A work from the MAM Contemporary American Indian Art Collection, A Map to Heaven by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, has been selected for an internationally touring exhibition titled Out West: The Great American Landscape.

Out West opened in Washington, D.C. in spring 2007, then toured to several locations in China, including the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, where the exhibit will provide an important cultural dimension to events leading up to the 2008 Olympics. The exhibition, sponsored by American Airlines, Anheuser-Busch Foundation and Tyco International, will bear the Olympic logo and be accompanied by an illustrated publication.

According to the organizer, Meridian International Center:

"The purpose of this exchange is not only to present an exhibition of fine art, but seen in a larger context, is an educational, cultural, and social initiative, targeted towards creating an atmosphere of increasingly good relations and mutual understanding as a background for business development and other bi-lateral relations.  Its intended audience is 'ordinary people' whose real knowledge of America may be limited.  With an eye to the unfolding future, we expect the exhibition’s message to reach China’s younger generation. 

"Out West, like all of Meridian’s exhibitions, fulfills the organization’s mission of promoting international understanding through the exchange of people, ideas and the arts. This exhibit is the fourth of American contemporary art which Meridian has organized and very successfully toured abroad.  It is the first devoted totally to art of the American West."

MAM is honored to collaborate as a lender to this exhibition, and draw attention to the contemporary artists and themes represented in the MAM Collection. Smith is a member of the Salish tribe and her heritage permeates her critically-acclaimed artwork. A Map to Heaven is an image of a warshirt collaged with a tiny photo of an elder woman at the top. Though Native culture is visually prominent, the print is about wars fought over religious differences: an issue with global implications. Using iconic images, Smith creates a map for reaching heaven. She decides that an Indian woman rules there, but acknowledges with generous good humor, “Since no one ever crossed over and came back to tell about what’s there, my guess is as good as anyone else’s.”

The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum, the Smithsonian, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and The Museum of Mankind, Vienna, Austria, are just a few of the major museums collecting Smith's paintings and prints. In 1998, Smith laid the cornerstone of the Missoula Art Museum Contemporary American Indian Art Collection with the significant commitment to gift her print oeuvre.