Transforming Images: The Art of Silver Horn and His Successors

This groundbreaking exhibition of Native American art featured ledger book drawings, an illustrated diary and calendar, and hide and muslin paintings made by Kiowa artist Silver Horn (1860–1940).

Silver Horn’s life spanned the tumultuous shift in traditional Plains Indian life and culture at the end of the century. He recorded Kiowa history and culture with depictions of warfare, daily life, ceremonies, and myths, documenting a vanishing Southern Plains culture for both native and white American audiences. Drawn from collections around the country, the exhibition contextualized Silver Horn’s artistic legacy with ledger drawings by contemporary nineteenth-century Kiowa artists, mid-twentieth-century paintings by the Kiowa Five, and works by contemporary Kiowa artists.