The indigenous artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is known for her dry humor, activist zeal and penetrating commentary. Her personality, and breadth of works, are evident in her first retrospective “Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map,” now open at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Now, as the art world reckons with inequities in art history and their collections, Smith is among the artists finally getting recognition, or more than “lip service,” she said, at American museums. In short, that a museum is staging a solo show of an artist such as Smith is a big deal. It’s why Phipps called Smith “not just an artist but an educator and activist and one of the most recognized indigenous artists of her generation.”“Indian Madonna Enthroned, 1974,” which was reconstructed by her son, the artist Neal Ambrose-Smith, is a reimagined Indigenous woman as a Madonna.
To celebrate the fifth centennial of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, Smith decided to spoof and celebrate 40,000 years of the land. A group of rabbits are dancing and holding hands.She wanted an icon of United States commercialism, and set on the rabbit, with multiple meanings. She chose the standing rabbit. “In Native American culture, a rabbit is part of the creation story. I usually go forward, and then I look back. And I think that’s what I did here.