Smith said the exhibit includes rarely seen paintings from private collections. “We hope to lay the groundwork for new ways of thinking about Scholder's place in art history," he said,
Scholder was the son of a Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator who was half Luiseno. The artist grew up in the Northern Plains, living on the campuses of Indian schools where his father worked but attending public schools. The artist once said that his father "was the product of the old Indian schools --- he was ashamed of being an Indian.")
Scholder won numerous awards following his graduation from Sacramento City College in 1958. He had been the subject of two one-man shows by the time he received his master's degree from the University of Arizona in 1964.
He taught painting and contemporary art history for five years at the Institute of American Indian Arts, initially counseling his Native American students to avoid ghettoizing themselves by painting so-called "Indian art."
A comprehensive 200-page book, edited by Lowery Stokes Sims, curator at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, accompanies the exhibition.
The exhibition presents works through 2004 --- the year before Scholder's death. Among the works from the final chapter of the artist's life is "Self Portrait with Grey Cat" (2003), the last of many self-portraits that the museum officials said represented “an unflinching reckoning with aging and infirmity.”
For more information, log on tot www.AmericanIndian.si.edu
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