TUCSON, AZ.- The Arizona State Museum presents Walking in Two Worlds: The Art of Jerry Brown, on view through March 2, 2007. It is intrinsic to all art that it conveys elements of culture in its creation. Language gives shape to culture and art is the language of creation. Evidence of cultural content can range from benign innocence (Folk Art) to self-conscious formality (Modernism), and hyperbolic irreverence (Post-Modernism). Native American art is no exception to this interpretive rule. Too often, we expect cultural content in Native American art to manifest as a folk narrative. Certainly, the art market supports this, and Indian artists find little pressure to step beyond their historic precedents.

When a Native artist is constantly prodded to choose a cultural platform, instead of a creative one, the pressure to articulate their experience in common, even cliché, cultural images looms large. The question of what makes Indian Art “Indian” compounds the responsibility among Native artists to achieve artistic authenticity. The socio-economic issue of expressing heritage in one culture—for the marketplace of another—hyper-sensitizes both artist and viewer to their respective expectations.