New exhibit displays Native American paintings
BY GABE HERMAN
A new exhibition at the National
Museum of the American Indian
in Lower Manhattan looks at Native
American paintings and how their
contributions to American art have been
largely overlooked.
“Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades
of Native Painting,” opens Nov. 16 at the
museum, which is at 1 Bowling Green
near Battery Park. It includes nearly
40 paintings taken from the museum’s
permanent collection, and highlights
20th century art movements that Native
American painters participated in, often
stretching boundaries of what is commonly
considered Native art.
Periods of American art explored in the
exhibit include modernist abstraction and
Pop Art. The show points out that there
have often been narrow restrictions of
what is considered Native American art.
“If other Americans thought of Indian
art at all,” the show’s introduction reads,
“they envisioned basketry and ceramics.”
The goal of this show is to break those
notions, according to lead curator David
Penney. “This is a very exciting moment to
think about how a narrative of American
art history includes what we see here,” he
said. “American Indian art has not often
been thought about,” he added, “or has
been segregated.”
The exhibit outlines how art schools
Mario Martinez next to his 2004 piece, “Brooklyn.”
were started in Native communities
in Oklahoma and New Mexico in the
early 20th century, which were training
grounds for artists and largely focused on
incorporating traditional culture and using
fl atter styles.
“Artists began to chafe at those restrictions,”
said Penney. He said the exhibit
honors the older fl at style, but also those
artists who broke out to explore other
techniques of modernism, including color,
harmony and abstraction.
In 1962, the Institute of American Indian
Arts was founded in Santa Fe, and
taught modern movements like abstraction
and Pop Art. Students often produced
work that rebelled against conventions
of Native American art, the show
notes.
Artist Mario Martinez, whose 2004
painting “Brooklyn” is part of the show,
said the exhibit can help to educate people
about Native American art that has
too often been ignored. “We’ve been here
PHOTO BY GABE HERMAN
all along,” he said.
Martinez said he was glad to hear from
many museum curators who said they
were excited to see the exhibition.
“A show like this shows the history, but
also connectivity to what was going on in
the art world,” Martinez said. “It’s an opportunity
to show we’ve been as good as
anyone else.”
“Stretching the Canvas” will be at the
National Museum of the American Indian
until Fall 2021.
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