UW art professor leads special tour of Smithsonian exhibition

Monday, November 10, 2008 -

 Lowe at Scholder exhibit
 

Art professor Truman Lowe treated members of the Art Department’s Board of Visitors, art faculty and art alumni to an exclusive, pre-opening tour of the exhibition “Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian” in New York City on October 30.

The two-city exhibition opened to the public on November 1 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. and at NMAI’s George Gustav Heye Center in Manhattan.

Lowe co-curated the comprehensive show, which illuminates a central paradox of the artist’s life and work – Scholder’s complex identity as a person of French, German, English, and American Indian ancestry.   Scholder is considered one of the most influential American artists of the 20^th century. 

While Lowe has long admired the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, he became directly involved with its efforts in 2000, after being asked to serve as the first curator of contemporary art at its National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which was under construction at the time.  The inaugural exhibition that Lowe conceived and organized, “Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser,” received rave reviews.  He has since curated other major exhibitions for the museum.

Lowe is an internationally acclaimed sculptor whose art reflects his strong connection to his ancestral heritage and to the land and waters of Wisconsin – he was born and raised in the state and is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.  Lowe joined the Department of Art in 1975 and was promoted to full professor in 1989.  In 2008 he received the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award. 

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