June 24–September 3, 2023
Entrance in Mae M. Whittaker Gallery 212
Action/Abstraction Redefined
Modern Native Art 1940s-1970s
Abstraction has been a part of Indian artistic thinking longer than most European contemporary influences and perhaps in truer form.
-Richard West Sr.
Tsistsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne) artist, 1955
The artists featured in this exhibition challenged stereotypical expectations of Native American art in the post-1945 era. Seeking to revolutionize materials, markets, and styles associated with Native American art, they combined abstractions from ancestral textiles, ceramics, and murals with media and approaches from contemporaneous global art practices.
In the 1940s Native American artists began to explore abstract composition in studio-based practice. By the early 1960s, conferences, workshops, and tentative reforms in federal policy led to the founding of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The teaching philosophy at IAIA emphasized “cultural difference as the basis for creative expression.” This concept, articulated and institutionalized by artist and administrator Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New, promoted study of Native aesthetics and individual experimentation. Students also learned about global art history and contemporary art movements. This artistic approach sparked an outpouring of innovation.
Work by students and teachers received widespread recognition through national and international exhibitions, press, and awards. Some figures, such as T. C. Cannon and Fritz Scholder, became the most celebrated Native American artists of their generation. The success of IAIA also inspired grassroots efforts and individual careers across North America, fueling a broad movement in contemporary Native American art that continues to reverberate across the United States today.
Action/Abstraction Redefined is organized by
IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM.
Support for this exhibition is provided by Art Bridges.
Additional funding is provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Edward L. Bakewell Jr. Endowment for Special Exhibitions.
Juanita Waukazo,
Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), 1947–2013
Untitled, 1966
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHP-40 2023.143
Neil Parsons (O’mahk-Pita, Tall Eagle),
Piikani (Blackfeet), born 1938
Parfleche #32, 1965
acrylic on canvas
Bands of taupe, green, and purple form a grid structure that divides the canvas into multiple compartments housing color-blocked shapes. This painting is characteristic of the abstract, geometric style that Neil Parsons popularized at IAIA.
As the title indicates, Parsons called up histories of Native geometric abstraction, especially parfleche, or painted hide containers, and beadwork. He specifically connected his practices and techniques to the art of the Plains, where he grew up, noting, “I was drawn to Hard-Edged abstraction, which sort of sprang out of Plains Indian beadwork.”
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: BL-26 2023.198
Native Studio Abstraction: The Early Years
In the 1940s and ‘50s Indigenous studio artists began to experiment systematically with abstraction. Shifting from ancestral media, these artists used drawing and easel painting to engage international dialogues about art practice and theory.
At the time, museums and the press generally adhered to a rigid definition of Native American art. In studio painting, especially, Native artists sought to move beyond a flat style of figuration that many believed had become entrenched. University students turned to the vocabularies of early-20th century non-representational painting to propose future paths for Native art. The Indigenous artists represented here studied at art schools throughout the country, many training with leading American painters of the 1940s and ‘50s.
Each artist related studio abstraction to their Indigenous heritage in a distinct way. Some, such as George Morrison, began their careers independently of their upbringing and identity. Others, including Dick West and Joe Herrera, used abstraction to represent Indigenous cultural practice and knowledge.
Mary Sully,
Dakota (Sioux), 1896–1963
Edwin C. Hill, after 1938
colored pencil and ink
Mary Sully explored three modes of abstraction in this triptych, or three-panel artwork. At top, an arrow strikes a collection of letters. Sully created this surreal insignia for Edwin Hill, who hosted the radio program The Human Side of the News. In the central panel, she reduced the contours of the overlapping letters then repeated this motif as if designing wallpaper. Below, Sully evokes historic paintings from hide boxes made by Plains women.
Sully studied design at the University of Kansas in the 1920s before creating a series of abstract, three-panel drawings based on celebrities, such as this work.
Courtesy of the Mary Sully Foundation 2023.207a-c
Joe Hilario Herrera,
Cochiti Pueblo, 1923–2001
Untitled, 1951
oil on canvas board
These compositions may appear to lack any reference to the world beyond their frames. However, the artist understood the potential for non-naturalistic forms to convey deep meaning. Joe Hilario Herrera based his notion of “abstract symbolism” on the conventions of ancient Pueblo art forms. Herrera wrote, “The use of symbols, often reduced to near-abstractions, is as natural for the artist today as it was for his forebears, as exemplified by the prehistoric paintings, pictographs, and petroglyphs found on kiva walls and lava rocks.” In Pueblo art of the past, elemental forms convey deep religious thought. Similarly, in Herrera’s oil painting, sawtooth shapes relate to aspects of Pueblo cosmology.
Created when Herrera was an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico, these works depart from his earlier style. He previously trained in figurative painting by observing his mother, the artist Tonita Peña, and through grade school instruction at the Santa Fe Indian School.
Bequest of Raymond Jonson, Raymond Jonson Collection, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, 82.221.1363 2023.201
Joe Hilario Herrera,
Cochiti Pueblo, 1923–2001
Untitled, 1951
opaque watercolor
Bequest of Raymond Jonson, Raymond Jonson Collection, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, 82.221.1733 2023.202
Walter Richard “Dick” West, Sr.,
Tsistsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne), 1912–1996
Water Serpent, c.1951
oil on canvas
Dick West conveyed the frenzied action of a powerful spirit being, the water serpent, by arranging color and line on a flat surface. West described a similar composition from 1950. “Prominent central shapes,” he wrote, “were encircled by the spiral motion to form the center of attention.” Smaller, peripheral designs “follow the same direction of movement.”
As a master of fine arts student at the University of Oklahoma from 1949 to 1950, West adapted Indigenous motifs to “contemporary pictorial principles.” Anchoring this spatially complex picture in Indigenous knowledge, the artist chose a subject from stories told by multiple Native American groups.
Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Museum purchase, 1951.11 2023.212
George Morrison (Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo),
Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), 1919–2000
White Environ VI, c.1967
oil on canvas
The complex textures of George Morrison’s White Painting series of the mid-1960s—including White Environ VI and White Painting No. 1—result from his original impasto technique. Morrison squeezed thick layers of paint directly onto canvas and then incised organic grid designs. This ordered, systematic approach contrasts with the free-form paint application in Morrison’s 1958 work Vertical Forms with Swimmer.
Morrison described such experiments with technique as “typical of things going on in painting at the time– gestural immediacy . . . The phenomenon of paint was what the painting was really about. Rather than getting sentimentally involved with a subject, the artist was more conscious of the painting itself, and that became the painting.” Morrison created these works during a period when he lived in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, where he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHP-47 2023.154
George Morrison (Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo),
Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), 1919–2000
White Painting No. 1, 1965
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHP-72 2023.155
George Morrison (Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo),
Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), 1919–2000
White Environ VI, c.1967
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHP-47 2023.154
John Hoover,
Unangan (Aleut), 1919–2011
Untitled (#17), c.1950–60
oil on linen
Organic masses rise from a reflective plane in each of these grisaille, or gray-toned paintings. Thrown into relief by the sun or shrouded in faint moonlight, the forms resemble the rugged islands that loom near the northern shores of the Pacific Ocean.
The artist John Hoover grew up in coastal south-central Alaska. In the early 1950s, he moved to the Seattle area and returned to Alaska each summer to fish commercially. “I started oil painting and after moving to Washington, undertook a few months of fine art classes, then launched a professional type career where I painted landscapes, seascapes, etc., selling them mainly to fellow fishermen, of all things!”
By the late 1960s, Hoover turned his attention to wooden sculpture. Critical acclaim for his three-dimensional efforts elevated Hoover’s profile, leading to an invitation to teach sculpture for a term at IAIA in 1972.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: AT-42 2023.182
John Hoover,
Unangan (Aleut), 1919–2011
Untitled (#10), c.1950–60
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: AT-28 2023.151
John Hoover,
Unangan (Aleut), 1919–2011
Untitled (#12), c.1950–60
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: AT-27 2023.150
Fritz Scholder,
Luiseño, 1937–2005
The Offering, c.1957
casein, ink, and glaze on canvas
Tiny, fantastical forms straddle a chasm in the earth. At once architectural and biomorphic, these figures are made up of distinct, small-scale components. When Fritz Scholder painted The Offering he was an undergraduate at Sacramento City College. This work is typical of Scholder’s earliest known compositions, where linear forms populate moody atmospheres. He would continue to focus on landscapes through his early career as a master of fine arts student at the University of Arizona and instructor at IAIA, pushing his work in the genre to increasingly abstract realms.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: MS-78 2023.156
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Untitled, c.1941
watercolor
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-178 2023.193
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Flagstaff, c.1941
watercolor
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-155 2023.196
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Untitled (Abstract Cactus), c.1941
watercolor
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-158 2023.194
New Directions
Artist and educator Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New played a critical role in shaping the curriculum and teaching style of IAIA. After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1938, New taught painting at the Phoenix Indian School. In 1959 he spoke at “Directions in Indian Art,” a consequential conference at the University of Arizona. In 1960 and ’61, he returned to Tucson to direct the Southwestern Indian Art Project at the University, a workshop where students experimented in various mediums.
New became the first artistic director of IAIA in 1961, and its second president from 1967 to 1978. IAIA’s theoretical foundations were patterned upon the open, experimental curriculum New had established at Tucson. The textile workshop New taught at IAIA also reflected his prior experience as a successful fabric manufacturer and fashion designer, starting in 1946.
On view in this gallery are New’s early drawings, later paintings, and textiles, as well as printed cloth panels by artists who studied with him in Tucson and, later, in Santa Fe at IAIA. New’s paintings reflect his interest in patterned, sculptural forms and pulsating visual effects resulting from layered and juxtaposed colors—qualities that New originally developed in his textile practice.
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Untitled (Squares), 1968
acrylic on canvas with wood
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-23 2023.128
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Indian Beadwork, 1979
oil and metal studs on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-121 2023.195
Bold, contrasting tones reflect the “color clash” aesthetic Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New originated in his textile designs. “I think that my thing in art, as it turns out, is a feeling for fabrics and leathers and soft textures,” New said, “as opposed to putting paint on a canvas with a brush.” New operated a successful design workshop and retail outlet in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the 1940s and ‘50s.
The embedded squares of Untitled (Squares) evoke quilted fabrics and accent buttons. Similarly, in the projecting, tent-like Indian Beadwork, New treated the canvas surface as he might any other textile: to be patterned and modeled in space.
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Untitled, 1950s or 1960s
mixed media and ink on Pima cotton
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-343 2023.197
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Treebark, 1950s or 1960s
ink on cotton
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-365 2023.192
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New,
Cherokee, 1916–2002
Untitled, 1950s or 1960s
acrylic on cotton
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-9 2023.191
Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New printed these cotton textiles in Scottsdale, Arizona, through his fashion brand, Lloyd Kiva. He turned to cultural history and the natural world as sources for garments and accessories marketed as luxury goods. The irregular plaid Untitled, for instance, resembles patterning from animal hide. He designed and produced textiles in collaboration with Native apprentices, many of whom went on to successful artistic careers. Workers in New’s shop cut and joined the printed cloth to create garments. They also distributed bolts of cloth through wholesale markets.
New’s designs and business model represented a remarkable innovation for Native artists in the Southwest, who had largely made work for traders, tourists, and collectors. Selling garments through his shop in Scottsdale, Arizona, and department stores across the nation, New garnered widespread acclaim in the United States through the 1950s. Through his business New achieved a decades-long goal established by administrators, curators, and retailers: to create Native art that was broadly useful for modern life.
