence, and strength amidst oppression.

Jeffrey Gibson collaborates with The Broad on a dynamic slate of programming. The relationship between art and community is central to Gibson’s practice. These performances, talks, and workshops create spaces for recognition and response, inviting audiences to engage more deeply with his work. 

Born in Colorado in 1972, interdisciplinary artist JEFFREY GIBSON is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent. Gibson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and his Master of Arts in painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. Throughout his career, Jeffrey Gibson has centered Indigenous and LGBTQ+ perspectives, exploring cultural authenticity, stereotypes of Native people, and how aesthetics circulate amongst different groups. Vibrant colors, geometric patterns and found objects are common throughout his art, resulting in a distinct visual language that celebrates interconnectedness and assemblage.

Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me was first presented by Portland Art Museum, Oregon, and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico at the United States Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, the 60th International Art Exhibition (April 20, 2024 through November 24, 2024); commissioned by Louis Grachos, Phillips Executive Director, SITE Santa Fe; commissioned and curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art, Portland Art Museum and Abigail Winograd, Independent Curator. 

The Broad’s presentation is organized by Sarah Loyer, Curator and Exhibitions Manager, with the participation of Abigail Winograd.

THE BROAD

221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.thebroad.org

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Tierra Madre @ Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith 

Tierra Madre

Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

May 1 – June 20, 2025

Garth Greenan Gallery announced Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Tierra Madre, an exhibition of works on paper, paintings, and one large-scale sculpture at 545 West 20th Street.The solo exhibition is the artist’s first with the gallery since her death in January of this year. The show features a selection of drawings from the mid-’90s that harken back to the artist’s childhood, as well as a series of paintings that engaged her up to her final weeks.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s twelve-foot bronze, Trade Canoe: Making Medicine II (2024–2025), is the last of a series she first began, in painting form, in the early-’90s. Smith recalled accounts of older Native Americans scarred from the “gifts,” like blankets, brought by settlers in canoes. It was under the guise of trade that these settlers dealt many of their deadliest blows, from smallpox to land expropriation. In the work, these barbed gifts—from syrup-flavored coffees to Christian sacramentals—are piled into a final canoe for symbolic return.

In Memories of Childhood #10 (1994), Smith foregrounds a charcoal drawing of a child. Her fingerpainted rainbow is declared “state of the art” by a nearby newspaper clipping. Smith honed her iconic mixing of text and image during this critical period. The work is packed with youthful optimism and possibility: “Pow!” and “You’ve come to the right place,” read other fragments of text. The child’s world is furnished with sustenance like Sweetgrass and Bitterroot, given in boththeir common and taxonomic names. Yet, the work also nods to perils and difficulty. The child, occupying the crucifix-shaped cutout at the center of the composition, is being inducted into a “School of hard knocks.” A human brain is wantonly carved into its phrenological parts. The divine potential of childhood meets the hard limits of a confused social world.

In Tierra Madre: Amy Bowers Cordalis (2024–2025), a female figure floats in the center of the composition with her palms facing outward. Plentiful salmon arch above her head—perhaps a reference to Cordalis’s conservation work on the Klamath river. In Tierra Madre: Maria Curie (2024–2025), the female is armless, but connected to all manner of symbolic forms: skulls, limbs, leaves, and horses. The compositions call to mind da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a comparison that Jaune Quick-to-See Smith made explicit in her 1992 The Red Mean: Self-Portrait. In contrast to da Vinci’s elevation of the singular, ideal (male) figure as the “measure of all things,” Smith positions the abstracted female form as the personification of nature itself, rather than a yardstick for creation. While each painting honors a specific woman, many of the Tierra Madres are faceless, egoless. For her decades of ceaseless advocacy for Native artists, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith no doubt belongs among this pantheon.

