Lew Allen Galleries Indian Market Show Case August 7-September, 5 2026

Santa Fe Indian Market Week returns for the 104th year. Lew Allen  Galleries showcase Frits Cholder, Jaune Quick-to- See Smith, Emmie White Horse.  

INDIAN MARKET SHOWCASE Fritz Scholder, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith & Emmi Whitehorse Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Exhibition @ LewAllen Galleries On view: August 7 - September 5, 2026 On the occasion of its 50th Anniversary celebration, LewAllen Galleries is particularly pleased to present an Indian Market Showcase of original works by legendary masters Native American Art: Fritz Scholder (1937–2005), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith ​(1940 - 2025), and featuring celebrated contemporary Emmi Whitehorse. Presented in tandem, their works offer a profound dialogue on Indigenous identity, history, abstraction, and cultural storytelling. View Online Exhibition FRITZ SCHOLDER Fritz Scholder, Last Indian with American Flag, 1975, serigraph on paper, ed. 83/150, 36.5 x 31 in Beyond his original fame for having “broken the mold” in the way Native Americans are portrayed in fine art—departing radically from traditional, stereotypical depictions to portray the reality of the Native American’s actual place in contemporary society—Fritz Scholder’s contribution lies in a profound interrogation of Indigenous and metaphysical subjects. Scholder employed a deliberate alchemy of figurative distortion, transforming the human form into a vessel for psychological and philosophical inquiry that bridges the tension between cultural myth and personal reality. This Showcase features paintings and monotypes recently received from the Estate of Fritz Scholder View More By Fritz Scholder JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Spam, 1994, mixed media & collage on paper, 15 x 11 in Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s practice functions as a powerful form of historical revisionism. Operating in the mode of a “trickster”—a sacred shape-shifting role rooted in Indigenous lore and Modernism alike—Smith constructs dense, multi-layered visual records challenging the erasure of Native experiences within the national discourse. Through a synthesis of tribal knowledge, canonical iconography, and pop-art ephemera, her work asserts the primacy of Native narratives within the broader canon of American Modernism. In 2023, Smith became the first Native American artist to be accorded a solo retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. View More By Jaune Quick-to-See Smith EMMI WHITEHORSE Emmi Whitehorse, #1229, Ice Plant, 1999, oil & chalk on paper on canvas, 39.5 x 51.25 x 2 in Emmi Whitehorse’s serene, atmospheric abstract paintings function as meditative landscapes rooted in an Indigenous and feminist worldview. Drawing inspiration from the Southwestern landscape, Whitehorse creates compositions using layered grounds of oil wash, Conté pencil, pastel, and chalk—translating the intricate visual rhythm of traditional Navajo weaving into fluid abstraction. Centered on the Navajo concept of hózhó—“walking in beauty”—her work reflects a lifetime dedicated to maintaining a harmonious balance with the natural world. A member of the Navajo Nation with a career spanning over four decades, Whitehorse’s work is held in major international collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art, among many others. Whitehorse’s work has been the subject of dozens of museum and gallery presentations and is currently on view at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe through October 3. View More Emmi Whitehorse

©2026 LewAllen Galleries | Artwork ©Artists and the Estates of the Artists pictured

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Walker Youngbird Foundations Emerging Native Arts Grant awarded to Paiute Painter Melissa Melero- Moose.

Paiute Painter Melissa Melero-Moose Wins $15,000 Native Arts Grant for Work Made From Willow and Pine Nuts

Native-led nonprofit Walker Youngbird Foundation's grant supports the development of a new body of work for public presentation this fall

Melissa Melero-Moose doesn't just paint the Great Basin, she gathers it. Willow, tule, cattails, and pine nuts collected from her Northern Paiute homelands are embedded in the layered, abstract surfaces of her mixed-media paintings, alongside acrylic washes and rice paper.

That practice has now earned her the Walker Youngbird Foundation's Emerging Native Arts Grant, a $15,000 award given twice a year to Native artists developing new bodies of work. Melero-Moose, an enrolled member of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe based near Reno, Nevada, is the fifth recipient. She will use the grant to create a new series of paintings for a public exhibition, with venue and dates to be announced this fall.

"Her work belongs to the Great Basin, not simply as subject matter, but as material and method," said Reid Walker, the foundation's founder, of her work.

"My proposal for this new series of work is to translate and create new imagery, in mixed media painting creations, that would accompany some of the traditional stories from the Numu (Northern Paiute) in my region. In my current work, the Basket Series, I present place, through color and textures, the feeling of the Great Basin region and Paiute culture with abstraction and design. I use organic objects like willow, pine nuts, cattails, and earth to create the textures that tell the story of place. These new works would be guided by those similar elements," said Melero-Moose.

Melero-Moose traces her practice to making her son's Paiute basket cradleboard with family members, an experience that drew her into weaving and, eventually, into working gathered materials directly into her paintings. It also made her an advocate for Native weavers losing access to traditional gathering sites on tribal and public lands. Her recent series "Access Denied" renders that loss visually: basketry designs that transform into barbed wire, cutting Indigenous people off from the willow, food, and water their traditions depend on.

She curates the Great Basin Native Artists Gallery at the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum in Carson City, an outgrowth of the artist collective she co-founded in 2014 to counter the invisibility of Great Basin Native artists in the broader Native art world.

Awarded bi-annually, the Emerging Native Arts Grant provides direct funding, mentorship, and visibility to Native and Indigenous artists at a pivotal stage in their careers. Native artists are often underrepresented in mainstream arts funding and gallery systems, and this initiative offers the resources to complete a proposed project, whether an exhibition, installation, publication, or other.

High-resolution images of the artist and her work are available upon request.

ABOUT WALKER YOUNGBIRD FOUNDATION
Founded in 2024, the Walker Youngbird Foundation is a Native-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to advancing contemporary Indigenous artists across North America. Through grants, mentorship, exhibitions, strategic partnerships, and institutional collaboration, the Foundation supports artists at pivotal moments in their careers while helping expand the presence of Native art in museums, collections, and public life. Learn more at walkeryoungbird.org.

SOURCE Walker Youngbird Foundation

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