Harrison Burnside,
Diné (Navajo), born 1955
Untitled, c.1979
ink on cotton cloth
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: N-149 2023.178
Maxine Toya (née Gachupin),
Jemez Pueblo, born 1948
Untitled, 1967
aniline dyes on cotton cloth
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: J-44 2023.181
Nathan Jackson,
Tlingit, born 1938
Untitled, c.1963
aniline dyes on silk cloth
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: TL-27 2023.183
IAIA students Harrison Burnside, Maxine Toya, and Nathan Jackson made these textiles. IAIA administrators, especially Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New, designed the curriculum to be broad. Students gained exposure to diverse techniques and experimented directly with art materials. Today Jackson is revered as a sculptor of wood and Toya is a well-known ceramicist. New, in addition to serving as IAIA art director (1961–67) and president (1967–78), taught textile printing based on his commercial process.
Student textiles adorned numerous campus buildings and some businesses in Santa Fe, New Mexico, such as the Bishop’s Lodge hotel, which commissioned students to design printed textiles.
George Burdeau,
Niitsitapi (Piikani), born 1944
Untitled, 1962
dyes on cloth
Courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, E-5444 2023.208
Jimmie Carole Fife,
Muscogee (Creek), born 1940
Untitled, 1962
dyes on cloth
Courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, E-5438 2023.209
James Lacy Red Corn,
Osage, 1938–1994
Untitled, 1961
dyes on cloth
Courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, E-5430 2023.210
Students enrolled in the Southwestern Indian Art Project produced these panels of printed cloth. Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New co-directed the program and taught textile design and production. The student work seen here reflects techniques and design principles from New’s own textiles. New sourced motifs widely from ancestral and historic Native North American art, then reoriented and repeated the designs to create an overall pattern.
The Southwestern Indian Art Project was hosted at the University of Arizona in Tuscon and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation over three summers in the early 1960s. The program introduced young Native artists to global art history and a range of media. With the goal of fostering new economic and aesthetic systems for southwestern Native American art, administrators sought to break through the stasis of the early-20th-century souvenir industry and academic standards of authenticity based on the past.
Largely seen as the conceptual predecessor to IAIA, the Tucson project also furnished key personnel for IAIA including instructors New and Otellie Loloma, as well as students such as George Burdeau.
Otellie Loloma (Sequafehma),
Hopi, 1921–1993
Untitled, 1945–60
clay, pigment, and turquoise
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: H-109 2023.188
With its rounded contours and small hat, this ceramic figure is an elongated take on the form of a lidded vessel. Otellie Loloma (Sequafehma) made this sculpture using multiple ceramic techniques from Hopi, European, and Asian art. She taught these various techniques at IAIA where she mentored a generation of notable students, including Peter B. Jones. “When I teach which is so important to me and my own clay work, I try to instill belief in my students.” said Loloma. “When that belief is alive, their work is alive … This belief and aliveness is what makes me the artist I am … it is what I am all about.”
Loloma worked closely with Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New through her career, first operating a store in the Kiva Craft Center, in Scottsdale, Arizona, then teaching at the Southwestern Indian Art Project in Tucson, Arizona, before joining the faculty at IAIA.
IAIA: The Institute of American Indian Arts
IAIA opened in Santa Fe in the fall of 1962. Mirroring objectives of the Southwestern Indian Art Project, IAIA administrators sought to revolutionize the styles, markets, and perceptions of Native American art. Organized as a federal boarding high school with post-secondary vocational arts programs, today IAIA grants undergraduate and graduate degrees.
In the 1960s, instructional methods encouraged direct experimentation with materials, training across media, and study of global arts. The visual arts assumed a primary role in the curriculum, which also included drama, dance, music, and writing. IAIA students and faculty worked in a range of styles. Figuration and Pop-Art painting have received the greatest recognition. As this exhibition demonstrates, there was also a strong current in abstraction across media.
Located on the Pueblo lands of northern New Mexico, IAIA attracted students from Indigenous nations across North America. The campus environment fostered an open exchange of knowledge about diverse Indigenous histories, practices, and beliefs. Students arrived with experience in studio- and community-based arts. Faculty included Native and non-Native artists, many recognized as leaders in their fields. Students and teachers responded to each other’s works; however, alumni confirm experimentation and peer-to-peer dialogue provided the most powerful methods for learning.
Fritz Scholder,
Luiseño, 1937–2005
New Mexico #45, 1966
oil on linen
Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Julian C. Eisenstein, and Gift of the Ford Foundation, by exchange 8:2023
Fritz Scholder,
Luiseño, 1937–2005
New Mexico #21, 1965
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: MS-27 2023.132
Fritz Scholder,
Luiseño, 1937–2005
New Mexico #40, 1966
acrylic on canvas
Fritz Scholder abstracted New Mexico landscapes to create the compositions of these paintings, translating rock formations, mesas, basins, blue sky, and vegetation into strata of rich color. His approach reflects Color-Field painting that emphasizes large fields of flat, solid tones. Scholder described his painting process as a kind of trance: “The music is going loud. The paint is juicy, the brushes are flexible, the canvas moves when you touch it. And the color is luscious, the paint is buttery. It’s a sensual thing—especially a big canvas that’s a little larger than you in all ways—and you just throw yourself into it.”
These works are part of his New Mexico Series, which he started when he moved to Santa Fe in 1964 to become an instructor at IAIA. A prolific and influential practitioner, Scholder inspired generations of Native American artists, including his students at IAIA, where he taught advanced painting and contemporary art history until 1969.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: MS-41 2023.133
Alfred Young Man (Eagle Chief),
Cree, born 1948
Indian Blanket, 1968
acrylic on canvas
In Indian Blanket, Alfred Young Man explored a flat, textile-inspired approach to pattern and line. Young Man arrived at IAIA in 1963 and studied painting with Fritz Scholder. Though he responded to his art instructors, Young Man also took cues from fellow IAIA students Kevin Redstar, T. C. Cannon, and Earl Eder. “Their approach to painting and creative thought had a kind of freshness, honesty, boldness, and vitality with which I could easily identify,” Young Man explained years later, “even though our styles, our subject matter, can be seen as worlds apart.”
