WASHINGTON
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian will present a career retrospective of works by what it calls one of the most transformative American artists of the last half century, Fritz Scholder (1937-2005), officials announced.
More than 130 paintings, prints, drawings and bronze sculptures will be drawn from 40 public and private collections for the exhibition. The early works are from the late 1950s, when Scholder studied with American pop painter Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento City College in California, and the mid 1960s, when he began to be influenced by portraits of Native Americans created by his students at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., according to the Smithsonian.
In a National Museum of the American Indian first, two “Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian” exhibitions open Nov. 1 at the museum’s Washington and New York City sites.
In Washington, the National Mall museum said it would present a broad overview of Scholder’s works, including many of the revolutionary paintings of Native Americans for which the artist is best known, through Aug. 16, 2009. In lower Manhattan, the George Gustav Heye Center will focus on works created in the 1980s when Scholder lived and worked in a nearby loft, through May 17, 2009.
“Fritz Scholder was an enormously important and complex figure in 20th-century American art and culture, yet he has never been the subject of an in-depth, comprehensive study of this magnitude,” said Kevin Gover (Pawnee/Comanche), director of the museum.
Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), curator of contemporary art at the museum, organized the exhibition with associate curator Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche).
