Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Homeland, 2017. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 1/4 x 72 1/8 (122.6 x 183.2 cm). Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; bequest of John Mortimer Schiff by exchange 2018:12. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Photograph by Tom Loonan and Brenda Bieger for Buffalo AKG Art Museum

The Whitney Museum of American Art announces that groundbreaking artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith will present the 2023 Walter Annenberg Lecture on Thursday, May 18, at 6:30 pm in the Museum’s Susan and John Hess Family Theater and online. Smith, whose acclaimed career retrospective Memory Map is currently on view at the Museum through August 13, will be joined in conversation by Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director.

For over five decades, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, has examined and interpreted life in America through Native ideology, focusing on pressing issues of land, racism, and cultural preservation. Her pointed and often humorous works employ a rich visual vocabulary inspired by modern art historical movements like Pop and Abstract Expressionism and potent symbols of her own culture and identity, such as horses, bison, and canoes, to challenge the mainstream narratives and visual languages of American culture. The lecture will explore Smith’s exceptional and unorthodox career as an artist, activist, curator, educator, and advocate.

This annual lecture is given in honor of the late Walter H. Annenberg, philanthropist, patron of the arts, and former ambassador. Past Annenberg Lecture participants include Dawoud Bey (2021), Julie Mehretu (2020 lecture, presented in Spring 2021), Jason Moran (2019), Kara Walker (2018), Catherine Opie (2017), Martha Rosler (2016), and Frank Stella (2015).

Audiences can register for the Zoom livestream on whitney.org.

On Friday, May 19, from 11 am–8 pm, the Museum will host a convening with an intergenerational group of Native American artists, curators, and scholars for conversations about the ongoing and overarching concerns in Smith’s work, including land, sovereignty, and Indigenous knowledge and identity. The program takes inspiration from Smith’s work as an artist and as an educator and curator by bringing together many communities that she has been in dialogue with throughout her career. For more information including a list of participating artists and scholars visit the museum’s website.

About Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940) is a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana. Smith has been creating complex abstract paintings and prints since the 1970s. Combining appropriated imagery from commercial slogans and signage, art history, and personal narratives, she forges an intimate visual language to convey her insistent socio-political commentary with powerful clarity. Smith’s multifaceted work is grounded in themes of personal and political identity.

Smith received an AA degree from Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, in 1960; a BA in art education from Framingham State College, Massachusetts, in 1976; and an MA in Visual Arts from the University of New Mexico in 1980.

Smith has received numerous awards, including the Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award (1987); Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (1996); Women’s Caucus for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award (1997); College Art Association Women in the Arts Award (2002); New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2005); ArtTable Artist Honoree (2011); Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Living Artist of Distinction Award (2012); Montana Governor’s Award (2018); New York Foundation for the Arts Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award (2019); United States Artists Fellowship (2020); Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2022); and Barnard College’s Medal of Distinction (2022). Smith has been honored with honorary doctorates from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1992); Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (1998); Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (2003); and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2009).

Smith’s work is in the collections of the Albuquerque Museum; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis; Heard Museum, Phoenix; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Missoula Art Museum, Montana; Museo de Arte Moderno, Quito, Ecuador; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yellowstone Art Museum, Montana, among many others.

About Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map is a celebration of fifty years of work by a groundbreaking artist. A citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Smith has charted an exceptional and unorthodox career as an artist, activist, curator, educator, and advocate. The exhibition highlights how Smith uses her drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures to tell stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Memory Map is the largest and most comprehensive showcase of Smith’s career to date. Including more than 130 works, the exhibition offers a new framework to consider contemporary Native American art.

WALTER ANNENBERG LECTURE

In honor of the late Walter H. Annenberg—philanthropist, patron of the arts, and former ambassador—the Whitney Museum of American Art established the Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture to advance this country’s understanding of its art and culture. Support for this lecture and for public programs at the Whitney Museum is provided, in part, by GRoW @ Annenberg, a philanthropic initiative led by Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Vice President and Director of the Annenberg Foundation, and by members of the Whitney’s Education Committee.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT

Generous support for Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map is provided by Judy Hart Angelo; the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation; Lise and Michael Evans; the Henry Luce Foundation; the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Kevin and Rosemary McNeely, Manitou Fund; the Terra Foundation for American Art; and the Whitney’s National Committee.

Major support is provided by Forge Project, Garth Greenan Gallery, Sueyun and Gene Locks, and Susan and Larry Marx.

Significant support is provided by Chrissy Taylor and Lee Broughton, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, Ashley Leeds and Christopher Harland, Susan Hayden, John and Susan Horseman Collection/Horseman Foundation, The Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Brooke Garber Neidich and Daniel M. Neidich, and Nancy and Fred Poses.

Additional support is provided by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund and Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg.

ABOUT THE WHITNEY

The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in 1930 by the artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), houses the foremost collection of American art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Mrs. Whitney, an early and ardent supporter of modern American art, nurtured groundbreaking artists when audiences were still largely preoccupied with the Old Masters. From her vision arose the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has been championing the most innovative art of the United States for ninety years. The core of the Whitney’s mission is to collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit American art of our time and serve a wide variety of audiences in celebration of the complexity and diversity of art and culture in the United States. Through this mission and a steadfast commitment to artists, the Whitney has long been a powerful force in support of modern and contemporary art and continues to help define what is innovative and influential in American art today.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Whitney is located in Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. The name Manhattan comes from their word Mannahatta, meaning “island of many hills.” The Museum’s current site is close to land that was a Lenape fishing and planting site called Sapponckanikan (“tobacco field”). The Whitney acknowledges the displacement of this region’s original inhabitants and the Lenape diaspora that exists today.

As a museum of American art in a city with vital and diverse communities of Indigenous people, the Whitney recognizes the historical exclusion of Indigenous artists from its collection and program. The Museum is committed to addressing these erasures and honoring the perspectives of Indigenous artists and communities as we work for a more equitable future. To read more about the Museum’s Land Acknowledgement, visit the Museum’s website.

VISITOR INFORMATION

The Whitney Museum of American Art is located at 99 Gansevoort Street between Washington and West Streets, New York City. Public hours are: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 10:30 am–6 pm; Friday, 10:30 am–10 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10:30 am–6 pm. Closed Tuesday. Visitors eighteen years and under and Whitney members: FREE. Admission is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays, 7–10 pm. COVID-19 vaccination and face coverings are not required but strongly recommended. We encourage all visitors to wear face coverings that cover the nose and mouth throughout their visit.