Wendy Red Star
From the series “1880 Crow Peace Delegation”
2013
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Wendy Red Star
From the series “1880 Crow Peace Delegation”
2013
Physical Qualities
Inkjet print, pigment-based, of a digitally manipulated photograph by C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Sheet: 660 × 469 mm. (26 × 18 7/16 in.)
Image: 610 × 418 mm. (24 × 16 7/16 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Object Number
2020.28.2
In red handwriting, Wendy Red Star annotated reproductions of 19th-century portraits of five Apsáalooke (Crow) members taken by Charles Milton Bell (1848–1893), a white photographer based in Washington, D.C. In an effort to undermine the ethnographic
perspective of the original photographs, the artist’s annotations identify the sitters and give them voice, carefully outlining regalia and describing their lives, often with biting humor. The Apsáalooke members traveled from Montana to Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. politicians and discuss white settlers’ encroachment on their land and the Northern Pacific Railroad expansion through their reservation. The United States government used force and threats—under the guise of treaties—to remove the Apsáalooke people from their homelands. Between 1851 and 1905, Apsáalooke territories shrank from 38.5 million acres to 2.3 million acres.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2020; Sargent's Daughters Gallery
Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum
