“People don’t call a work by Picasso a Spanish painting—they call it a Picasso”
T. C. Cannon (1946‐1978)
Native Vanguard presents a group of artists that epitomizes a contemporary art aesthetic and transcends cultural boundaries. The artists included have displayed through their visual art, writings and teachings that the art they have produced goes beyond Native art and is contemporary in every aspect. These important works of contemporary art need to be exhibited in a modern fine art setting. The artists featured in Native Vanguard represent different schools, movements and time periods. The show presents painters who gained notoriety in the 1990s with striking and beautifully executed imagery: Bunky Echo-Hawk, John Feodorov, Frank Buffalo Hyde and Steven Paul Judd; women who revolutionized ceramic and weaving traditions like Roxanne Swentzell, Anita Fields and Ramona Sakiestewa; established masters Edgar Heap of Birds, David Johns, Armond Lara, George Longfish and N. Scott Momaday and posthumous showings of artists who worked in the 1950s and 60s during the genesis of Contemporary American Indian Painting; T. C. Cannon and George Morrison. The show also includes Robert Rauschenberg who, although he was never billed as a Native artist, was one quarter Cherokee.