The image displays curving lines and abstract shapes on a vibrant blue canvas. The shapes include loops, arcs, spiral shapes, and circular forms. Crisscrossing lines, zigzags, and waves give the impression of floating bubbles or planets. Some patterns resemble comet trails or constellations, while smaller intricate designs suggest delicate lace or microscopic organisms in a vast blue space. On the top and bottom edges of the canvas, the blue background fades into white.
Emmi Whitehorse, Fog Bank, 2020, mixed media on paper on canvas, William A. Clark Fund, 2022.41.1

Native American Artists

Across the United States, Native American artists are making trailblazing art. These contemporary creators connect Native histories with the present moment. Learn more about their work along with artists who came before them.

Selected works

  • The image displays curving lines and abstract shapes on a vibrant blue canvas. The shapes include loops, arcs, spiral shapes, and circular forms. Crisscrossing lines, zigzags, and waves give the impression of floating bubbles or planets. Some patterns resemble comet trails or constellations, while smaller intricate designs suggest delicate lace or microscopic organisms in a vast blue space. On the top and bottom edges of the canvas, the blue background fades into white.
  • A map of the United States has black outlines for the states and is loosely painted, mostly in lemon yellow, but there are also streaks in indigo blue, turquoise, crimson, brick red, pink, pine green, and marigold orange. Some streaks drip down the canvas within the map and onto the azure-blue background surrounding the map. Snippets of black text against a white background, like newspaper or magazine clippings, are arranged to create a loose band from the upper left corner, in Washington state, to the lower right, in Florida. They read, "No mas.", "Finito.", "Ciao", "Au revoir.", "This is it.", "All gone.", "Adieu.", "Hasta la vista.", "Sayonara.", "Dasvidaniya.", "Kaput baby.", "Shalom.", "Toodeloo.", "Keep it real.", "Hit the road.", "Ta ta.", "Bye-bye.", "Das Ende.", "No more.", "Going going gone.", "Auf Wiedersehen.", "All the best.", "Adios.", "Take it easy.", "Peace.", "Cheerio.", "Later alligator.", "Hang loose.", "The end.", "Last one.", "See ya'.", "Cheers.", "That's it.", and "Finis."
  • Two vertically oriented, rectangular canvases are stacked over each other, and a dart board is affixed to the uppermost edge. The canvases are collaged with newspaper articles, headlines, black-and-white pamphlets, cartoons, comic books, illustrations of animals like chipmunks and buffalo, and a triangular pennant celebrating the “Washington Redskins” as “Super Bowl XXVI CHAMPIONS.” Streaks and drips of red paint create horizontal bands across the panels, separated by bands streaked in yellow. Text is visible throughout, including the title of the pamphlet, which repeats across the composition: “Community Service and Interest Courses/Workshop.” Headlines include “The Heist,” “For People Who Inherited Brains Instead of Wealth,” “Defying the Stereotypes,” and “Destroy The Myth.” The comic is titled “Son of Tomahawk,” and fliers are titled “Help Locate Handicapped Indian Children” and “2nd Annual Flathead Reservation Culture Fair.” One piece of blue fabric with white polka dots is along the bottom edge of the top panel and a piece of red fabric with white dots is along the bottom edge of the lower panel. The outer band of the dart board is smeared with red, and darts with red, blue, yellow, or green feathers line the upper perimeter of the board.

Stories

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A black and white photograph shows a man with greyish hair standing against a wall of stacked cubes of wood in different shades. He is shown from the waist up. He is turned to the right and looks to the left. He rests his left hand on his waist, with his elbow bent. He has a serious expression.

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The Minnesota painter merged abstract expressionism with traditional Ojibwe values. 

Article:  Emmi Whitehorse Paints the Harmonies of Her Homelands

How the Diné artist's serene paintings "tell the story of knowing land over time."

Video:  Artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Takes on Pop Art

New York Times art critic Aruna D’Souza discusses Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's 1992 work Target. 

Article:  Called Back: On George Morrison, Land Acknowledgement, and Returning Home

In her tribute to the late George Morrison, Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson asks, how can Indigenous artists be called back to the land?

Video:  John Hitchcock’s "Impact vs. Influence” Fuses Family, Military, and Nature

John Hitchcock's (Comanche/Kiowa/European descent) work Impact vs. Influence uses symbols like animal heads, tanks, helicopters, birds, butterflies, and an hourglass to speak to the complexity of our shared environment and the “hopeful small moments” inside that chaos.

Video:  John Hitchcock’s Mesmerizing Art Installation From Start to Finish

Watch artist John Hitchcock and our dedicated exhibition team transform an empty gallery into a wall of wonder as they install Hitchcock’s work Impact vs. Influence.

Video:  The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans Exhibition Trailer

Watch to learn more about the nearly 50 living Native artists practicing across the United States featured in the 2023–2024 exhibition The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans.

Article:  What Did We Eat Before Colonization? A Native Chef and Artist Connect Over Plant Knowledge

Chef and Native American food historian Loretta Barett Oden reflects on her friendship with artist G. Peter Jemison.

Video:  Marie Watt Explores the Story of Turtle Island

Marie Watt, an artist and member of the Seneca Nation, takes us into the story of Turtle Island and its connection to her work, family, and Native American history. 

Video:  Prioritizing Indigenous Communities and Voices: Curating in This Time

Wyeth Lecture in American Art presented by Patricia Marroquin Norby (2021)

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Tall, billowing, lavender-purple and shell-pink clouds line the distant horizon over a vast plain of flat grassy land in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us to the lower left, a tree with a gnarled trunk and round, sage-green canopy sits mostly in shadow. A river curves from near the tree to cut across most of the landscape in a tight S-shape. One plump haystack, shaped like a giant teardrop, sits near a curve of the river in the vivid, lemon-lime field, to our left of center. One brown and one white cow graze across the river, to our right. Above tawny-brown hills lining the horizon, sunlight from our left turns the tops of the band of clouds pale pink, and the undersides are grayish-purple. The sky above is turquoise. The artist signed the lower right corner, “M J Heade.”

Environment

Artists are keen observers of the natural world. The landscapes they create capture the progression of seasons, the changing climate, and conservation concerns.