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CE-22 2023.134
Neil Parsons (O’mahk-Pita, Tall Eagle),
Piikani (Blackfeet), born 1938
Pueblo Forms #2, 1965
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: BL-45 2023.130
Neil Parsons (O’mahk-Pita, Tall Eagle),
Piikani (Blackfeet), born 1938
Untitled (Pueblo Forms), 1965
acrylic on canvas
Neil Parsons (O’mahk-Pita, Tall Eagle) likened the muted-brown band spanning Untitled (Pueblo Forms) to the color of scraped buckskin hides. He complemented this tone with deep black rectangles superimposed over freeform strokes of teal, purple, and salmon. In Untitled (Pueblo Forms) and Pueblo Forms #2, overlapping color planes appear to resolve into geometric shapes.
These works were painted shortly after Parsons arrived in New Mexico. They evoke the sense of mass and spatial complexity that characterize Pueblo adobe structures of the American Southwest. Parsons’ use of horizontal lines and planer divisions also relates to the landscape of his childhood. “My work . . . has always been horizontally inspired” he has claimed, “and I think that horizontal inspiration comes from having been brought up on the Plains.”
Born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana, Parsons earned his master of fine arts from Montana State University in Bozeman. In 1964, Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New recruited Parsons to join the faculty at IAIA, where his Hard-Edge approach to painting influenced many of his students, such as Alfred Young Man, whose work is on view nearby.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: BL-29 2023.129
Alfred Young Man (Eagle Chief),
Cree, born 1948
Untitled (Wall with Doorway), 1966
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CE-9 2023.142
Manuelita Lovato,
Kewa (Santo Domingo Pueblo), born 1945
Untitled (Abstract Figures), c.1964
clay
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: PROP-221 2023.170
Soft-edged, biomorphic forms frame elongated openings, simultaneously evoking Pueblo adobe architecture and a group of human figures. Manuelita Lovato’s inventive composition and her introduction of a color shift—from dark to light brown clay—challenge preconceived notions of Pueblo pottery.
Raised in the Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico, Lovato grew up surrounded by a family of artists. She graduated from IAIA in 1964 with a high school degree and pursued post-secondary work at IAIA in exhibition arts and ceramics. She went on to earn a certificate in museum training in 1968 from the University of Colorado Boulder and returned to IAIA in 1970 as a museum employee and museum studies instructor, specializing in conservation.
Bertha Lujan,
Taos Pueblo, born 1948
Untitled, c.1965–68
clay and glazes
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: TA-1 2023.171
William “Bill” Prokopiof,
Unangan (Aleut), 1944–1999
Totem, c.1964
pine wood
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: AT-24 2023.173
One side of Totem displays wave-like forms and the other features animal figures in the style of Northwest Coast crest art. Bill Prokopiof made this early student work in pine wood, responding to art from Southeast Alaska and the rugged landscapes of the western Aleutian Islands. Prokopiof received a high school diploma from IAIA in 1964 and a post-secondary certificate in 1966. He went on to study at San Francisco Art Institute (1966–1967) majoring in sculpture. Later, Prokopiof became best known for his sculptures in alabaster and forged metal.
John Cruz Romero,
Taos Pueblo, born 1946
Construction, c.1969
wood, marble, and steel
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: TA-32 2023.174
Douglas “Doug” Hyde,
Nimi’ipuu (Nez Perce), Assiniboine, and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), born 1946
Sun and Moon Gods, 1967
wood, nails, wire mesh, and varnish
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: NP-5 2023.168
The painted nails and zigzags of mesh affixed to this sculpture resemble Native American beadwork as well as Kongo nkisi, African figural sculpture with projecting nails. These elements add texture and volume to the smooth, wooden structure.
Doug Hyde’s approach to materials reflects his training at IAIA, beginning in 1962, with jeweler Charles Loloma, ceramicist Ottilie Loloma, and sculptor Allan Houser. These mentors encouraged Hyde to experiment in three-dimensional forms. “I created wood pieces with found objects,” Hyde recalls. “I made colored stone pieces. I experimented with ceramics and metal. We’d collect our own sandstone. Every day, whatever you could think of was what you would work on.” The abstract shapes and forms of Hyde’s work recall Indigenous North American petroglyph depictions of spiritual beings—deities perhaps referenced in the title Sun and Moon Gods.
Peter B. Jones (Geh-A),
Haudenosaunee (Onondaga),
born 1947
Mexico #1, c.1969
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OND-33 2023.169
Christine Nofchissey McHorse,
Diné (Navajo), 1948–2021
Thrown Vase, 1968
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: N-985 2023.172
Manuelita Lovato,
Kewa (Santo Domingo Pueblo), born 1945
Untitled, c.1963–65
earthenware clay
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: PROP-168 2023.190
Henry “Hank” Delano Gobin (Kwi Tlum Kadim),
Tulalip and Snohomish, 1941–2013
Abstract, c.1966
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: SNH-37 2023.167
Drips of lustrous glaze and patterned incisions enliven the interior and exterior surfaces of this organically shaped vessel. Born in Tulalip, Washington, Hank Gobin received his high school degree from IAIA in 1965 in ceramics and painting. His clever application of glaze in Abstract reflects his facility with painting, which became his primary medium. Gobin later returned to teach at IAIA, and eventually became Arts Director. After his teaching career, he served as a cultural resources manager, helping the Tulalip Tribes in the state of Washington with language, environmental issues, repatriation, cultural revitalization, and education.
