Orange Alert

Sascha Scott interviewed for NPR's Marketplace

Sascha Scott in a library.

Posted on: July 6, 2020

Sascha Scott, associate professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in an article from marketplace.org about the National Gallery of Art’s first major painting by a Native American artist. The museum, located in Washington, D.C., acquired the painting, “I See Red: Target,” (1992) by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, which is an 11-foot-tall mixed-media work on canvas. The work explores the commercial exploitation of Native culture.

Speaking about the inclusion of works by Native American artists in the gallery, Scott says in the article, “It can’t just be one. There has to be better representation, and I don’t think that’s a challenge given how many exceptional artists are working today.”

To help the general public learn more about prominent Indigenous artists, Scott had students from her spring 2020 graduate seminar on 20th-century Native American art write and correct Wikipedia entries. According to Scott, one of the common challenges when researching, learning and teaching about Indigenous art is a lack of information about individual artists. Through this exercise, her students added accurate and well-cited information to entries about Indigenous artists.