About the Artist

(Born 1940) This prominent American Indian artist has been featured in articles ranging in magazines from Arts to The Village Voice, also ArtNews, The New York Times, Portfolio, Southwest Art, Art in America, Artspace and Vogue.  Quick-to-See Smith earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art Education at Farmington State College in Massachusetts and her Master of Art from the University of New Mexico. She holds four honorary doctorates from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the Massachusetts College of Art and the University of New Mexico.

Her solo exhibitions include Marilyn Butler Fine Art in Scottsdale, AZ  (1987), Yellowstone Art Center in Billings, Montana (1986); Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York City (1984); at the Galerie Akmak in Berlin, Wester Germany (1983).  To date she has had in excess of over 100 solo exhibitions over the past forty years. 

Public collections permanently holding her works are:  Heard Museum; Denver Art Museum; Museum of Mankind in Vienna, Austria; National Museum of American Art, in Washington, DC; Stanford Museum in Connecticut; the Whitney Museum; the Metropolitan Museum; the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum for World Cultures in Frankfurt, Germany; the Brooklyn Museum; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Walker; the Minneapolis Art Institute; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe.

Recent awards include a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation to archive her work; the 2011 Art Table Artist Award; Moore College Visionary Woman Award for 2011; Induction into the National Academy of Art in 2011; Living Artist of Distinction, Georgia O’Keefe Museum, New Mexico 2012 and the Switzer Award for 2012.

Smith has completed several collaborative public art works such as the floor design in the Great Hall of the new Denver Airport; an in-situ sculpture in Yerba Buena Park San Francisco and a mile-long sidewalk history trail in West Seattle and recently a new terrazzo floor design at the Denver Airport.

Beyond making art, Quick-to-See Smith is also an art educator, art curator, art advocate, and political activist.  To date, she has organized or curated over 30 Native exhibitions.