Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: An American Modernist

Acknowledgments

ix ▲▼▲ This project began as a paper for the Native American Art Study Association, where I learned how to be a scholar and a grateful human being. So it is appropriate that I begin with thanks to my colleagues and dearest friends, Bill Anthes and Kate Morris, for their encouragement to submit a paper to their panel on contemporary Native American art. By the time I had finished the paper on Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s Chief Seattle series, I knew her artwork deserved a book-length monograph. From that first study, I realized the great depth of her political will and artistic discipline. I am especially grateful to Kate, who read a draft of that first paper and encouraged me to think of it as the beginning of the manuscript that has become this book. The research for that first paper and this project began at Jaune Quickto -See Smith’s kitchen table as she and her husband, Andy Ambrose, opened boxes of documents and slides and then left a stranger to examine the record of a prolific career that had been collected, ordered, and stored over the decades. In the years since my first visit, our time together has included many meals at that kitchen table, where they opened their hearts as well as their precious archive and we became friends and collaborators on this project. My gratitude for their loving generosity is immeasurable. I also thank Neal Ambrose-Smith for his loyal enthusiasm and technical support. My experience as an intern at the Anderson Collection in the San Francisco Bay Area enabled me to recognize the significance of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s place as an American modernist. My appreciation of modernist art grew Acknowledgments x Acknowledgments immensely as I worked among the greatest artworks of the twentieth century in the collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. I thank them for the opportunity to learn from their astonishing collection. As I integrated my experience of modern art and research in the field of Native American art, several strong models of scholarship inspired me. I thank American art historians Ellen Wiley Todd and Wanda M. Corn first and foremost for the model of their rigorous scholarship, as well as for their continuing support. I am especially grateful for the encouragement of Suzanne Helburn and Lucy R. Lippard, whose compassionate consciousness and scholarship establish a political paradigm for interrogating art and life. No words can match the depth of my appreciation for the time and wisdom shared by the generous scholars who read this manuscript in its early stages. To Evelyn Hankins, my dear friend and “first reader” since graduate school, I extend my heartfelt thanks for reading and then rereading multiple drafts. My debt and gratitude are beyond measure for the specific and sage advice offered by Aldona Jonaitis and Janet Catherine Berlo. Their exemplary scholarship and infinite generosity in the field of Native American art are beyond compare. A fellowship at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center allowed me the time to reflect and write chapter 3. I am particularly appreciative for the lively conversations among the scholars-in-residence and staff members , who read early drafts of this manuscript: Barbara Buhler Lynes, Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Jonathan Walz, Christopher Reed, Robin Veder, Kelly Quinn, Tirza True Latimer, and Karin Higa. I am especially thankful to Barbara Buhler Lynes, who invited me to organize an exhibition of Smith’s landscapes for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Landscapes of an American Modernist was on view there from January 27 to April 29, 2012. Chapters 3 and 4 benefited enormously from the insights I gained from talking with Jaune Quick-to-See Smith in the galleries while looking at her paintings and pastels. Chapter 5 began as a presentation at the New Mexico Museum of Art and later became an essay in Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Rebecca Tillet’s book Indigenous Bodies: Reviewing, Relocating, Reclaiming. I am grateful for the encouragement that both invitations offered me to look closely and write about Smith’s Paper Dolls for a Post Columbian World with Ensembles Contributed by US Government . I thank Merry Scully, curator of the Governor’s Gallery at the museum, for bringing the amazing artwork to my attention, as well as Joseph Traugott, curator of twentieth-century art, and Michelle Gallagher-Roberts, chief registrar , for sharing their knowledge and access to the artwork during my research. My...