Phillips to Present New Terrains in January 2024, the Company's First Major Exhibition of Native American Art

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Oct 03, 2023, 16:18 ET

Featuring A Breadth of Important Native Artists from the Past Seventy Years, Including Oscar Howe, George Morrison, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Kay Walkingstick, Dana Claxton, and Many Others

NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Phillips is pleased to announce New Terrains, a watershed exhibition of important works of contemporary Native American art. Exploring the inﬂuences of modernism, post-war and pop inﬂuences, the exhibit provides context for the evolution of contemporary Native art in the mid-to-late 20th and early 21st centuries. These artists evoke the rich diaspora of Native American tribal representation, including Canadian ﬁrst nations people. Featuring over 50 artists, spanning seven decades, the works reﬂect the socio-political and artistic climates in which they were conceived. Native American art is continually expanding to embrace new ideas, expressions, and artistic mediums. Established, emerging, and under-recognized artists share their unique visions and stories of what it is to be an indigenous artist.

Kent Monkman
Death of Adonis, 2010
72” x 120” — Kent Monkman Death of Adonis, 2010 72” x 120”

The exhibition opens 5 January 2024 at Phillips, located at 432 Park Avenue. New Terrains is co-curated by Bruce Hartman, Tony Abeyta, and James Trotta-Bono. Each of whom have garnered considerable recognition within the museum, artist, or private arenas. They have secured numerous, iconic works by a number of the most signiﬁcant and highly sought-after contemporary Native American artists to date. Dozens of these artists have recently been featured in one-person or group exhibitions at major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Many of these works have here-to-fore not been publicly exhibited, nor have they been made available to collectors, foundations, or museums for acquisition.

Bruce Hartman, former museum Executive Director and Curator, said, "During my 37-year career, it has been most exciting and gratifying to witness the expanding emphasis on artist diversity in museum collections and exhibitions. The canon of American art history is being rewritten to include artists of all ethnicities, genders, etc. It is a movement long over-due. For this show, we chose to look at the years 1950 to now. Established, under-recognized mid-career, and emerging artists are represented throughout the exhibit. We strove to include a range of tribal affiliations, artistic expressions, and mediums. Our hope is to further public and collector appreciation of the extraordinary achievements of contemporary Native American artists. As America's first artists, their contributions and importance cannot be overstated."

Tony Abeyta, Dine' artist and Curator, said, "This exhibition remarks upon the journey of artists whose contributions were pivotal and helped change the idea of what Native American art is - and what it can be. Each artist - from diverse tribes throughout this country - expresses the unique aspects of their ancestral origins, myths, and traumas. Theirs is art of the first people, delayed in its ascent to the mainstream art world, now arrived. Each of the artists in this exhibition has their own interpretation of what it is to be Native - to be Choctaw, Chemehuevi, Luiseno, Mandan Hidatsa, and Navajo, among many other tribes. The stories they tell are generational testaments to survival and healing. New Terrains is an exhibition of new possibilities, reflective of the times within which these works were created. They address our Native connection to source, to our lands and songs taught by those who came before us. Our time of inclusion and our hour of personal storytelling is now."

James Trotta-Bono, Private Art Consultant/Gallerist and Curator, said, "Sensitive custodianship is a privileged role within the art market. It is our pleasure to present seminal artworks by some of the most important figures in Native American Art since 1950. Over the past number of years, there has been a growing nationwide interest to expand the parameters of American Art. Gallerists and auction houses were early to recognize this need and have been at the forefront of presenting marginalized artists to collectors and institutions, resulting in the vast expansion of private and institutional collecting and exhibiting of Native American Art. Phillips has identified this burgeoning market and has empowered our curatorial team to organize a private exhibition that parallels the long-overdue recognition and dramatic rise in demand for contemporary Native American art. New Terrains is an exhibition of scale, discernment, and depth. It is an exhibition that celebrates the florescence of contemporary Native American art."

ABOUT THE WORKS
Outstanding works in the exhibition include major pieces by Kent Monkman (Canadian Cree), Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee), Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc), Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne/Arapaho), T.C. Canon (Kiowa/Caddo), George Morrison (Ojibwe), Oscar Howe (Yanktonai/Dakota), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish/Kootenai tribes), Dana Claxton (Hunkpapa Lakota), Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), Eric Paul Riege (Navajo), Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Michael Kabotie (Hopi), Narcisco Abeyta (Navajo), Helen Hardin (Santa Clara Pueblo), Val Jean Hessing (Choctaw), Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo), Rabbett Before Horses Strickland (Chippewa), Geralyn Montano (Navajo/Comanche/Pueblo) McKee Platero (Navajo) and Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) - to name only a number. Painting, sculpture, photography, jewelry, clay, video, large-scale installation, and weaving are among the many artist mediums represented in the show.