Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now

“There is no one way to be a Native artist,” writes Kathleen Ash-Milby, an associate curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Consciousness about representation underscores the Nasher’s new exhibit, which charts the evolution of indigenous American art during the past seventy years. Made up of approximately sixty pieces, this sweeping survey begins mid-century, with the rise of Native American modernism, and features the works of George Morrison and Daphne Odjig, among others. It continues through ​the civil rights movement and the American Indian Movement, with works by  James Luna, Edgar Heap of Birds, and Jolene Rickard​. And it proceeds to contemporary artists like Jeffrey Gibson, Andrea Carslon, and Brian Jungen, the latter of whom came up with exhibit’s titular language. The exhibit was developed by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; at the opening reception on August 29, curator Mindy Besaw, who co-organized the exhibit, will lead a talk at the Nasher. The exhibit runs through January 12.