Beginning February 23, the Saint Louis Museum of Art will be highlighting a selection of material donated to the Missouri museum by Wyoming-based collector William P. Healey. The museum notes that the donation represents a “transformative gift of outstanding works by Native American artists active across the 20th century.”
Awa Tsireh (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1898-1955), Untitled, 1930s, watercolor, 17 x 23½”. The William P. Healey Collection of Native American Art. © Estate of Awa Tsireh.
Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection will continue through July 14 to celebrate the donation from the prominent collector. “The promised gift of 100 works from Jackson, Wyoming-based collector William P. Healey establishes a critical junction between the museum’s deep collection of historic Indigenous North American art and a growing emphasis on the contemporary,” according to the museum’s announcement of the exhibition. “Beginning in the 1920s artists such as Fred Kabotie, Tonita Peña and Carl Sweezy established professional careers as easel painters in New Mexico and Oklahoma. The exhibition features a rare mural panel by Peña, the sole woman in this largely self-taught generation. Peña’s Eagle Dance demonstrates key principles of modern pueblo painting. The artist lovingly detailed the dress of dancers whom she set against a groundless, unarticulated space. In the 1930s, instructors at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico and Bacone College in Oklahoma instilled these conventions in Native students.”
Acee Blue Eagle (Muscogee, 1907-1959), Untitled, mid-20th century, gouache on paper, 12½ x 10½”. The William P. Healey Collection of Native American Art. © Estate of Acee Blue Eagle.
Other artists in the exhibition include Fritz Scholder, Linda Lomahaftewa and T.C. Cannon. The exhibition is co-curated by artist Tony Abeyta and Alexander Brier Marr, associate curator for Native American art.
Native American Art magazine will have complete coverage of this gift and exhibition in the April/May 2024 issue.
February 23-July 14, 2024
Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection
Saint Louis Art Museum One Fine Arts Drive, St. Louis, MO 63110
(314) 721-0072, www.slam.org
Powered by Froala Editor