Student Artists in Focus
This gallery features multiple works by five IAIA students. T. C. Cannon utilized a gestural, expressive brushwork, while Earl Biss created fluid, atmospheric Color-Field paintings. Red Star Price conceived geometric abstractions based on Apsáalooke (Crow) art forms. Anita Fields produced colorful, abstract woodblock prints and paintings, while Peter B. Jones formed innovative objects from clay, a historically important material for many Native American cultures.
IAIA students and teachers combined ancestral Native art practices with formal qualities from contemporary art movements from the 1950s to the 1970s. These included Abstract Expressionism, a form of gestural action painting that emphasized the energy of the painter’s mark; Color-Field painting, characterized by atmospheric fields of color; and geometric and Hard-Edge painting, with its typically impersonal execution and smooth surfaces.
Students and instructors brought their artistic backgrounds and experiences to IAIA, building on global contemporary art trends and Indigenous artistic practices. Students were encouraged to look to the cultural heritage of their own Indigenous nations, and that of fellow students, as a source for their artworks. In this context, IAIA students experimented widely and developed distinct approaches and artistic styles.
Anita Fields (née Luttrell),
Osage and Muscogee (Creek), born 1951
Untitled, 1974
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OS-8 2023.179
Anita Fields (née Luttrell),
Osage and Muscogee (Creek), born 1951
Untitled, c.1972–74
woodblock
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OS-49 2023.161
Anita Fields (née Luttrell),
Osage and Muscogee (Creek), born 1951
Untitled, c.1972–77
woodblock
In the acrylic painting Untitled, overlapping layers of color resemble the strata of a mountain landscape. Such references to distinct terrains reflect Anita Fields’ understanding of how natural environments are imbued with the memory of cultures and peoples who have called them home. “We live in a time where there is a disconnect from the natural world with little regard to the importance of our environment,” Fields has said. “By articulating the concepts of balance and the symbiotic relationships found throughout life and nature, I hope to deepen our understanding of the intersection of all living things.”
Fields created this painting and the two woodcut prints on view nearby while studying at IAIA from 1972 to 1974. While she intended to concentrate on painting, she also experimented with video, photography, ceramics, printmaking, and sculpture. This multidisciplinary training influenced her current work at the intersection of ceramics and textiles.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OS-48 2023.180
Redstar Price (née Connie Red Star),
Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1948
Crow Parfleche, 1969
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-50 2023.139
Redstar Price (née Connie Red Star),
Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1948
Crow Parfleche #4: A Parfleche Design for a Bag, 1969
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-47 2023.199
Redstar Price (née Connie Red Star),
Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1948
Crow Parfleche, 1967
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-2 2023.138
In these works, Redstar Price combined customary Apsáalooke (Crow) parfleche designs and colors with a Hard-Edge geometric mode of painting. Parfleches are Native American hide containers painted with geometric patterns. Price’s decision to adopt parfleche motifs can be read as an homage to the history of Plains hide painting, an art form customarily created by women.
Price attended IAIA from 1964 to 1968 and studied painting with Fritz Scholder and Neil Parsons. After graduating she continued her studies at the Art Institute Fashion School of Design in Portland, Oregon. Price continues to paint large acrylic canvases of abstract Apsáalooke parfleche designs and also creates beadwork.
T. C. Cannon,
Caddo and Kiowa, 1946–1978
Firelights, c.1965
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CD-2 2023.145
T. C. Cannon,
Caddo and Kiowa, 1946–1978
Trail of Tears, 1965
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CD-4 2023.146
T. C. Cannon,
Caddo and Kiowa, 1946–1978
New Mexico Red, c.1967
acrylic on canvas
In Firelights, T. C. Cannon created a rhythmic pattern using bold black brushstrokes that evoke dancers moving mid-step. These visual forms are echoed in Cannon’s poetic verse: “a thousand campfires flicker / overhead / a flame that falls across the sky / is all that I am.” A talented painter, poet, singer, and performer, Cannon died at age 31—a promising life cut short. Still, the works that he produced from IAIA onward were critical in igniting the contemporary Native art movement.
Early works, such as Firelights and Trail of Tears, demonstrate the importance of gestural painting in Cannon’s art education in the mid-1960s at IAIA. In New Mexico Red, however, Cannon took a more Hard-Edge approach, focusing on the interactions of color within reductive, minimal forms.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CD-14 2023.125
Earl Biss (Spotted Horse),
Apsáalooke (Crow), 1947–1998
Untitled (Mole Hole Series), c.1967
oil and turpentine on canvas
Earl Biss splashed turpentine over the lower half of Untitled (Mole Hill Series) to create a dappled effect in pink, brown, and white. These colors contrast with the smooth, dark sky above. The painting is part of a series of abstracted landscapes depicting a mole tunnel and cloud of dirt. Biss was interested first in painting methods, and second in the subject. “I have always been most concerned with the quality of paint,” Biss said later in life, “as opposed to the statement.”
When Biss enrolled at IAIA in 1965, he already knew how to paint in oil. He was assigned to Fritz Scholder’s advanced painting classes where Biss further developed his style and experimented with new tools and techniques. His creative and innovative application of fluid paint is visible in Shore, from 1967, and the shaped canvas Untitled (from the Thunderbird Egg Series), from 1972 to 1973.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-42 2023.144
Earl Biss (Spotted Horse),
Apsáalooke (Crow), 1947–1998
Untitled (from the Thunderbird Egg Series), 1972–73
oil and acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-61 2023.177
Earl Biss (Spotted Horse),
Apsáalooke (Crow), 1947–1998
Shore, 1967
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-38 2023.176
Peter B. Jones (Geh-A),
Haudenosaunee (Onondaga), born 1947
Seed Jar, c.1964–69
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OND-17 2023.184
Peter B. Jones (Geh-A),
Haudenosaunee (Onondaga), born 1947
Seed Jar, c.1964–69
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OND-14 2023.185
Peter B. Jones (Geh-A),
Haudenosaunee (Onondaga), born 1947
Spout Pot, c.1964–69
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OND-31 2023.187
Peter B. Jones (Geh-A),
Haudenosaunee (Onondaga), born 1947
Untitled, c.1964–69
glazed stoneware
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: OND-50 2023.186
Peter B. Jones made these unconventional vessels at IAIA. As a student, Jones responded to the immediacy of clay, a material that “lends itself to spontaneity of creation,” as he described. The artist credits instructor Otellie Loloma as a major influence on his work. Loloma taught Jones to build pottery by hand with coil and slab methods. She also conveyed a profound respect for clay.
