Remembering Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Honoring Her Artistic Legacy

Subhankar Banerjee, Professor of Art and Ecology recalls, “I long considered Jaune Quick-to-See Smith as an elder that I could look up to from afar, and a kindred soul, as we both honored nonhuman kin in our art. When her painting, ’The Browning of America,’ 2000, and my photograph, ’Caribou Migration I,’ 2002 (now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art), were placed near each other in the introductory gallery of the exhibition, ’Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment’ at the Princeton University Art Museum—it was a joyous occasion. But a most memorable highlight of my life in art arrived when I had the opportunity to work closely with Jaune for her contribution in our project, ‘a Library, a Classroom, and the World’, which was included in the 2022 Venice Biennale art exhibition ’Personal Structures’ organized by the European Cultural Centre in Venice, Italy.

“In September of the previous year when I invited her to participate, she accepted with enthusiasm. She told us that she always loved books. She wanted to create her art in a book-form, which would be a first in her long and distinguished career. She told us that it will be a good fit for our ‘Library’ in Palazzo Bembo, once home of the famous Bembo Library in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. She worked closely with Valpuri Remling, Master Printer at the Tamarind Institute, and created ’All of My Relations I + II,’ 2022, two five-color lithograph accordion books with chine collé, which was first introduced in Venice, Italy, and then the following year, the accordion-book was included in her retrospective exhibition, ’Memory Map,’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

“I look forward to honoring Jaune in our forthcoming book, ’Coexistence: BioDiversity in New Mexico,’ that I’m editing now and which will be published next year by The University of New Mexico Press. Jaune not only had a long and distinguished career as an artist, but of equal significance was her tireless efforts to champion the work of other Native American artists, the proof of which are two recent exhibitions she curated: ’The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans’ (National Gallery of Art, 2023), which she lived to see come to fruition, and ’Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always’ (Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 2025), which opened on February 1, 2025, a week after she passed away.

“Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was the grand matriarch of Indigenous art in North America. Your luminous legacy will inspire us and the generations to come. Rest in peace, dear one.” With these words, we remember the life she lived and the legacy she left.

Jaune Quick-to-see Smith (Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana) a groundbreaking visual artists, curator, and activist, died on Friday, January 24, 2025, at her home in Corrales, New Mexico, at the age of 85 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Smith was recognized as one the first Distinguished Alumni of The University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts, who earned an M.A. in Visual Arts in 1980 and an honorary doctorate in 2008.

The UNM Art Museum holds many of her artworks in their collection, including every print she made in collaboration with Tamarind Institute over the course of 40 years. The UNM Art Museum shared this letter that Smith wrote for the graduating class of 2020, “We artists are important to society. Keep in mind that cultures who quit making art are dying cultures. We artists create art experiences that inspire people, help provide meditation, help heal, that give people hope whether we sing, make a painting, dance on YouTube, play a guitar or create an orchestra on Zoom that comes from all over the world. We artists are flexible, changing and moving with the times. We are contributors to society in too many ways to count. See that the Creator gave you a gift, preserve it and treasure it. Art can be your drug of choice. Don’t lose it; use it, to make the world a better place.”

We are incredibly grateful for her time here and express our most sincere condolences to family, friends, and the artist community at large who knew and were touched by her life, work, and activism.