In the first private gallery exhibition to honor the life and legacy of Jaune Quick- to-See Smith after her passing on January 24, 2025 at the age of 85, LewAllen Galleries is deeply honored to present Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: art of memories told. The exhibition includes twenty-five major works on paper including pastel paintings, monotypes, charcoal and graphite drawings, and mixed-media. The exhibition opens on Friday, March 21, and remains on view through April 19, 2025.

Internationally prominent for her groundbreaking artwork that made visible the history and experiences of Indigenous people, Smith is today considered one of the most prominent Native American artists of the past century. She was honored in 2023 with a major solo retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the first Native American artist in the museum’s history to receive such an exhibition. That show also traveled to the Fort Worth Modern Museum and the Seattle Art Museum in 2023 and 2024. Works from the Whitney show are included in this LewAllen exhibition.

Smith’s art transcends boundaries—both culturally and artistically—through her deep commitment to storytelling, Native American truths, and the reclamation of Indigenous identities. Over the course of more than five decades, her diverse range of works, including paintings, sculptures, as well as the art mediums represented in this exhibition for which she was particularly noted, have served as powerful means for her voice to be heard and unflinching efforts in behalf of redefining the history and identity of Indigenous people in American life.

Smith’s art bridged the past to the present to ensure that the past is neither forgotten nor remembered erroneously. “Smith’s images bear witness. They are a recounting of truths... She only asks us not to forget ... She reminds us what is sacred,” wrote Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Associate Curator of Native American Art, in her essay entitled The things she carries published in the catalog accompanying the Whitney Museum retrospective.

Smith's work often cleverly blurred lines between polemic and poetry, engaging viewers with humor as well as directness to decipher complex layers of imagery, symbolism, and meaning, while addressing critical issues such as displacement, human rights, and environmental preservation. Her signature use of satire, combined with her role as the self-described "trickster" coyote—an avatar of herself in many ways— furthered her exploration of the complexities of Indigenous issues, making her work deeply engaging and thought-provoking. Smith's ability to spark curiosity, challenge perspectives, and push boundaries in American art has cemented her legacy as one of the most dynamic, provocative, and impactful artists of her generation.

Smith once described her art as a "diary" of her life which is itself a compelling story. An enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Smith was born on January 15, 1940, in the St. Ignatius Mission on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. Her teenage mother disappeared when Smith was still a toddler leaving her much older father, a horse trader, to raise her. They moved frequently, and between the ages of eight and fifteen, when she wasn’t in school, Smith worked in canneries and in fields, harvesting rhubarb and raspberries. Though fascinated with art from an early age, she said that “I wasn’t inside of a museum until I was in my 20s.”

Due to her gender and indigenous heritage, Smith was discouraged by teachers and administrators from pursuing an art career. When in high school, she was admonished by an adviser that “Indians don’t go to college.” Nevertheless, she enrolled at the two-year Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington where she was told “you draw better than all the men here, but you can’t be an artist, women cannot be artists.” Despite that, she received her arts degree from there in 1960.

Smith worked her way through school and ultimately met her partner, Andy Ambrose, and had children. For years she struggled to fit her college studies in among the various jobs she was forced to hold out to support her young family, including those of factory worker, waitress, veterinary assistant, and janitor. Smith earned a degree in art education, in 1976, from Framingham State College in Massachusetts, and in 1980 she received an MA in visual art from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Though her career struggles were many, her accomplishments as measured by art world standards were astonishing. While still a student she had her first show in Santa Fe in 1978 followed by a show in New York in 1979. In addition to making and exhibiting her own art, Smith was early on a talented curator and a tireless advocate for Native American artists including founding the Grey Canyon Group, a collective who exhibited their work together, both domestically and internationally. She subsequently organized more than thirty group exhibitions featuring Indigenous artists. Among them was the highly regarded Women of sweetgrass, cedar, and sage (1985). In 2023, she was chosen to be the curator of “The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans” at the National Gallery of Art, the first exhibition of contemporary Native American art ever held there. She had also been the first Native American artist to have had a work purchased by the National Gallery of Art in 2020.

Smith has also been recognized with numerous awards from leading arts organizations, and has been awarded with four honorary doctorate degrees. In addition, she was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York and was the recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Despite these major distinctions, Smith retained a remarkable sense of humility, never losing sight of her important personal goal to open doors for other Indigenous artists. In an interview with The New York times interview about the Whitney Museum retrospective she noted “When I came through the door, I bring a community with me ... I want there to be others after me.”

In promoting and generating opportunities for younger Native artists Smith proved to be a paragon of generosity. Having played a major role in “cracking the buckskin ceiling” in the art world for Indigenous artists, she maintained a steadfast commitment to “raising their voices”. About this aspect of her work, Smith observed that came as a natural part of her tribal heritage which possessed a “sharing cultural mandate.” As an example of this, in what has been described as her “most ambitious curatorial undertaking,” Smith curated the last major project of her life, the important survey exhibition entitled “Indigenous Identities: Here, Now and Always” at the Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers University in New Jersey. It features the works of 97 artists from 74 Indigenous nations. It opened on February 1, 2025, just a week after her passing.

This exhibition has special significance for both Santa Fe and LewAllen Galleries. She was a long- time resident of nearby Corrales, and this will be the first solo gallery show of her work in New Mexico in over 20 years. LewAllen represented Smith’s work for more than two decades beginning in the early 1990’s.

The gallery is most grateful to Garth Greenan Gallery in New York with whom this exhibition is in collaboration.