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

Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field @ National Museum of the American Indian, New York - Donovan Quintero, Tailyr Irvine, Russel Albert Daniels

Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field

National Museum of the American Indian, New York

Through March 12, 2023

National Museum of the American Indian, New York

Photo courtesy of the Museum

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York presents “Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field,” an exhibition of photo essays by three Indigenous photojournalists. “Developing Stories” was originally expected to open at the museum in March 2020 and a version of it exists as an online exhibition. 

“Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field” is a series of photo essays created by Native photojournalists in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian. Each photographer explores an issue that is of deep personal interest and touches the lives of Native people in a specific community. The essays feature compelling photography and thought-provoking insights into contemporary Native life and, in so doing, nuanced perspectives on American experiences that are largely invisible to mainstream society.

“Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field” is curated by Cecile R. Ganteaume. Collaborators Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa), Editor at Large at Grist and John Smock, director of photojournalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, provided editorial and technical expertise to the museum and photojournalists throughout the development of each photo essay.

Photo Essays 

Russel Albert Daniels (Diné descent and Ho-Chunk descent), “The Genízaro Pueblo of Abiquiú.” Daniels brings attention to a nearly 300-year-old community in New Mexico that was born out of violence and slavery. In this essay, he examines how, through annual festivals and feasts and their relationship to the land, Genízaros—detribalized descendants of freed Native American slaves—have maintained their sense of history and identity to the present day.

Tailyr Irvine (Salish and Kootenai), “Reservation Mathematics: Navigating Love in Native America.” Irvine examines the legacy of U.S. government regulations affecting Native Americans’ most personal decisions. Specifically, she focuses on the challenge blood quantum requirements (the amount of tribal affiliation in a person’s ancestry) pose for young Native American couples who want children and want them enrolled in their tribe. In early 1900s, the U.S. government began imposing this system on tribes as a means of defining and limiting citizenship. While some tribes still use this method for determining eligibility for tribal enrollment, other Native nations use documentation of a person’s descent from an enrollee on a designated tribal roll or census records.

Donovan Quintero (Diné), “The COVID-19 Outbreak in the Navajo Nation.” Photographer and journalist for the Navajo Times, Quintero explores how the pandemic affected the everyday lives of the Diné over the course of a year. The images highlight the resiliency of the Diné and the critical roles played by healthcare workers, police, council members, and unsung heroes of the pandemic.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, One Bowling Green, New York, NY 10004

americanindian.si.edu

3/11/2022 - 12/3/2023