Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville

By July 25, 2024
image of abstract expression painting
Benjamin Harjo, Jr., Honoring the Spirit of All Things, 2001, opaque watercolor, 39 3/4 in. x 27 inches. On loan from Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, Oklahoma. Image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Installation view of Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville. Photograph by Tom McFetridge and image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Dyani White Hawk, She Gives (Quiet Strength V), 2019, acrylic on canvas, 60 × 48 × 1 5/8 inches. Image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.

Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art examines the mid-century American art movement known as the Indian Space Painters and the relationship between those non-Native painters, the Indigenous visual and material culture that inspired them, and the artists from the modern Native art movement who expanded upon such creative explorations through their own visual heritage.

Investigating these relationships for the first time, Space Makers reconfigures the history of American art and reveals its foundations in Indigenous space – aesthetically, geographically, and socio-politically. The free, focus exhibition features loans from the Charles and Valerie Diker collection, one of the nation’s preeminent collections of the underrecognized Indian Space Painting movement, and is guest curated by Christopher T. Green, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College.

from the exhibition text

Installation view of Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville. Photograph by Tom McFetridge and image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Linda Lomahaftewa, Sustenance, late 1960s, oil on canvas, 71 x 42 1/2 inches. Courtesy of Logan Slock and Ana Kuny © Linda Lomahaftewa. Photograph by Jason S. Ordaz and image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Installation view of Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville. Photograph by Tom McFetridge and image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Steve Wheeler, Woman Eating a Hot Dog, 1950-1975, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches. Charles and Valerie Diker Collection. Image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
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Installation view of Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville. Photograph by Tom McFetridge and image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Installation view of Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville. Photograph by Tom McFetridge and image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.

Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art is on view at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville through September 30, 2024.

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