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Reid Walker On the Infrastructure Gap Holding Back Native American Art

Even as the institutional visibility of Native American artists grows, Walker argues that impactful change will require stronger bridges to museums, galleries, collectors and the international art world.

The Santa Fe Indian Market is arguably the country’s most historic and significant event devoted entirely to Native American art, bringing generations of artists into direct contact with collectors and broader audiences while fostering greater awareness of Indigenous artistic practices. The 104th edition, held just a few weeks ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico, brought together nearly 1,000 artists from more than 200 tribal nations. The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) describes it as the largest and most prestigious Native art market in the world.

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Yet even amid a recent reawakening that has brought contemporary Indigenous practices greater international recognition, coupled with renewed interest in ancestral knowledge and alternative systems of understanding, Native American art remains comparatively underrepresented in the mainstream art world, particularly outside the United States. Compared with other historically marginalized communities that have gained greater visibility through the ongoing reassessment of institutional and market canons, the number of contemporary Native American artists achieving broad international recognition remains relatively limited, as does the rediscovery of established and pioneering figures long overlooked by art history. The same is true of galleries representing Native artists beyond those specializing in the field.

Native American artists may have begun appearing more frequently in biennials and broader institutional exhibitions, particularly as contemporary curatorial discourse increasingly engages ecological questions, land and alternative relationships between humans and the natural world—areas in which Indigenous knowledge systems have long offered compelling models and perspectives. Yet major historical surveys devoted to individual Native artists remain relatively rare, and rarer still are ambitious exhibitions attempting to trace the breadth, diversity and historical continuity of Native American art within the larger story of American art.

In 2023, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., staged “The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans,” which gathered work by nearly 50 living Native artists from across the United States. The show was curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who became the first artist ever invited to curate an exhibition at the museum. (Despite being one of the most notable Native American artists to emerge in the postwar period, it took until 2020 for the museum to acquire a painting by Quick-to-See Smith: I See Red: Target, the first painting by a Native American artist to enter the National Gallery’s collection.) In December 2024, the museum announced the acquisition of works by eight other contemporary Native artists: Jeffrey Gibson, Sky Hopinka, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Dakota Mace, Eric-Paul Riege, Cara Romero, Kay WalkingStick and Will Wilson. But it took until 2025 for the National Gallery to appoint a curator dedicated specifically to work by Native artists, when Dakota Hoska (Oglála Lakȟóta Nation, Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee) became its inaugural curator of Native American and Global Indigenous Art.

Last year, the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University staged “Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always,” also curated by Quick-to-See Smith, which featured work by 97 living artists representing more than 74 Indigenous nations and communities across North America—the largest museum survey of contemporary Native American art of its kind to date. Meanwhile, “An Indigenous Present” at the ICA Boston, which closed in March, took a more focused look at the past century of contemporary Indigenous art. Co-organized by Jeffrey Gibson and independent curator Jenelle Porter, it brought together 15 Native North American artists, including George Morrison, Mary Sully, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, Raven Chacon, Sky Hopinka and Dakota Mace.

Clearly progress is being made, but institutions are undoubtedly running late, and there is still much to do. The main problem remains persistent entry barriers and the lack of a broader infrastructure capable of supporting Native American artists, art collector Reid Walker tells Observer. A citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, Walker has stepped up to advocate for greater representation of his community, serving on the National Gallery of Art’s Collectors Committee, Tate’s North American Acquisitions Committee and the Phillips Collection board. After realizing that collecting would never do enough to support emerging Native talent, he has also directed resources toward grants, mentorship and curatorial introductions for Native artists through the........

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