Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

A black-and-white photograph of a light-skinned adult woman with long dark hair, shown in full face from the chest up, standing in front of a light-colored wall. She wears large earrings and a black turtleneck top.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Born in 1940

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith creates work that addresses the myths of her ancestors in the context of current issues facing Native Americans.

Raised on the Flathead Reservation, Smith is deeply connected to her heritage. She creates work that addresses the myths of her ancestors in the context of current issues facing Native Americans. Her inspiration stems from the formal innovations of such artists as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as traditional Native American art.

Smith works with paint, collage, and appropriated imagery. Through a combination of representational and abstract images, she confronts subjects such as the destruction of the environment, governmental oppression of Indigenous cultures, and the pervasive myths of Euro-American cultural hegemony.

Smith has had more than eighty solo exhibitions over the past 30 years. During the same period, she organized and curated more than 30 Indigenous exhibitions and lectured at almost 200 universities, museums, and conferences.

She has also completed several collaborative public art works such as the floor design in the Great Hall of the Denver International Airport; an in-situ sculpture piece in Yerba Buena Park, San Francisco, and mile-long sidewalk history trail in West Seattle.

Artist Details

  • Name

    Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

  • Birth

    St. Ignatius, Montana, 1940

  • Phonetic Spelling

    zho(n) kwihk-too-see smith

  • NMWA Exhibitions

    • Trove: The Collection in Depth, 2011–2012
    • Pressing Ideas: Fifty Years of Women’s Lithographs from Tamarind, 2011
    • Telling Secrets: Codes, Captions, and Conundrums in Contemporary Art, 2009–2010
    • Preserving the Past, Securing the Future: Donations of Art, 1987–1997, 1997–98
    • Presswork: The Art of Women Printmakers, 1991

Works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

  • Four Directions

    View Artwork Details
    A black line painting of a bird with several gray stick figure faces, basic animal drawings, and a small, detailed lake in the background. "Batteries Not Included" is typewritten down the bottom left side. The colors are terracotta neutrals: tan, red, orange, and light blue.

    Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Four Directions, 1994; Lithograph with linocut collage, 48 1/4 x 34 x 1 1/2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Anastasia Pfarr; © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

  • Indian, Indio, Indigenous

    Jaune Quick-to-See Smith refers to paintings like Indian, Indio, Indigenous as narrative landscapes. They evoke the visible topography of the landscape as well as the life and history encompassed within it.

    For Indian, Indio, Indigenous, she collaged an array of materials onto her canvas, including striped and polka-dotted fabrics; the masthead of her reservation’s newspaper, Char-Koosta; parts of a U.S. map;...

    View Artwork Details
    A horizontal canvas combines collaged paper, such as a scrap of a U.S. map, comic strip, and pictographs; cloth swatches; scrawled and dripped paint; and phrases like “It takes hard work to keep racism alive” and “Oh! Zone.” The work’s title appears in red paint right of center.

    Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Indian, Indio, Indigenous, 1992; Oil and collage on canvas, 60 x 100 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Museum purchase: Members' Acquisition Fund; © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

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