Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The latest: A Native artist’s 50-year career gets a long-overdue exhibition in a Manhattan museum, a new film examines the fight against racist mascots, and Cherokee ‘voices’ return to television
ART: Whitney retrospective a ‘Memory Map’ for artist
In a major milestone for Native art, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith of the Salish and Kootenai Nation will become the first Native woman to have a retrospective show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.
The show, “Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map,’ which opens April 19 and runs through Aug. 13, will recognize Smith’s 50-year career as an artist, curator, educator and advocate. It comes on the heels of another show at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, which opened an exhibit featuring 10 of Smith’s works on March 23 that will continue through April 30.
The Whitney retrospective makes an important statement for Native art, Smith said in a statement.
“The oldest art museum in New York was inaugurated sometime in the late 1800s, 150 years ago, and there are younger art museums approximately 90 years old, yet I am the first Native woman to have a major retrospective in New York City,” Smith said in the statement.
“The Whitney has jumped off the cliff and shattered the status quo. Hallelujah for them making this risky move,” she said. “What is the risk worth? It offers us more Native artists, the Nation’s First Peoples, our Original Peoples, to become part of the mainstream art world. I am deeply grateful to the Whitney, as well as Garth Greenan Gallery, for their kind, supportive, diligent work over four years.
“We are making history. We are plowing new ground; we are opening a staid, closed, colonial door. I am so thankful.”
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The Whitney retrospective, “Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map,” will sprawl across two floors with drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures to upend commonly held historical narratives and illuminate cultural and colonial absurdities in the dominant culture.
It is the largest and most comprehensive showcase ever curated of Smith’s career, featuring more than 130 works. Organized thematically across the museum’s third and fifth floors, the exhibition offers a new framework of female contemporary Native art, exhibiting how Smith has led and initiated the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation, museum officials said.
Since the 1970s, Smith has used recurring imagery, including maps, trade canoes, horses, bison and flags, rendered in common materials such as newspaper and fabric.
“The Whitney Museum is honored to collaborate with Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at this important moment in her career, and we are grateful to her for trusting us to organize the exhibition,” Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg said in a statement.
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“As the first retrospective of an Indigenous artist organized by the Whitney, this exhibition is long overdue. Smith is not only a monumental artist but also a mentor, exemplar, and powerful influence to younger generations of Native American artists,” he said.
“She has brought exposure and offered encouragement to hundreds of Indigenous artists over her career. This exhibition encourages us to look at Smith and her peers anew, to be mindful of our prejudices, and to be vigilant and self-critical in our use of art historical labels and frameworks in our work moving forward.”
FILM: New film explores racist mascots
A new film, “Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting,” examines the movement to eradicate the words, images, and gestures surrounding sports mascots.
The film will open exclusively in movie theaters beginning on March 31 in New York, followed by Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta, Kansas City, Chicago, Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities throughout April.
It includes interviews with activist Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne/Hodulgee Muscogee; Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo; Olympic gold-medalist Billy Mills, Oglala Lakota; W. Richard West Jr., Southern Cheynne, founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian; Kevin Gover, Pawnee, under secretary for museums and culture at the Smithsonian; historian Phil Deloria, Dakota; and others.
“‘Imagining the Indian’ is a film that addresses the misrepresentation of Native peoples in sports, television, movies, pop-culture and beyond,” co-director Ben West, Cheyenne, in statement. “We are proud that this film is a product of Indian Country, and that its goals are for the good of all people.”
Despite recent advancements, however, including the renaming of the Washington professional football team and the Cleveland professional baseball team, the fight continues, the film concludes.
Owners of Kansas City’s professional football team, Chicago’s professional hockey team, and Atlanta’s Major League Baseball team are still adamant that they will not change the team names or practices, particularly the insidious tomahawk/arrowhead chop. And across the country, close to 2,000 secondary schools still have harmful Native-themed mascots.
“Imagining the Indian” seeks to shine a light on the harms done by the mascots.
“Changing the names for the Washington Football team and Cleveland’s baseball team was long overdue, but the victory is only piecemeal until names are also changed in Atlanta for baseball, in Chicago for hockey, and in Kansas City, and don’t ignore the almost 2,000 other teams with problematic names,” co-director Aviva Kempner, who is non-Native, said in a statement.
The change is important for everyone, said co-producer Kevin Blackistone, an ESPN panelist and professor at Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland who writes sports commentary for the Washington Post.
“Eradicating mascoting of Native people will rid us of its perniciousness, which is that exposure to it is at the root of negative stereotyping and treatment of all people of color,” Blackistone, who is Black, said in a statement.
TELEVISION: New season of Cherokee ‘Voices’
The newest season of “Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People” is back with all-new Cherokee stories.
The groundbreaking docuseries shares narratives of the people, places, history and culture of the Cherokee Nation.
Season eight of the tribe’s popular TV series debuts online on Thursday, April 6, at 7 p.m. CST at osiyo.tv, followed by a broadcast premiere on Sunday, April 9.
“Cherokee Nation’s story is important, complex and, above all, inspiring to us and others,” Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement.
“It’s an honor to see our tribe’s story of strength, survival and resilience, as well as our language and vibrant culture, being preserved and shared with people around the world through this impactful series.”
This season takes viewers around the world to the waters of the Pulau River in the South Papua province of Indonesia, to the unlikely London opera scene and back to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma to pay tribute to a revered Medal of Honor recipient. The series will also introduce a stuntman and actor, as well as the new Miss Rodeo USA.
“As a lifelong storyteller and now filmmaker, I can’t think of a more important story to share than that of our tribe’s incredible legacy and the individual experiences and achievements of Cherokee citizens, or a better means of sharing our culture. than through the powerful lens of filmmaking,” said Jennifer Loren, executive producer, director and host of OsiyoTV in a statement.
“There is certainly no shortage of amazing and triumphant Cherokee stories to tell, and our team could not be prouder to be trusted with helping bring them to audiences everywhere.”
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