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH

Born in 1940 in St. Ignatius, Montana, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. In 1980, she earned an MFA from the University of New Mexico. After the late 1970s, Smith had over 50 solo exhibitions, including at Kornblee Gallery (1979, New York), Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (1990, New York), Steinbaum Krauss Gallery (1992, 1995, 1998, New York), and Jan Cicero Gallery (2000 and 2002, Chicago). In 2004, the Milton Hershey School Art Museum (Hershey, Pennsylvania) opened Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Made in America, which traveled to Keene State College (Keene, New Hampshire). In 2023, she became the first Native artist to be given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum when they mounted Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map—the most comprehensive exhibit of the artist’s work to date.

Quick-to-See Smith received numerous awards, such as the Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, New York, 1987; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters Grant, 1996; the Women’s Caucus for the Arts Lifetime Achievement, 1997; the College Art Association Women’s Award, 2002; Governor’s Outstanding New Mexico Women’s Award, 2005; the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2005; Visionary Woman Award, Moore College, Pennsylvania, 2011; Elected to the National Academy of Art, New York, 2011; Living Artist of Distinction Award, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 2012; NAEA Ziegfeld Lecture Award, 2014; the Woodson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015; a United States Artists fellowship in 2020; an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 2021; an Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2022; and the Artists’ Legacy Foundation Artist Award in 2023, among many others. She holds four honorary doctorates from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts College of Art, and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Quick-to-See Smith’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; Museum of Modern Art, Quito, Ecuador; the Museum of Mankind, Vienna, Austria; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others.

Stephen Friedman Gallery, now the co-representative of the artist’s estate with Garth Greenan Gallery, will present a solo exhibition in London this June. Fruitmarket (Edinburgh, UK) will also mount Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Wilding in November—the first posthumous museum exhibition of her work.

GARTH GREENAN GALLERY

545 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.garthgreenan.com

Contemporary Native American Art @ Phillips New York - "New Terrains: Contemporary Native American Art" - Artists & Artworks Hightlights

New Terrains: 

Contemporary Native American Art

Phillips New York 

5 – 23 January 2024

Cara Romero

Water Memory, 2015

78 x 78 in.

© Cara Romero / Courtesy of Phillips

Phillips presents the exhibition New Terrains: Contemporary Native American Art, curated by Bruce Hartman, James Trotta-Bono, and Tony Abeyta. The exhibition traces the influences of Modernism, Post-War, and Pop Art, contextualizing the evolution of contemporary Native American art from the mid-20th to early 21st centuries. Showcasing over 60 artists across seven decades, the works reflect the socio-political and artistic periods of their creation. Embracing new ideas and expressions, Native American art continues to evolve, with established, emerging, and under-recognized artists sharing their unique visions of Indigenous artistic identity. Full artist list following.

Each curator have garnered considerable recognition within the museum, artist, or private arenas. They have secured numerous, iconic works by a number of the most significant and highly sought-after contemporary Native American artists to date. Dozens of these artists have recently been featured in one-person or group exhibitions at major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Many of these works have here-to-fore not been publicly exhibited, nor have they been made available to collectors, foundations, or museums for acquisition.

Cara Romero, an outstanding contemporary artist-photographer of Chemehuevi descent, seamlessly intersperses narratives of identity, memory, and the intrinsic relationship between land and people. Currently based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Romero's connection to the Southwest profoundly influences her work. Included in the exhibition is one of her most compelling masterpieces, Water Memory, in a never-before-seen format – a monumental 78” x 78”, edition of 1. This particular artwork encapsulates Romero’s dedicated exploration of cultural imprint and its deep connection to spirituality and the environment. The striking image can be interpreted as a metaphor for immersion in ancestral knowledge and the retention of cultural heritage despite external pressures and societal shifts. Water Memory can be found in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Autry Museum, LACMA, Palm Springs Art Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, The Hood Museum, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Montclair Art Museum, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and among prominent private collections.

