Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25

heather ahtone (Chickasaw and Choctaw) is Senior Curator at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. She is the coauthor of Warhol and the West (Tacoma Art Museum, 2019), editor of Seeds of Being (Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, 2018), and coeditor of Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts at Twenty-Five (Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, 2017) among other works.

Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25 explores the first twenty-five years of a remarkable nonprofit printmaking and traditional arts studio based on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon, the only such center located on a reservation community in the United States. Art historian Prudence Roberts, drawing from conversations with CSIA founder, the artist James Lavadour, narrates the institute's history from its beginnings through the establishment of a professional quality printmaking program and an international reputation. Native American art scholar heather ahtone and curator Rebecca Dobkins trace the development of indigenous printmaking in North America, further contextualizing this story. Over sixty color plates will illustrate selected work from the dozens of artists, indigenous and non-indigenous, who have completed residencies at CSIA since its founding, including luminaries of contemporary Native American art Rick Bartow, Joe Feddersen, Jeffrey Gibson, Edgar Heap of Birds, James Lavadour, Lillian Pitt, Wendy Red Star, and Marie Watt.