Native Subjects & Cultures
Browse representations of Native peoples and cultures and consider the role of perspective.
Browse representations of Native peoples and cultures and consider the role of perspective.
The images of Native people and cultures included in Gallup’s New Deal art collection are products of their time. They manifest the ideologies of the era and the tensions between Native and non-Native perspectives.
The majority of the artworks picturing Native subjects were produced by non-Native artists at a time when the boundaries between representation and romanticization were blurred in Western American art. While archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnographers were advancing concepts of cultural preservation, the railroads were promoting culture–based tourism and the fiction of “cowboys and Indians” permeated popular culture. Western American artists were influenced by these impulses to view Native peoples as relics of an idealized, “wild” past.
A handful of artworks in the collection were created by Native artists. While they depict Native customs, beliefs, and lifeways, most are done in the Studio Style, or “flat art” style, formulated by non-Native art teacher Dorothy Dunn in the 1930s. Dunn’s style took a primitivist view of Native cultures and, in doing so, was incredibly commercially successful, defining “Indian art” for generations to come.
As you look through these works, consider the lenses through which the artists saw and portrayed their subjects.
To learn more about the Studio Style and Native art during the New Deal, visit “The Art and Artists of ‘The Indian New Deal’” Special Exhibit.
To learn more about issues of Native representation in Western American art, visit the “Views on the Southwest” Special Exhibit.
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Gallup and McKinley County are situated on the ancestral and current homelands of the Diné and Ashiwi peoples.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection consists of over 120 objects created, purchased, or donated from 1933 to 1942 through New Deal federal art programs administered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to support artists during the Great Depression.
The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum features three types of exhibits, combining traditional and non-traditional approaches to illuminate academic, creative, and individual understandings.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection includes works by a demographically, professionally, and stylistically diverse group of named and unnamed artists.
Image Use Notice: Images of Gallup’s New Deal artworks are available to be used for educational purposes only. Non-collection images are subject to specific restrictions and identified by a © icon. Hover over the icon for copyright info. Read more
