Audio Guide – “Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape”

Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee)

Transcription:

Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), Thom, Where Are the Pocumtucks (The Oxbow), 2020, oil on panel, 24 × 48 in. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, London and New York

Artist Biography:

KAY WALKINGSTICK (Cherokee) (b. 1935) was born in Syracuse, NY, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma with Cherokee/Anglo heritage. WalkingStick earned a BFA in painting in 1959 from Beaver College of Arcadia University, Philadelphia, PA. In 1973, she was awarded a Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellowship for Women to attend Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, where she earned her MFA in 1975. Her practice is both a visual record of her life experience and her attempt to express Indian history as a crucial part of America’s history. WalkingStick was a Professor of Fine Arts at Cornell University from 1988 until 2005. She had a major retrospective at the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC, in 2015. The exhibition traveled the United States to venues including the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Dayton Art Institute, OH; Gilcrease Art Museum, Tulsa, OK; Kalamazoo Institute of Art, MI; and Montclair Art Museum, NJ, closing in 2018. Additionally, she has been included in exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; National Gallery of Canada, Ontario; The New Museum, New York City; and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Her work is held in collections of the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Cherokee Heritage Foundation; Park Hill, OK; Denver Art Museum, CO; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; MoMA, New York City; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Southern Plains Indian Museum, Anadarko, OK. WalkingStick is represented by Hales Gallery in New York City.