Dana Claxton

Easy Rider NDN, 2022

59.5” x 78.75” x 7”

© Dana Claxton / Courtesy of Phillips

Dana Claxton (b. 1959) utilizes photography, film, video, and performance to explore colonial histories of the United States & Canada, along with issues of Native representation. Her photographs challenge pervasive stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, often employing humor to contradict popularly held views and depictions. Her works can also evoke inspiration and affirmation, asserting First Nations resilience, survival, and identity. Claxton's commanding, large-scale, backlit color transparency depicts fellow artist Iikaakskitowa against a green background, replete with a buffalo skull and lowrider bicycle. She refers to such works as "fireboxes," rather than "lightboxes."

Kent Monkman

Death of Adonis, 2010

72” x 120”

© Kent Monkman / Courtesy of Phillips

Kent Monkman (b. 1965) is one of the most provocative North American Indigenous artists. He is also one of the most acclaimed and sought after. Revisiting Western genres of art, such as Albert Bierstadt's "The Last of the Buffalo," Monkman sexualizes, decolonizes, and Indigenizes Bierstadt's iconic depiction. In "The Death of Adonis" he inserts a dying, white cowboy cradled by a tearful Miss Chief Eagle Testicle (Monkman's alter ego). Monkman has subverted and reclaimed Bierstadt's mythologized narrative by introducing Indigenous and queer participants. This masterful and monumental painting echoes the exact dimensions of Bierstadt's work.

Oscar Howe

Double Woman (Winyan Nupa), 1962

25” x 21 6/16” (Art) / 39 11/16” x 36 1/16” (Framed)

© The Estate of Oscar Howe / Courtesy of Phillips

Oscar Howe (1915-1983) is among the most highly regarded figures in the cannon of Native American Art. His contribution to the trajectory of stylistic approaches is unparalleled. Double Woman masterfully depicts the female figure suspended in a womb-like bundle of swirling energy. Howe’s work is the most scarce of all his contemporaries and this relatively large, published example is a genuine masterpiece from his most mature period.

George Morrison

Summer Spectrum II, 1958

19” x 50”

© The Estate of George Morrison / Courtesy of Phillips

George Morrison (1919-2000) a Post-War artist, quickly became a regarded figure in New York. He made friendships with and worked alongside Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Louise Nevelson. Morrison showed regularly in group shows and had nine solo exhibitions between 1948 and 1960 at Grand Central Moderns Gallery. Summer Spectrum II is an early, seminal example defined by color field variations built from impasto layers of abstraction that predate later delineated horizon landscapes which emerged in his career. Examples of work from this era can be found in the collections of The Whitney, others.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

My Heart Belongs to Daddy, 1998

60 x 50 in.

© Jaune Quick-to-See Smith / Courtesy of Phillips

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, is a pioneering force in contemporary Native American art. Quick-to-See Smith’s long and prestigious career has experienced an explosive rise over the past number of years. The artist’s activities have recently led to a highly acclaimed solo retrospective at The Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC this past Spring, 2023. Following this and currently on view, Quick-to-See Smith has curated a landmark exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington DC, the institution’s first show of Contemporary Native American Art in 70 Years. In her major work titled My Heart Belongs to Daddy, the artist excavates the past through painting, mixed media, and collage. My Heart Belongs to Daddy delivers a poignant and thought-provoking critique on cultural appropriation, rather than acculturation, and the commodification of Native American imagery.

Marie Watt

Trek (Pleiades), 2014

76 x 118 in.

© Marie Watt / Courtesy of Phillips

Marie Watt, a Seneca artist, infuses her creative endeavors with a strong sense of community, heritage, and storytelling. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Watt draws from her Indigenous perspective and personal experiences to create art that bridges the gap between tradition and contemporary expression. Her work encompasses a diverse range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, and most notably, large-scale textiles that serve as vessels for collective memory and cultural narratives. Watt's important work from 2014, Trek (Pleiades), hangs as a monumental testament to the power of communal storytelling. Through meticulous stitching, the artist combines disparate elements imbued with historical and symbolic significance. Her use of blankets carries a cultural weight, symbolizing warmth, comfort, and inter-personal bonds within Indigenous communities. Throughout Watt's rise in the art world, marked by numerous accolades and exhibitions in prestigious galleries and museums, she remains deeply rooted in her community. Watt engages in community-driven projects, workshops, and educational initiatives, aiming to amplify Indigenous perspectives and empower the next generation of artists.

