Leon Polk Smith: Hiding in Plain Sight Opening

The Heard Museum announces a new original exhibition, Leon Polk Smith: Hiding in Plain Sight, opening on Feb. 4, 2021. Leon Polk Smith, one of the great American artists of the 20th century, has been studied and celebrated through major exhibitions, publications and scholarship over many years – and yet, a significant source of inspiration and influence on his artistic production remains largely unexplored.

Leon Polk Smith: Hiding in Plain Sight takes visitors on the journey of how a young Smith, influenced by American Indian culture in his native Oklahoma, became one of America’s most accomplished painters and a founding icon of midcentury modern art and design.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by heather ahtone (Choctaw/Chickasaw), chief curator at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City; Joe Baker (Enrolled Delaware), exhibition co-curator and director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum; Dwanna McKay (Muscogee Creek), assistant professor of sociology and Indigenous studies at Colorado College; Diana Pardue, Heard Museum chief curator and exhibition co-curator; and Dana Whitney, former Richard DeMartini Family Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and current independent curator. The catalogue includes a statement by Patterson Sims, president of the Leon Polk Smith Foundation, and a foreword by Heard Museum Dickey Family Director and CEO David Roche.