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Déaxitchish / Pretty Eagle

Wendy Red Star

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Wendy Red Star’s 1880 Crow Peace Delegation series features the artist’s notations about Native heritage, history, and identity, handwritten on reproductions of Charles Milton Bell’s photographs of Crow leaders. The original photographs were taken during a historic meeting of the Crow delegation with the U.S. government in Washington, DC, in 1880, to negotiate the expansion of the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Crow reservation. Shortly after, these photographs began to circulate as part of a stereotyped, commercialized, and flattened understanding of Native American leadership.

The artist’s notes elucidate the meaning of various costume elements, educating non-Indigenous viewers while commenting on white Americans’ ignorance of Native American culture. Red Star also includes information about each chief: anecdotes of bravery, personal details, and a note about how Pretty Eagle’s body was kept for seventy-two years at the American Museum of Natural History, a potent institutional critique.

This series includes five additional portraits of these five leaders; for more information, visit www.wendyredstar.com.
MEDIUM Inkjet print
DATES 2014
DIMENSIONS each panel: 25 × 17 in. (63.5 × 43.2 cm)  (show scale)
ACCESSION NUMBER 2018.19.4a
CREDIT LINE Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D.
PROVENANCE Before 2018, purchased from the artist by Loren G. Lipson; 2018, gift of Loren G. Lipson to the Brooklyn Museum.
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MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1981). Déaxitchish / Pretty Eagle, 2014. Inkjet print, each panel: 25 × 17 in. (63.5 × 43.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2018.19.4a. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , CUR.2018.19.4a.jpg)
EDITION Edition: 1/15
IMAGE overall, CUR.2018.19.4a.jpg., 2018
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT © Wendy Red Star
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Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1981). <em>Déaxitchish / Pretty Eagle</em>, 2014. Inkjet print, each panel: 25 × 17 in. (63.5 × 43.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2018.19.4a. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , CUR.2018.19.4a.jpg)