Stretching the Canvas: Ten Decades of Native Painting

Stretching the Canvas: Ten Decades of Native Painting explores how Native artists challenged perceptions of what constituted art and what Native art could and should look like. Featuring more than 50 works by 46 artists, this exhibition tells the story of how American Indian art expanded after World War I and how Native painters began to advocate for themselves in a world that often ignored their talent. Artists such as Fred Kabotie, Tonita Peña, and Stephen Mopope carved out space for painting at a time when Native art was often dismissed. Later generations—including Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, Fritz Scholder, James Lavadour, Jeffrey Gibson, Dyani White Hawk, and Athena LaTocha—expanded the field even further, embracing a wide range of approaches. Over the span of ten decades, these artists and their work demonstrated the breadth, complexity, and continuing expansion of Native self-expression.