Crystal Bridges and Art Bridges Acquire 90 Works of Contemporary Native Art

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Art Bridges Foundation in Bentonville, Arkansas, have acquired 90 works of contemporary Native art from the St. Louis–based John and Susan Horseman Collection, which focuses on supporting Indigenous and African American artists.

The acquisition includes works by Kent Monkman, Tyrell Tapaha, George Morrison, Oscar Howe, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Rick Bartow, Kay WalkingStick, James Lavadour, Emmi Whitehorse, Brad Kahlhamer, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Rose B. Simpson, Roxanne Swentzell, and T.C. Cannon. The two organizations will divide the works, with nine going to Crystal Bridges and the remaining 81 being added to the collection of Art Bridges.

“The Horseman Collection has such a rich selection of works,” Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa/Tonga), the museum’s curator of Indigenous art, told ARTnews. “The artists tell stories about collective history that predates America.”

The Crystal Bridges acquisition is part of an overall collecting strategy on the museum’s part to expand its holdings in both Native art and craft. (Crystal Bridges recently acquired a major Tiffany Studios Window.) Though the museum’s focus is on American art, its holdings of Native art have only numbered around 120 works, or about 3 percent of its total collection.

“Indigenous perspectives are foundational to any American art collection,” said Ashley Holland, director of curatorial initiatives for Art Bridges.

Founded in 2017, Art Bridges funds exhibitions across the US dedicated to American art. More recently, it has begun building a collection of its own. (In 2023, it acquired a Robert Colescott painting at a Bonhams auction for $4.5 million.) Art Bridges’s works are available to over 250 partner organizations, primarily regional museums, which can borrow them for long-term loans. The Horseman acquisition brings its total holdings to around 250 works, with Native art now making up a third of its holdings. 

Crystal Bridges last made a major acquisition of Native art in 2020, when it acquired 35 works by 25 Native American artists from collector Bruce Hartman. That acquisition included works made by early 20th century artists from New Mexico, like the San Ildefonso self-taught artists and Santa Fe Indian School, and from Oklahoma, such as the Kiowa Five/Six artists.

But acquisitions of Indigenous art of this scale are still rare at US museums. A comparable one was made nearly a decade ago, in 2017, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York received a gift 91 works from the Diker Collection, which had been loaning works from its holdings since the early 1990s.

Works from both parts of the Horseman acquisition will soon go on view. The Art Bridges portion will be featured in an exhibition at the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, which will open this summer on the Crystal Bridges campus. Opening November 3, the exhibition will look at art as central to Native lifeways and healing. Three works—Cannon’s It’s A Good Day to Die (1970), Swentzell’s The Corn Mothers are Crying (2015), and Monkman’s Saving the Newcomers (2023)—will go on view at Crystal Bridges next year as part of the expansion of its campus. Additional works going on view in 2027, including in the exhibition “Made In Beauty,” which will trace the historical and contemporary art of Native peoples.  

After the Bentonville display, Art Bridges will begin loaning at works from the Horseman acquisition to its partner institutions, with an emphasis on ensuring an accurate display and interpretation of the loaned works and “developing long-term, reciprocal relationships with the community, and not simply checking a box for the next 5 years,” Holland said.  

John Horseman said he was motivated to give his works to Crystal Bridges and Art Bridges with the hope that contemporary Native art will be placed alongside the work of non-Native artists. “They’ll be a breath of fresh air, an awareness,” he said of the works he has been collecting since 2012. “[Ojibwe painter] George Morrison should be considered a great abstract artist to be juxtaposed alongside Willem de Kooning, and Kent Monkman next to painters from the Hudson River School.”

Since joining Crystal Bridges in 2023, Cocker has been thinking about how the museum can go about these kinds of displays and “show a sort of model for how to work with Indigenous artists and communities, and that unfolds in a range of ways,” she said, noting that Crystal Bridges is situated on the ancestral territories of the O-ga-xpa, Osage, and Cherokee nations.

She continued, “Arkansas is on the Trail of Tears, so shows should be led by its survivors, and museums ought to create space for joy and continuity, and educate people about the place they’re in: Bentonville, Arkansas. Success looks like excitement from the community and willingness to collaborate and share in this redesigned museum space; this acquisition is one step in the right direction.”