Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi/Muscogee)

Title: “The Presence of your Absence”

Bio: Richard Ray Whitman is an artist, actor, and activist who has spent a lifetime working to strengthen Native communities through his creative efforts. His art and photography have been exhibited at museums and galleries nationally and internationally - with highlights including exhibits at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in NY and La Biennale di Venezia in Venice Italy. Whitman’s work has been featured in magazines and books including Aperture’s Strong Hearts and Oxford University’s textbook Native North American Art. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM and California Institute of the Arts.

As an actor, he has performed in critically acclaimed films including Barking Water, Winter in the Blood, Drunktown’s Finest and Neither Wolf Nor Dog. He’s appeared in series for AMC-TV, Netflix and Hulu, including the Sterlin Harjo/Taika Waititi FX comedy series Reservation Dogs. Richard worked with Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate as a narrator for the symphonies Fire and Light and Lowak Shoppala.

Richard grew up in Gypsy, Oklahoma, where he learned Yuchi as his first language. His maternal grandmother Polly Long raised Richard and his brothers, taught them how to speak their native language and helped to instruct them in the ways of the Yuchi people. That cultural foundation remains at the heart of Richard’s work.

Richard’s involvement with activism began with his opposition to the Vietnam War and support for Civil Rights and Treaty Rights as a student at IAIA in 1968. He participated in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. At the community level, Richard has worked with the Oklahoma Arts Council, the Native American Art Studies Association and other organizations to teach young people how art can bring them closer to their cultural heritage and help with the intergenerational trauma that so many Indian youth experience.

In recent years, he has worked with Idle No More, the Indigenous Environmental Network and other groups to oppose oil pipeline developments that threaten cultural resources and water supplies and contribute to climate change. He is also using his art to bring attention to the hundreds of murdered and missing Indigenous women whose cases have been largely ignored by law enforcement and the public.

On View: November 15-December 12 2021

Work Location: 624 E. Archer St.

Title: “Do Indian Artists Go To Santa Fe When They Die?”

On View: November 15-December 12, 2021

Work Location: 121 S. Lewis Ave.