Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Homeland, 2017. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 1/4 x 72 1/8 (122.6 x 183.2 cm). Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; bequest of John Mortimer Schiff by exchange 2018:12. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Photograph by Tom Loonan and Brenda Bieger for Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
ID: This is a rectangular painting of a fractured map of the United States of America. Lines radiate outward from Montana, like a bullseye. Bands of pink, blue, red, yellow, green, and brown alternate. The paint has a drippy, gestural look.
Join your fellow ARLIS/NA New York members for a curator-guided tour of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map at the Whitney Museum of American Art on Thursday, July 13th at 4:00 PM. The tour will be led by Laura Phipps, Associate Curator, and Caitlin Chaisson, Curatorial Project Assistant. After the tour, please join Managing Librarian Ivy Blackman and Benjamin and Irma Weiss Director of Research Resources Farris Wahbeh for a visit to the Frances Mulhall Achilles Library, and a brief discussion of the library resources assembled in support of this exhibition. Following the museum visit, we will end the evening with a happy hour in the garden of Entwine. Members who cannot make it to the tour are welcome to join for refreshments, expected to begin at 6:00 PM.
This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.
Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.
Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.
The tour will be capped at 20 participants and admission to the museum is free with your registration. Registration is limited to members of ARLIS/NA's New York Chapter. We will gather for the tour inside the Lobby, located at 99 Gansevoort Street. The museum is open until 6:00 PM that day.
Entwine is located at 765 Washington Street, a short walk from the museum. All are welcome to the happy hour; feel free to bring non-members, co-workers, friends, etc.
Thank you for considering, and if you have any questions about the event, feel free to reach out to info@arlisny.org.
