Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Enrolled Salish/Confederated Salish/Kootenai Nation), State Names Map: Cahokia and Trade Canoe: Osage Orange, 2023. Saint Louis Art Museum. © Jaune Quick-To-See Smith. Courtesy the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. Image courtesy Counterpublic. Photo by Jon Gitchoff.
The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) has acquired works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick, deepening the museum’s commitment to representing Native American artists within its collection.
WalkingStick’s 1975 painting Personal Icon features “a low, swelling arc against a gridded frame of red encaustic” according to SLAM. State Names Map: Cahokia, by Quick-to-See Smith, was created using collage and gestural painting. The piece “reconfigures the United States map, using text with only those state names based on Indigenous words,” the museum notes. In Quick-to-See Smith’s other work, Trade Canoe: Osage Orange, the artist created the frame of a canoe using wood from an Osage Orange tree.
Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), Personal Icon, 1975, acrylic, wax and ink on canvas, 42 x 48”. Saint Louis Art Museum. © Kay WalkingStick.
The acquisitions fill important spaces within the Saint Louis Art Museum’s permanent collection of artwork by contemporary Native American artists. “We are in a moment of heightened visibility for Native artists across the country but especially in Saint Louis,” says Min Jung Kim, the museum’s Barbara B. Taylor director. “Adding these works to our collection is a way to continue to shed light on these vital artists, whose art speaks to both personal histories and wider cultural concerns.”
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