Lloyd New Native American Art Institute offers unique educational experience

For students and teachers interested in Native American art and culture, the Lloyd New Institute of Native American Art offers a unique educational opportunity to explore how they intersect. The week-long program, July 19 – 23, takes place at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, and is co-sponsored by the Center’s Plains Indian Museum and the University of Wyoming.


Participants immerse themselves in Native American art and culture through a variety of experiences: study of extraordinary original objects from the past three centuries; close interaction with dynamic, creative artists working today who will serve as instructors and demonstrators; in-depth research; and museum experience, both in the public galleries and in collections vaults behind-the-scenes.


“This institute provides a unique opportunity for participants to learn about the expression of creativity, and cultural and historical understanding reflected in Native American arts,” says Emma I. Hansen, senior curator of the Plains Indian Museum and director of the institute. “Led entirely by Native artists and scholars, the program offers one-on-one interaction with artists for a better understanding of their training, backgrounds, creativity, and inspirations.”


The art institute is open to graduate and undergraduate students as well as teachers seeking instruction on Native American arts and cultures that they can then integrate into their classes. Participants can receive college credit through the University of Wyoming’s American Indian Studies program by enrolling in summer session course AIST-4990. Go to http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/registrar/Summer2010 for more information. The cost for the summer institute without college credit is $275. Contact Gretchen Henrich at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 307.578.4061 to register without credit.


Dr. Judith Antell (Chippewa), director of the American Indian Studies program at the University of Wyoming, and Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakota), artist, educator, art historian, and author, worked with Hansen (Pawnee) to organize the institute; all three also serve as lead instructors during the week. Additional artist instructors include Bently Spang (Cheyenne) and Ken Blackbird (Assiniboine). Participants will take a field trip to Chief Plenty Coups State Park in Montana for presentations by Susan Stewart (Crow) and other traditional artists, and to the studio of a contemporary Native American artist.


This year’s institute draws on the Plains Indian Museum’s extraordinary collection as well as the Splendid Heritage Collection from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. That collection is featured in the special exhibition Splendid Heritage: Perspectives in American Indian Art, on view at the Historical Center May 1 – October 31, and includes eighteenth and nineteenth-century Plains, Plateau, and Northeastern Woodlands objects of unique artistry and powerful cultural expression.


Cherokee artist and educator Lloyd New, for whom the institute is named, was instrumental in the founding and direction of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and served for more than thirty years on the Plains Indian Museum Advisory Board. Endowment funds established after his death provide scholarships for the art institute for Native American students, and for teachers working in Native American communities. For scholarship information, contact Henrich at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 307.578.4061. The Lloyd New Institute is an annual program at the Historical Center.


The Splendid Heritage special exhibition was organized by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts from the collection of John and Marva Warnock. Its stay at the Historical Center is funded in part by grants from the MetLife Foundation Museum and Community Connections program, the Wyoming Humanities Council, and the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, and by a generous gift from Buffalo Bill Historical Center Trustee Naoma Tate. It was co-curated by Hansen and Bernadette Brown, former curator of African, Oceanic, and New World Art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.


Committed to connecting people with the Spirit of the American West, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center weaves the varied threads of the western experience—history and myth, art and Native culture, firearms technology and natural history—into the rich panorama that is the American West. The Center, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is operating its spring schedule of 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. through April 30; it moves to summer hours of 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. May 1. For general information, call 307.587.4771 or visit www.bbhc.org.