Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, groundbreaking artist, curator, and activist, died on Friday, January 24th, after a protracted battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 85 years old.
Smith was known for her poetic, curious, and profound interpretations of America’s particular forms of bigotry toward Native peoples. The artist’s sharp humor pierced through the heavy topics of race, colonialism, pollution, genocide, and survival.
In addition to her prolific art making, Smith was immersed up to her death in the ambitious project of compiling a major compendium of 250 contemporary Native artists—a culmination of her career-long mission to legitimate the work of other living Native American artists. In 2023, she organized and curated The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, an exhibition highlighting the work of nearly 50 living Native artists at the National Gallery of Art.
“Jaune’s loss is deeply felt and indescribably significant. She was a beloved mentor and friend and truly one of the most thoughtful and talented human beings I have encountered,” said Garth Greenan, her longtime dealer. “She was one of the very brightest lights in contemporary American art. If a more generous person ever existed, I’d like to meet them.”
Born in 1940 at the St. Ignatius Indian Mission on her reservation, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana. She received 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.
From the first years of her career, Smith took every opportunity to bring the work of Native artists to the attention of curators, critics, and historians, organizing pivotal group exhibitions like Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar, and Sage (1985) with Harmony Hammond. Partly due to these efforts, she and her contemporaries were featured in Lucy Lippard’s 1990 classic Mixed Blessings. After decades of professional successes, Smith’s commitment to highlight the miracle of Native Americans’ continued existence showed no signs of waning.
The artist repeatedly overcame the immense headwinds of gender and race—deliberately clearing space for others as she went. Hers was the first painting by a Native artist to be acquired by the National Gallery of Art. In 2023, she became the first Native artist to be given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum when they mounted Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map—the most comprehensive exhibit of the artist’s work to date.
Her pioneering work earned her numerous accolades, including the Women’s Caucus for the Arts Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts Award in 1997, the College Art Association Women’s Award in 2002, and a Governor’s Outstanding New Mexico Women's Award in 2005. Other notable awards include the Wallace Stegner Award for Art of the American West in 1995, a Joan Mitchell Painter’s Grant in 1996, the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Native American Fine Art in 1999, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Living Artist of Distinction Award in 2012, a United States Artists fellowship in 2020, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 2021, an Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2022, and the Artists' Legacy Foundation Artist Award in 2023, among many others. Smith was also admitted to the New Mexico Women's Hall of Fame in 2014. She holds four honorary doctorates from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts College of Art, and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
The long overdue but growing institutional and cultural recognition of Native American artists is, in no small part, a testament to her life’s work.
Her family and the gallery are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support and are pulling together in this time of loss, asking for space to grieve privately. To continue her mission of uplifting Native artists, IAIA is establishing a scholarship fund in her honor. Contributions can be made here.