A Life of Collecting: Gifts of Native American Art from Malcolm Whyte ’55 and Karen Whyte

In the Bartels Gallery, Floor 1L

This exhibition showcases gifts of Native American art by Malcolm Whyte, Cornell Class of 1955, and Karen Whyte. The objects, along with those given previously, constitute the core of the Johnson Museum’s collection of Indigenous arts of the United States and Canada. Over almost three decades of collecting, Malcolm and Karen Whyte assembled a formidable collection of artworks by twentieth-century Native American artists. For them, this was a journey of constant learning about artists and the stories behind their artworks.

The selection presented here covers a variety of artistic expressions, from creators often referred to as “traditional” to modern and contemporary practitioners. Native American art cannot be reduced to a specific aesthetic but rather comprises a diversity of individual perspectives shaped by particular life experiences, kinship and community, and Indigenous cultural knowledge—both connected to the past and rooted in ancestral territories.

This exhibition was curated by Hugo C. Ikehara-Tsukayama, Harris Family Curator of the Arts of the Americas.