“Clay holds a revered place in most Indigenous societies,” Jones has said. “When our ancestors looked for a new settlement place, they looked for a water source and a clay source. This would ensure that the new settlement could provide for our survival. Clay itself was used a medicine and for treating bites. It is a very versatile medium.” In 1977, Jones returned to his home community in Western New York and began to revive Haudenosaunee practices of pit firing and hand building ceramics.
Techniques of Abstraction
Native artists’ embrace of avant-garde, experimental styles allowed them to work in realms beyond stereotypical expectations regarding the subject matter and materials of Native American art.
By dripping, throwing, squirting, and layering paint, Kevin Red Star and Alice Loiselle took a spontaneous and intuitive approach to their canvases while exploring the properties of art materials. In his Color-Field paintings, Earl Eder often referenced Native American concepts and designs or symbolic aspects of the New Mexico landscape.
Don Montileaux, Carl Tubby, and Francis Makil combined the geometric patterns of historic Native American art, including beadwork, weaving, pottery, basketry, and hide painting (parfleche), with the clean lines and flat, bold colors of Hard-Edge painting. Drawing on ancestral practices and subjects, these artists explored a wide range of artistic materials in new ways to create distinctly contemporary statements.
Don Montileaux (Yellowbird),
Lakota (Sioux), born 1948
Four Legs of Life, 1968
acrylic on canvas
Four Legs of Life combines Hard-Edge painting with the geometric designs and flat, bold colors of Don Montileaux’s cultural heritage, which includes quillwork, beadwork, and parfleche painting. The artist has stated, “I have made a choice to share, give and show my culture to the world.”
Born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Montileaux studied with painter Oscar Howe at summer art workshops at the University of South Dakota in the mid-1960s. He attended IAIA from 1966 until 1969, when he left to pursue a course of study at Black Hills State College in Spearfish, South Dakota.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: S-25 2023.137
Carl Tubby,
Choctaw, 1946–2005
Crow Stripes No. 7, 1967
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHO-9 2023.140
Carl Tubby,
Choctaw, 1946–2005
Nez Perce IV, 1966
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHO-24 2023.141
Harvey Herman,
Oceti Sakowin (Sioux), born 1952
Geometric #4 (triptych), c.1971
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: S-78, S-79, S-80 2023.136a-c
Earl Eder (Tancan Hanska Longchase),
Yanktonai (Sioux), born 1944
Forms in Beadwork, c.1963
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: S-60 2023.147
Alice Loiselle (née Ackley),
Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), 1949–2003
We Ay Ge She Go Quay (Sky Woman), 1968
oil on canvas
In We Ay Ge She Go Quay (Sky Woman), Alice Loiselle experimented with a variety of energetic marks including drips, splatters, squirts, and spills of paint. Her practices recall the drip painting techniques of Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, who affirmed the influence of Diné (Navajo) sand painters on his art. Pollock’s techniques were taught in art classes at IAIA, where Loiselle attended as a post-secondary student in 1967 and 1968. By titling the work with reference to a spirit being from the Ojibwe origin story, Loiselle directly connects the drip painting technique with Indigenous knowledge.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHP-31 2023.152
Kevin Red Star (Running Rabbit),
Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1943
Untitled (tubes), 1964
acrylic and paint tubes on board
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-76 2023.175
Frances Makil,
Hopi and Akimel O’odham, born 1950
Triangle Painting, 1968
acrylic on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: H-49 2023.127
Prints, Drawings, and Poetry
Students at IAIA worked across different media. This included robust programs in drawing and printmaking where studio instructors worked with students to explore techniques from etching and aquatint to woodcut and silkscreen printing. These printmaking processes introduced students to the concepts of design, shape, line, texture, and color that informed their work in other media, such as painting, sculpture, and textile design.
Artists like Henry Gobin used drawing to examine qualities of line and color, through historic Northwest Coast forms. Kevin Red Star created an abstracted image of animals with oil and turpentine. IAIA students also experimented in other fields of art, from fine arts to theater and creative writing. The artist book Four showcases this multimedia approach to art education and features poetry alongside prints by student artists.
Christine Nofchissey McHorse,
Diné (Navajo), 1948–2021
Who Knows, c.1963–68
monoprint
Linear, biomorphic forms with sensuous, curving silhouettes are featured in Who Knows and in much of Christine Nofchissey McHorse’s work. After attending IAIA from 1963 to 1968, she became an expert in customary Pueblo and Diné (Navajo) styles of pottery using techniques learned from her husband’s grandmother, Lena Archuleta (Taos Pueblo). At age 50, she created a new format of organically shaped sculptures in matte black in her Dark Light series. “I’m no longer subject to anything, I do my work. If it pleases me, I’ll put it out there,” McHorse has stated, “If it doesn’t please anyone, that’s fine too. I’ve come a long ways.”
