The art of Indigenous Americans and American art history: a century of exhibitions

The indigenous arts of the United States have long stood in a vexed relationship with the canons of American art history. This brief essay covers only the highlights of this relationship, by considering some major exhibits and installations of Native art in American art museums (and, occasionally, in other exhibition spaces) during the past century. I make these comments as an art historian who has for more than three decades focused on Native American art, with some contributions to others a..

L’art des Amérindiens et l’histoire de l’art aux États-Unis : un siècle d’expositions

Les arts indigènes aux États-Unis ont longtemps entretenu une relation délicate avec les canons de l’histoire de l’art américain. Ce bref article retrace les temps forts de cette relation, en revenant sur plusieurs expositions et installations majeures d’art amérindien au sein des musées d’art américains (et, parfois, dans d’autres espaces d’exposition) au cours du siècle passé. Je m’exprime à ce sujet en tant qu’historienne de l’art, puisque depuis trente ans, mes recherches ont essentiellem..

Review of \u3ci\u3eMigrations: New Directions in Native American Art.\u3c/i\u3e Edited by Marjorie Devon

The Tamarind Institute is a well-known and well-respected venue where contemporary artists collaborate with master printmakers to realize their work in multiples, principally in limited edition lithography. In the decades since its establishment in New Mexico in 1970, artists as diverse as Elaine de Kooning, Ed Ruscha, Fritz Scholder, Judy Chicago, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, James Havard, and Jose Bedia have been in residence. As the above sample indicates, Native artists have long been a part of the collaborative mix. This volume considers the work of six Native artists who collaborated with master printmakers to produce new work: Steven Deo (Creek), Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk), Larry McNeil (Tlingit), Ryan Lee Smith (Cherokee), Star Wallowing Bull (Minnesota Chippewa), and Marie Watt (Seneca). Of interest to the readers of Great Plains Quarterly is the fact that Deo and Smith are both from Oklahoma. All six artists were featured in an exhibit at the University of New Mexico Art Gallery in 2006 which is currently touring nationally

Book Review: Treasures of Gilcrease: Selections from the Permanent Collection

All who study the visual culture of the American West are familiar with the vast holdings of the Gilcrease Museum. This excellent introduction to the museum consists of five essays on its component collections. The introduction to Thomas Gilcrease himself (1890-1962) chronicles his mixed ethnicity (born of European and Muskogee-Creek heritage, he was enrolled as a Creek) and his success in the oil business. His several decades of avidly collecting the American objects, paintings, and manuscripts that would become the Gilcrease Museum (which initially opened in San Antonio, before moving to Tulsa in 1949) is told in a lively though brief essay

Review of \u3ci\u3e Visions and Voices: Native American Painting from the Philbrook Museum of Art.\u3c/i\u3e Edited by Lydia L. Wyckoff

The Philbrook Museum in Tulsa has long been recognized as one of the major forces in the shaping of twentieth-century Native American painting, as well as one of the major repositories of such paintings, many of them winning entries in the well-known Philbrook Annual juried exhibit, which began in 1946. With the publication of the lavishly illustrated Visions and Voices, reproductions of 484 pieces from the collection, most of them painted by artists of Plains or Southwestern tribes, are now readily available, many in color. In works by such well-known figures as James Auchiah, Tonita Pena, Joe Herrera, and R. C. Gorman, as well as by relative unknowns, one sees almost the entire range of painting styles that developed in the first sixty years of the twentieth century, from the indigenous efforts at San Ildefonso Pueblo at the beginning of the century, to the Studio School in Santa Fe, and among the Kiowa Five and their descendants on the Southern Plains. A few antecedents to the twentieth-century Plains painting tradition are illustrated by several hide and muslin paintings of the late nineteenth century, including a very important muslin by the Lakota artist Standing Bear. In addition to the encyclopedic survey of traditional Native American paintings from the Plains and Southwest, a few works by artists from other regions-among them Patrick Desjarlait (Ojibwe), Florence Malewotuk (Yupik), George Morrison (Chippewa), and Fritz Scholder (Luiseno}-are also represented. The works illustrated span more than a century (ca. 1870-1984), although the post-1970 period is represented by only a small number. There are no catalogue entries for individual works, but where possible the artist\u27s own words accompany the illustrations. The editor, along with Marla Redcorn and Andrea Rogers-Henry, conducted hundreds of interviews with artists and their descendants to make this possible. Jeanne Snodgrass King, retired curator at the Philbrook, offers a brief, informative history of the Philbrook Annual in her foreword. Lydia Wyckoffs lead essay provides considerable information on the patronage of Indian painters by the Philbrook, while Ruth Blalock Jones\u27s essay on Bacone College gives an insider\u27s account of the role of one Oklahoma college in the development of several generations of Southern Plains artists. Visions and Voices is an essential volume for the library of anyone interested in the development of Native American painting in the twentieth century