60.125″x50.125″; acrylic, newspaper, paper, cotton, printing ink, chalk, and graphite
pencil on canvas; 1994. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Dorothee
Peiper-Riegraf and Hinrich Peiper in memory of Arlene LewAllen 2007.88.
©Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map
at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, New York, USA
19 April-13 August 2023
“Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map” is a recognition of a groundbreaking artist’s work. For nearly five decades, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, has charted an exceptional and unorthodox career as an artist, activist, curator, educator, and advocate. The exhibition highlights how Smith uses her drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures to flip commonly held historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the dominant culture.
“Memory Map” is the largest and most comprehensive showcase of Smith’s career, featuring more than one hundred thirty works. Organized thematically across the Museum’s third and fifth floors, the exhibition offers a new framework to consider contemporary Native American art, addressing how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation. It celebrates the artist’s dedication to creativity and community and emphasizes her deep political commitments, essential and potent reminders of our responsibilities to the earth and each other.
58.5625″x57.625″; lithograph, photolithograph, and collage; 2002. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Dorothee Peiper-Riegraf and Hinrech Peiper 2006.287. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Smith engages with modern and contemporary modes of artmaking, from an idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to American Pop art to Neo-Expressionism. She reimagines these artistic traditions with concepts rooted in her own cultural practice to examine contemporary life in America and interpret it through Native ideology. Since the 1970s, Smith has built a visual language that includes recurring imagery, such as trade canoes, horses, bison, and flags, and common materials like newspaper, fabric, and commercial objects. Throughout her works, she addresses urgent concerns of ecological disaster, the misreading of history, and the genocide of Native Americans, while also evoking the power of kinship and education.
two panels: 60″x100″ overall; oil, paper, newspaper, fabric, and charcoal on canvas; 1993. High Museum of Art, Atlanta; purchase with funds provided by AT&T NEW ART/NEW VISIONS and with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton, Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Photograph courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
This exhibition is organized by Laura Phipps, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with Caitlin Chaisson, Curatorial Project Assistant.
(text adapted from material provided by the museum)
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