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Born January 15, 1940 ( 1940-01-15 ) Salish and Kootenai Indian Reservation, Montana Nationality Salish-Kootenai, Métis-Cree, Shoshone-Bannock Books Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: She Paints the Horse Education Framingham State University, University of New Mexico Similar Fritz Scholder, Kevin Red Star, R C Gorman | ||
Jaune Quick–to–See Smith (born 1940) is a Native American contemporary artist. Her work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
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Biography
Born January 15, 1940 in St. Ignatius, a small town on the Flathead Reservation on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Indian Reservation, Montana, Jaune Quick–to–See Smith is an internationally renowned painter, printmaker and artist. Her first name comes from the French word for "yellow" (jaune), from her French-Cree ancestry. Her middle name "Quick-to-See" was given by her Shoshone grandmother as a sign of her ability to grasp things readily.
She earned a BA in Art Education from Framingham State College, Massachusetts, and an MA in Art from the University of New Mexico. She received an Associate of Arts Degree at Olympic College in Bremerton Washington in 1960. She attended the University of Washington, received her BA in Art Education at Framingham State College in 1976 and a masters degree in art at the University of New Mexico in 1980. Smith has been awarded four honorary doctorates from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and the University of New Mexico. In 2015 she received an honorary degree in Native American Studies from Salish Kootanai College, Pablo, MT.
Smith has been creating complicated abstract paintings and litographs since the 1970s. She employs a wide variety of media, working in painting, printmaking and richly textured mixed media pieces. Such images and collage elements as commercial slogans, sign-like petroglyphs, rough drawing, and the inclusion and layering of text are unusually intersected into a complex vision created out of the artist’s personal experience. Her works contain strong, insistent socio-political commentary that speaks to past and present cultural appropriation and abuse, while identifying the continued significance of the Native American peoples. She addresses today’s tribal politics, human rights and environmental issues with humor. Smith is known internationally for her philosophically centered work regarding her strong traditional beliefs and political activism.
A guest lecturer at over 185 universities, museums and conferences around the world, Smith has also shown her work in over 100 solo exhibitions. Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, ArtNews, Art In America, Art Forum, The New Art Examiner and many other notable publications. She also organizes and curates numerous Native American exhibitions and serves as an activist and spokesperson for contemporary Native art. She is included in many private and public international collections, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Mankind, Vienna, Austria; The Museum of Modern Art, Quito, Ecuador; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and The Museum of Modern Art, NY. Smith’s work is included in many important museum collections: Museum of Modern Art, NY, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum for World Cultures, Frankfurt, Germany and Museum for Ethnology, Berlin.
Among other honors, she has received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters Grant, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for the Arts, the College Art Association’s Committee on Women in the Arts Award, the 2005 New Mexico Governor’s Outstanding New Mexico Woman’s Award, and the 2005 New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (Allan Houser Award). Smith also has been admitted to the New Mexico Women’s Hall of Fame.
Her collaborative public artworks include the terrazzo floor design in the Great Hall of the Denver Airport; an in-situ sculpture piece in Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco; and a mile-long sidewalk history trail in West Seattle.
Recent awards include a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation to archive her work; the 2011 Art Table Artist Award; Moore College of Art & Design, PA, Visionary Woman Award for 2011; Induction into the National Academy of Art 2011; Living Artist of Distinction, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, NM, 2012; the Switzer Distinguished Artist Award for 2012, and the Woodson Foundation, Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Smith also holds honorary doctorates from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of New Mexico. In 2015 she received an honorary degree in Native American Studies from Salish Kootanai College, Pablo, MT.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 2015: "Art After the Drought" at the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX; 2014: "Water and War" at the The Bernstein Gallery in The Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University; "Artists and Arts Workers" in the Robert E. Elberson Fine Arts Center at Salem College, and an exhibit at the Maudeville Art Gallery at Union College in Schenectady, NY. 2013: "Water and War" at the Accola Griefen Gallery in New York City.
Personal
Smith's son, Neal Ambrose-Smith, is a contemporary painter, printmaker and sculptor.