Calvin Toney

Untitled Red Background Textile, 2022

101.5 x 69.5 in.

© Calvin Toney / Courtesy of Phillips

Born in 1987 in Fort Defiance, Arizona, Navajo artist Calvin Toney currently resides and works near Salina, Arizona. He hails from a long and rich lineage of matriarchal artists. Toney’s grandmother (Beth Bitsuie), mother, and aunt are all renowned weavers. It was with these women that he perfected his weaving skills. The extraordinary Navajo weavings of the late 19th century, most especially weavings employing intensely colorful Germantown yarns, have greatly inspired Toney. A meeting in 2019 with Santa Fe based artist Ken Williams Jr. led to a commission to create a very colorful work and ensured Toney’s subsequent weavings would be a riot of color, fearlessly applied. Toney views his weavings as paintings and his influences are myriad, ranging from Italian Renaissance & Modernist architects, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Faberge, and famed Hopi potter, Nampeyo. His large-scale works, such as those in the exhibition, suit Toney's ambitions to envision and express elaborate, encompassing designs. 

Charles Loloma

Tufa Cast 14k Gold Hopi Maiden Pendant, 1974

5 x 2 x 1 in.

© Charles Loloma / Courtesy of Phillips

Charles Loloma is one of the most renowned and influential Native American artists in America. Often referred to as The Godfather of contemporary Native American jewelry, his designs were inspired by the iconography of his tribal ceremonialism as well as the cultural origins of the Hopi living in the arid desert of northern Arizona. Loloma's avidly collected pieces are featured in major institutions and were in the prestigious collections of the late Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lyndon B. Johnson, and the Queen of Denmark, among many others. Loloma’s innovations in the field set the tone for Native jewelry of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One of his most important and famed creations, an 18K gold and Lander blue turquoise pendant, is included in this exhibition. This turquoise is one of the largest and highest gem-grade stones to come from one of the rarest turquoise mines in the world. The stone was chosen and meticulously hand carved by Loloma to represent the portrait of a sacred Hopi corn maiden. The maiden herself is a single manifestation created by pouring molten gold into a mold made from a Tufa carving, a traditional practice used in Native American jewelry.

Teresa Baker

On a Slant Village, 2022

102” x 112 ½”

© Teresa Baker / Courtesy of Phillips

Teresa Baker's (b. 1985) desire to circumvent the inherent parameters of traditional canvas led her to discover - quite by accident - bright blue AstroTurf at Home Depot. By her own admission she "was blown away." Baker relates her quirky abstract forms to the vast expanses of the Northern Plains, remembered from her youth. She now conjoins the use of synthetic materials with organic ones (buckskin, willow buffalo hide, and parfleche). Baker’s enigmatic constructions are uncannily alluring, visceral, and compelling.

Eric Paul Riege

jaatloh4Ye’iitsoh [7-8], 2022

132” x 36” x 24”

© Eric Paul Riege / Courtesy of Phillips

Eric Paul Riege (b. 1994) draws inspiration from the generations of Navajo weavers in his family. His works address his philosophies of spirituality, harmony, and interconnectedness. Riege's woven sculptures, wearable art, and durational performances create immersive spaces, as well as intimate objects rendered monumental. Many of his oversized soft sculptures reference Native American/Navajo jewelry. Riege's giant earrings, "jaatloh4Ye'iitsoh(7-8)," are simultaneously unnerving, endearing, and challenging. He strives for his work to "exist as a kind of forest, the objects acting like trees that are swaying."