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: N-729 2023.163
Courtney Moyah,
White Mountain Apache, Akimel O’odham, and Tohono O’odham, born 1948
Cow’s Life, 1969
Etching
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: A-67 2023.164
Kevin Red Star (Running Rabbit),
Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1943
Drawing, 1965
oil and turpentine on paper
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CR-39 2023.165
Roger Tsabetsaye,
Zuni Pueblo, 1941–2019
Creation of the Pottery Symbols, 1963
casein on illustration board
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: ZU-27 2023.200
Linda Lomahaftewa (Dawavenka),
Hopi and Choctaw, born 1947
Untitled (Spirals and Lines), 1965
pastel and ink on paper
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: H-241 2023.189
Henry “Hank” Delano Gobin (Kwi Tlum Kadim),
Tulalip and Snohomish, 1941–2013
Northwest Design, 1966
casein, tissue paper, and ink pen on paper
Enclosing lines drip, radiate, and give way to poetic text scrawled across the uppermost contours of rectangular shapes in this drawing. Inside the eye, at top right, a single line introduces a jaunty figure. Artist Henry Gobin offered a view of historic Northwest Coast art that is at once detailed and fragmentary.
The basic units of northern Northwest Coast painting and carving are central oval shapes and bold connecting lines. Historically, artists combined these elements in a multitude of configurations to depict clan crests and narrative scenes. Rather than using these forms to build up a single picture, however, Gobin positioned the shapes as an animate landscape.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: SNH-6 2023.158
IAIA artists, authors, editors, printers, and designers
Four, edition of 100, 1965
ink on paper, fabric cover, and leather binding
IAIA students collectively produced this book of poetry and prints. From the first years at IAIA, students learned to practice “all major fields of the arts,” in the words of Lloyd Henri “Kiva” New. This included instruction in poetry, performing arts, and various visual media. IAIA students were among the first Native poets to publish; early efforts such as Four contributed to a groundswell in Native authorship in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Today, IAIA offers a master’s program in creative writing that includes a track in poetry, as well as fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting.
Collection of the IAIA Archives 2012.214
The Institute of American Indian Arts and Beyond
IAIA raised the national profile of experimental studio works, helping to redefine Native American art broadly. Writing in 1972, the artist and curator Lloyd Oxendine (Lumbee) described IAIA as “perhaps the most important influence on the training of young Indian artists.”
Many graduates of IAIA high school and the post-secondary vocational program continued their education at long-established art schools. The artists in this section—Linda Lomahaftewa, Bennie Buffalo, and Mike Zillioux—attended the San Francisco Institute of Art while other IAIA students in this exhibition continued at the University of Oklahoma, Rhode Island School of Design, and The Slade in London. Some returned to IAIA to teach, including Lomahaftewa and Peter B. Jones.
Other IAIA graduates entered adjacent careers in the art world. Manuelita Lovato went into the field of conservation and Alfred Young Man became a teacher and writer. Many IAIA students, such as Zillioux and Henry Gobin, worked as social servants for their Indigenous nations, citing the emphasis on cultural values and histories at the Institute as inspiration.
Linda Lomahaftewa (Dawavenka),
Hopi and Choctaw, born 1947
The Quiet Land, the Warm Land, c.1965
oil on canvas
Brushed layers and drips of paint create a subtle atmosphere that suggests a landscape in The Quiet Land, the Warm Land. Linda Lomahaftewa was among the first students at IAIA. She studied there from 1962 to 1965, graduating with a high school diploma. This work, with its large areas of contrasting hues, reflects her early interest in Color-Field painting. Later, she also pursued monotype and silkscreen printing, often incorporating abstracted cosmological references.
Lomahaftewa returned to IAIA where she taught painting, color theory, and two-dimensional art foundations for over 40 years. She characterized her teaching as “an opportunity for me to share my experience and the knowledge I have acquired in my life and work; my commitment, interest, inspiration, love of color and the processes of working with images.”
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: H-51 2023.153
Mike Medicine Horse Zillioux,
Akimel O’odham, Tsistsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne), and Pawnee, 1952–2020
The Day Jackson Pollack Became A Christian, 1974
acrylic, rawhide, and salt on canvas
Mike Medicine Horse Zillioux flicked paint across this canvas in a technique associated with Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock. Pollock, in turn, cited Native art, particularly Diné (Navajo) sand paintings, as an influence in his work. Zillioux has described this painting as a “tongue in cheek” appropriation of Pollock’s method, noting, “a lot of people think it’s a drip. But if you look at it with your eyes closed, it’s not. There is a series of shadow people in there.”
Zillioux attended IAIA from 1973 to 1975 before studying at the Rhode Island School of Design through a special program with IAIA. He became an influential elder in the Gila River Indian Community and a central figure in the Phoenix art scene.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: P-22 2023.157
Bennie Buffalo,
Tsistsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne), 1948–1994
Untitled, 1966
acrylic and styrofoam on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHY-22 2023.124
Bennie Buffalo,
Tsistsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne), 1948–1994
Material Break, 1967
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHY-8 2023.135
The 1970s and the Rise of Contemporary Native Art
A diverse array of artworks made in the 1960s, supported by the instructional framework of IAIA, opened new possibilities for contemporary artists of Indigenous heritage. By the 1970s avant-garde contemporary art became more widely accepted, although arts institutions often elevated only a few dominant voices. Despite exclusion from mainstream narratives, Native American artists contributed to contemporary art discourse and started to build their own networks.
Artists including George Morrison and Kay WalkingStick spent time in New York City’s contemporary art world. WalkingStick studied at New York’s Pratt Institute, learning a variety of modernist techniques from painting with a palette knife to encaustic—mixing acrylic paint with wax. Morrison had lived in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, where he worked in Abstract Expressionist circles alongside Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. In 1970 he moved back to Minnesota where he began to make works with explicit reference to his Indigenous heritage. After leaving his teaching position at IAIA in 1969, Fritz Scholder participated in exhibitions, lectures, and print workshops around the country, becoming one of the most celebrated Native American artists.
Kay WalkingStick,
Cherokee, born 1935
Personal Icon, 1975
acrylic, wax, and ink on canvas
The rugged, textural surface of Red Fault and The Yellow Line suggests an overhead view of mountainous terrain. This effect results from Kay WalkingStick’s investigation of painting methods through the late 1970s. WalkingStick manipulated a mixture of acrylic paint and processed wax on the canvas surface using her hand. In the earlier Personal Icon, a palette knife allowed WalkingStick to apply pigmented wax in a thin, smooth layer.
