Jaune Quick-To-See Smith

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (1940–2025) was a visionary Native American artist, curator and activist whose six-decade career reshaped the narrative of contemporary American art. A citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, she was born on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and died in Corrales, New Mexico, at age 85.

Smith’s hybrid visual language merged Abstract Expressionism with Indigenous symbolism, political satire and collage. Her works often incorporated newspaper clippings, maps, commercial logos and handwritten text, layered into energetic, mixed-media compositions that challenged dominant histories. Drawing from both Western art history and Native traditions, she explored themes of land, sovereignty, cultural survival and environmental justice. Her I See Red series (1992–) remains among her most acclaimed, critiquing colonial violence and cultural appropriation through biting irony and visual disruption.

In 2023, Smith became the first Native American artist to receive a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art with Memory Map, a major exhibition that travelled to the Seattle Art Museum. She continued working until her final months, completing the Tierra Madre series in honour of Indigenous and feminist figures, later shown at Garth Greenan Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery.

Posthumously, her curatorial project Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always opened at Rutgers’ Zimmerli Art Museum, featuring 97 artists from 74 tribal nations. Her legacy endures not only through her own practice but in her decades of advocacy, mentorship and institutional activism. A scholarship in her name was established at the Institute of American Indian Arts, honouring her lifelong commitment to the next generation of Native artists.