Fritz Scholder

Sitting Indian, 1972

80” x 68”

© The Estate of Fritz Scholder / Courtesy of Phillips

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005), one of the most critical Native American artists of the 20th Century, was a breakthrough force that stood apart from all of his peers as someone who could bring the concept of “real” Indian to contemporary art dialogue. Scholder's work is frightfully compelling. Through his manipulation of the dichotomy between tradition and modernism, Scholder wrought a completely unique artistic voice and vision. To this day, it remains fresh, bold, and cutting edge. His most iconic works deal with dominant Colonial misunderstandings of cultural identity and Sitting Indian is a monumental and iconic from this highly accomplished period.

Geralyn Montano

The Web of Transformation, 2021-2022

72” x 72”

© Geralyn Montano / Courtesy of Phillips

Geralyn Montano (b. 1961) is inspired by personal experiences relating to cultural and feminist themes. She expresses powerful, deeply emotional ideas and confronts controversial and taboo subjects. The Web of Transformation reflects upon the dark days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Montano’s work is intended as commentary on complicated social, environmental, and political issues - particularly those impacting the indigenous community. Her disparate images question how we are interconnected and interdependent on each other and on nature.

Nicholas Galanin

Ascension, 2022

72.5 x 52 7.8 x 53 in.

Courtesy the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York

Nicholas Galanin is a conceptual artist working from his studio in Sitka, Alaska. His practice traverses a vast spectrum of medias which investigate and converse on ideas of land, identity, repatriation, cultural authenticity, extinction, technology, and the often-conflicting interactions and perceptions between Native and Anglo cultures. Galanin’s work challenges institutions to reconsider their role in telling Indigenous people’s stories. Galanin is one of the most esteemed Native American artists working today. His work has been prominently exhibited in many museums and private collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada, SITE Santa Fe, the Denver Art Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Ascension, a decorated ladder with wings blending consumer visuals and Indigenous symbols, embodies diverse interpretations within its form. According to the artist, “to ascend means to rise to a position of importance and references the Christian belief in Christ’s ascension to heaven after resurrection. In this light, the sculpture is a kind of lens for considering the ways Indigenous culture is made into a tool for climbing, particularly by those who do not belong to it.”

Craig George

Liberty, 2023

24 x 36 in.

© Craig George / Courtesy of Phillips 

Craig George frames his narratives in the context of urbanity, giving voice to questions about assimilation, colonization, and a persistent survival that evidences his connection to rich tribal sources. George grew up on the Navajo reservation, however, due to the Navajo Indian Relocation Act of 1956, his family was relocated to Los Angeles. During the summer he would reconnect with his homelands and the perspectives of a traditional life. Many of George’s paintings reflect his relationship to specific neighborhoods in Los Angeles where he depicts a place of urbanity with the soundtrack of hip hop, gentrification, and downtown LA’s colorful urban edge - streets marked with the vernacular of territorial graffiti. His figures, often on bicycles, are always moving, as if enroute to ceremony, dressed in customary attire. Navajos, Apaches, and Pueblos alike were a part of his community. He has sought a connection to their homelands, while living amidst the chaos of a never-ending urban sprawl. In the words of the artist, "I merge my worlds into one place, one where I am at peace with my beliefs and my environment. Home is a place where you take your beliefs to, so they will always be there.” Several of his works on view were created for this exhibition - his first New York showing.

Michael Kabotie

Meditation, 1989

19.5 x 15.5 in.

