Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

1940 – 2025

As a child growing up on the Flathead Reservation, Quick-to-See Smith would carry around small drawings of animals that her father drew for her; she knew from a young age that she wanted to become an artist. A Native American of French-Cree, Shoshone, and Salish ancestry, Quick-to-See Smith is part of a new generation of Native American artists working to redefine their culture’s relationship to contemporary American life and its problematic past.

Her studio practice includes painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking, and is rooted in storytelling. Her imagery is in equal measures political, defiant, and humorous, and she incorporates elements of language and popular culture alongside the desert landscape, horses, petroglyphs, and maps.

Quick-to-See Smith has worked at Tamarind repeatedly over the years, collaborating with a range of printers over a forty year period. She has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the College Art Association Women’s Award, 2002; New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2005. Art Table Artist Honoree, New York, 2011; Visionary Woman Award, Moore College, Pennsylvania, 2011; Elected to the National Academy of Art, New York, 2011; Living Artist of Distinction Award, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 2012; NAEA Ziegfeld Lecture Award, 2014; The Woodson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015 along with four honorary doctorates: Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 1992; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1998; Massachusetts College of Art, 2003; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque 2009. Her work is represented in museum collections around the world, including Museum of Modern Art, Quito, Ecuador; the Museum of Mankind, Vienna; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Artist’s Website