From 1974 to 1975 WalkingStick studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. As she shifted the content of her paintings from figuration to abstraction during this period, WalkingStick also reflected increasingly on her own identity. She had grown up in the northeast, estranged from her Cherokee father and his community in Oklahoma. Painting and reading Native American history became a way to reclaim this aspect of herself. The arc shape—repeated and repositioned across multiple canvases—became a type of signature for the artist across an experimental body of work, an abstract form with deep personal meaning.
Courtesy of the artist and Hales London and New York 2023.213
Kay WalkingStick,
Cherokee, born 1935
Red Fault, 1979
acrylic, wax, and ink on canvas
The John and Susan Horseman Foundation, Courtesy of the Horseman Foundation 2023.329
Kay WalkingStick,
Cherokee, born 1935
The Yellow Line, 1979
acrylic, wax, and ink on canvas
The John and Susan Horseman Foundation, Courtesy of the Horseman Foundation 2023.204
Fritz Scholder,
Luiseño, 1937–2005
Indian Rug, 1973
acrylic on canvas
Painted lines create a column of diamonds down the center of this canvas. This pattern recalls textiles from the American Southwest in the early 1900s—a transitional period when Native weavers developed new designs with manufactured yarns. This painting also relates to the abstract, gestural, and geometric works of the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement, whose styles emphasized vibrant color, ornament, and craft.
Starting in the late 1960s, Fritz Scholder became known for his figurative works, yet he continued to paint in an abstract mode. Like Indian Rug, many of his abstractions are informed by the types of textiles Scholder collected and displayed in his studio.
The John and Susan Horseman Foundation, Courtesy of the Horseman Foundation 2023.203
George Morrison (Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo),
Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), 1919–2000
Red Totem I, 1977
stained redwood panels on plywood form
Built from pieces of stained redwood glued to a plywood core, Red Totem I, is the first in a series of tall columns that George Morrison began making in 1977. Morrison adopted the totem format from Indigenous artists on the Northwest Coast, who sculpt poles to represent narratives about the founding of a clan, to memorialize a deceased person, or to shame a rival. The geometric patterns of Morrison’s totem reflect his pursuit of “a kind of Constructivism like Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy, with straight edges and flat shapes,” in Morrison’s words.
The color of red with which Morrison stained the wood was important to the artist, who associated the hue with sacred earth paint. Morrison practiced in New York and Paris before returning to Minnesota in the 1970s, when he began using wood to depict the landscape forms abstractly, taking up his Indigenous heritage as a subject in his art for the first time.
Lent by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Robert J. Ulrich Works of Art Purchase Fund 2023.206
1960s Exhibitions
IAIA student art received significant attention through press coverage, juried awards, and major exhibitions. Works seen in this gallery by Kirby Feathers, Phyllis Fife, Larry Littlebird, George Burdeau, and Roger Tsabetsaye appeared in Young American Indian Artists, a 1965 exhibition in New York City. Tsabetsaye’s oil on paper, Untitled, was also part of an exhibition that traveled through Europe, South America, Mexico City, and Ankara, Turkey.
IAIA administrators organized exhibitions with colleagues at other federal agencies. Edna Massey worked at the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, facilitating exhibitions of IAIA student work at the Department of Interior building in Washington, DC and assisting with the international tour. She also explored abstraction in her own work, such as the block print on view here.
These exhibitions presented a continuous narrative of Native American artistic production. Older works from museum collections frequently joined student art on gallery walls, a juxtaposition which highlighted connections across art historical periods.
Edna Massey (née Hogner),
Cherokee, 1913–1977
Untitled (Abstract Print), c.1950
Woodcut
To create this bold, nonrepresentational design, Edna Massey carved into the surface of a woodblock, leaving only the semi-rectangular voids and irregular shapes printed in black. Though neither a student nor a teacher at IAIA, Massey worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, where she established an important Native art collection and organized exhibitions.
As a female Native artist, Massey did not receive the
same level of recognition as many of her contemporaries, although her legacy as an artist and curator of modern Native expression is undeniable. She supported established techniques and tribal art practices, while advocating that “we must, at the same time, go forward.”
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CHE-20 2023.162
Roger Tsabetsaye,
Zuni Pueblo, 1941–2019
Untitled, 1965
oil on paper
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: ZU-31 2023.166
Phyllis Fife,
Muscogee (Creek), born 1948
Life Within, 1965
oil on canvas
Phyllis Fife’s paintings, including Life Within, are gestural abstractions of nature that combine representational and expressionistic elements. Fife graduated from IAIA in 1966 with a high school degree, majoring in painting and minoring in exhibition arts. Speaking of her time at IAIA, Fife remarked, “I experimented a lot . . . you had exposure to what other students were doing, and that was a big influence on me . . . whether it’s conscious or not, I think that happens.”
Since graduating from IAIA, Fife has collaborated with her sisters on a clothing line, earned a doctor of education degree from the University of Arkansas, and advocated for American Indian education in Oklahoma. She also continues to work in painting and graphic arts.
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: CK-4 2023.149
Kirby Feathers,
Ponca and Oceti Sakowin (Sioux), 1945–2019
Blue Feathers, 1966
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: PC-2 2023.148
George Burdeau,
Niitsitapi (Piikani), born 1944
Beast Series, c.1963
watercolor
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: BL-25 2023.160
Larry (Littlebird) Bird,
Kewa (Santo Domingo Pueblo) and Laguna Pueblo, born 1941
Listen, c.1963
Ink
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: SD-24 2023.159
Peter Sampson,
Umatilla, 1945–1971
Untitled, 1965
oil on canvas
Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: UMT-2 2023.131