© Michael Kabotie / Courtesy of Phillips

Michael Kabotie was a Hopi painter, silversmith, sculptor, and poet. His father, Fred Kabotie, was also a nationally renowned artist. Kabotie grew up in the village of Shongopovi, Arizona, however, when the Hopi reservation high school closed, he moved and graduated from Haskell Indian School, Lawrence, Kansas, in 1961. In 1967, Kabotie was initiated into the Hopi Wuwutsim Society. During this ceremony, he was given the Hopi name Lomawywesa (Walking in Harmony) with which he subsequently signed his work. Kabotie joined with four other Hopi artists in the early 1970s to found a group called Artist Hopid, dedicated to new translations of Hopi art forms and serving as cultural emissaries to the world at large. He lectured and exhibited widely both in America and abroad. Kabotie’s dynamically composed and richly hued paintings evidence his fascination with imagery derived from Hopi kiva murals, basketry motifs, and abstract, contemporary designs. Meditation beautifully encapsulates Kabotie's seamless integration of abstract and representational elements. A highly stylized figure, seemingly cubistic, is merged with traditional Hopi motifs and patterns. Representative of his most distinctive and visually compelling works, Kabotie’s use of color is unabashed, imaginative, and expressive.

Sarah Sense

Hinushi 9, 2023

40 x 80 in.

© Sarah Sense / Courtesy of Phillips

Sarah Sense (Chitimacha & Choctaw) is from Sacramento, California and received her BFA from California State University Chico and her MFA from Parsons the New School for Design in New York. Her early works, executed through photo-weaving (employing traditional family basket making techniques and patterns), are based on Chitimacha landscapes in Louisiana and Hollywood’s interpretations of Native North America. Subsequently, her work has reflected her extensive research, residencies, and travel in South America, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Ireland. The artworks in Sense's series, Hinushi, are composed from a series of landscape photographs of ancestral homelands integrated with colonial maps of the Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico, and Choctaw allotment land. Following removal from their ancestral land, Choctaws endured an arduous and deadly walk to "Indian Territory" – now known as Oklahoma. Entwined in the artworks are maps from Oil News (1920) with Broken Bow, Oklahoma landscapes. Choctaw basket patterns are woven through these maps and images, joining the land with the colonial maps as an act of reclamation. As stated by Sense, "Cutting the paper into strips and opening them, moving them apart to create spaces for differing interpretations and re-inserting indigenous patterns from the very same locations where the ancestors were removed, taken and killed, is a process of decolonizing." Visually and conceptually compelling, they are the expression of an intensely personal, yet universally applicable, journey of discovery, revelation, and reconciliation.

FULL ARTIST LIST

Alex Janvier

Diane O'Leary

Jeffrey Gibson

Patrick Swazo Hinds

Allan Houser

Diego Romero

Jerry Ingram

Pop Chalee

Anita Fields

Edgar Heap of Birds

Joe Herrera

Preston Singletary

Anna Tsouhlarakis

Emma Lewis

Julie Buffalohead

Rabbett Before Horses Strickland

Arthur Amiotte

Emmi Whitehorse

Kay WalkingStick

Rhonda Holy Bear

Billy Soza War Soldier

Eric Paul Riege

Ken Williams

Richard Glazer Danay

Brad Kahlhamer

Esteban Cabeza de Baca

Kent Monkman

Sarah Sense

Calvin Toney

Fritz Scholder

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun

Starr Hardridge

Cannupa Hanska Luger

George Alexander

Margaret Jacobs

TC Cannon

Cara Romero

George Morrison

Marie Watt

Teresa Baker

Carol Emarthle Douglas

Geralyn Montano

McKee Platero

Tony Abeyta

Caroline Monnet

Grey Cohoe

Michael Kabotie

Tony Da

Charles Loloma

Harry Fonseca

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Valjean Hessing

Craig George

Helen Hardin

Narciso Abeyta

Virgil Ortiz

Dana Claxton

James Lavadour

Nicholas Galanin

Yatika Starr Fields

David Bradley

Jamie Okuma

Norman Akers

Dempsey Bob

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Oscar Howe

PHILLIPS NEW YORK

432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

www.phillips.com

Kay WalkingStick and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith @ Saint Louis Art Museum

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

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110

www.slam.org