The JSMA’s recent acquisition of Untitled by Raymond Saunders (American, b. 1934) marked the first work by this esteemed Bay Area painter and installation artist to enter the collection. Untitled combines many of the visual and thematic elements Saunders has repeated throughout his long artistic career. His work often references his public school education in Pittsburgh and his own role as an educator: as professor (now emeritus) at California State University in Hayward (now CSU East Bay) and as a core faculty member at the California College of Arts, from which he had received his MFA in 1961. Saunders was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship (1964), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1977, 1984). His 1967 pamphlet titled “Black Is a Color” challenged the notion of “Black art” as an identifiable, fixed category of art-making tied directly to an artist’s racial identity. In Saunders’ rejection of an easy reading of his own works, he celebrates the possibilities provided by jazz-like improvisation, multiple references, and layered meanings.

Untitled is presented in context with special loans of three drawings by Saunders from the collection of Laura Vandenburgh (Director, UO School of Art + Design; Associate Dean; and Professor of Art), and two works from Vandenburgh’s own drawing-based practice. The two artists have known one another for nearly five decades; Drawing Connections includes a reflection from Vandenburgh on the significance of this friendship and Saunders’ role in the development of her own artistic practice. 

Ideas about the American West, both in popular culture and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred. The exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region, which too often has been dominated by romanticized myths and Euro-American historical accounts.

Featuring artwork from the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and four partner museums in the western region of the United States, Many Wests is the culmination of a multi-year, joint curatorial initiative made possible by the Art Bridges Foundation. Along with JSMA, the SAAM’s collaborating partners include the Boise Art Museum (Boise, Idaho); the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, Utah); and the Whatcom Museum (Bellingham, Washington).

This exhibition presents an opportunity to examine previous misconceptions, question racist clichés, and highlight the multiple communities and histories that continue to form this iconic region of the United States. Working in various media, from painting and sculpture to photography and mixed media, the artists featured bring a nuanced and multifaceted history to light. Many Wests highlights many voices, especially those of artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latinx, and LGBTQ+. In Many Wests, JSMA is pleased to share works by Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Ka’ila Farrell-Smith (Klamath Modoc), V. Maldonado, Rubén Trejo, and Marie Watt (Seneca) from the permanent collection. The modern and contemporary artists featured in this exhibition reveal that “the West” has always been a place of multiple stories, experiences, and cultures.  

This exhibition is organized by Amy Chaloupka, curator of art at the Whatcom Museum; Melanie Fales, executive director/CEO of the Boise Art Museum; Danielle Knapp, McCosh Curator at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Whitney Tassie, senior curator and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; and E. Carmen Ramos, former curator of Latinx Art, and Art Bridges Initiative Project Director, with Anne Hyland, the Art Bridges Initiative curatorial coordinator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

This is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.

Virtual Tour

Many Wests national tour:

Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID (July 31 to Feb. 13, 2022)

Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA (March 19 to Aug. 21, 2022)

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR (Sept. 28, to Dec. 18, 2022)

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (Feb. 4 to June 11, 2023)

Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. (July 28, 2023, to Jan. 14, 2024)

On Earth: A Fragile Existence highlights works from the JSMA’s permanent collection that reflect a multi-layered understanding of humanity's role in our shared ecology with the non-human, or more-than-human, world. The Anthropocene, our current geological age in which human activity is the dominant influence on the natural world, is a time of both staggering environmental change and incredible innovation and discovery. As witnesses and participants in this era, artists observe, record, interpret, advocate, and imagine. The works on view are presented as guideposts in considering these complex and urgent issues and encourage reflection on one’s own place within our shared global ecology.

• What is the current state of the natural world, and what is humanity’s responsibility to our environment?
• How do human and animal interactions shape the ecology we share?
• What is the relationship between ecological shifts and human rights issues, including food justice, spatial justice, access to clean water, and environmental racism?
• How does art record the impact of human activity, including industrialization and extraction practices, global trade, and migration, on our climate and environment?
• Where do art and science intersect, and what can be learned from art that documents or responds to our most pressing environmental issues?
• What can humans do to change course?

On Earth: A Fragile Existence is organized by Danielle Knapp (McCosh Curator), and Thom Sempere (Associate Curator of Photography), with contributions from JSMA Executive Director, John Weber, and Anne Rose Kitagawa, Chief Curator of Collections & Asian Art and Director of Academic Programs, and the assistance of Morning Glory Ritchie (Mildred Bryant Brooks Student Intern in American Works on Paper). This exhibition supports the goals of the JSMA’s Faculty Engagement Working Group and the University of Oregon’s Environment Initiative, a campus-wide coordinated effort to create an intellectual and active hub focused on higher education’s role and contribution to a just and livable future. On Earth: A Fragile Existence invites further conversation around the university’s 2021-22 “Common Reading” selection, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi Nation). For more information, visit https://environment.uoregon.edu/about-us and https://fyp.uoregon.edu/common-reading-2021-2022-braiding-sweetgrass.

Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos)'s Artist Project Space exhibition pearly gates includes painting installation, video, and woven baskets, and thematically considers access in terms of land, ancestry, resources, and human relationships. The artist makes visible the complex systems of engagement between ancestral objects and contemporary institutional practices. Siestreem’s work bridges education and institutional reform, and this project specifically focuses on the care for Indigenous works in museum collections as well as the structural systems that provide or omit access and appropriate context to the presentations of Indigenous fine art.

This exhibition is made possible by the University of Oregon, Center for Art Research (CFAR) and Curators-in-Residence, Tiffany Harker and Iris Williamson. Their 2021-22 program, titled HABITS OF DENIAL, features research, exhibitions, and public programs around the theme of “access.” Collaborating artists investigate specific issues within larger systems of power and their embedded exclusionary impacts. Four anchoring programs will examine access through lenses of language and communication, technology and economies, communities and archives, and Indigeneity and institutions. Residency and related programming are made possible by The Ford Family Foundation. 

Special thanks to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University for their kind support of pearly gates.