Wendy Red star

ABOUT THE Artist

“Wendy Red Star (b. 1981, Billings, Montana; lives and works in Portland, Oregon) is an Apsáalooke artist whose multidisciplinary practice is grounded in the histories, archives, and lived knowledge of the Apsáalooke Nation. Raised in the district of Pryor in Montana, her work grows from the stories passed through her family, the materials she encounters in historical records, and the lineage she carries forward. The places, people, and histories that shaped her early life continue to guide her research and artistic process.

Her practice is rooted in sustained attention to inherited stories, to archival traces, and to the ways Apsáalooke history lives across generations. She approaches historical materials through the lens of her own lineage, allowing relationships between memory, record, and lived experience to emerge through time and close looking. Her work grows from this process of gathering, listening, and assembling rather than from any impulse to explain or correct the historical record.

Red Star received her BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and her MFA in Sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2017), the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2018), the MacArthur Fellowship (2024), the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship (2024), and the Infinity Award in Contemporary Photography and New Media (2024). In 2025 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Montana State University, Bozeman.

In 2019, her first career survey, Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth, opened at the Newark Museum and traveled to the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Columbus Museum of Art. Recent exhibitions include What It Becomes, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Future Imaginaries: Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology, Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles; 19th Century Photography Now, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Land Carries Our Ancestors, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (traveling to the New Britain Museum of American Art); New Acquisitions: Paul Bril to Wendy Red Star, The British Museum, London; and This is Not America’s Flag, The Broad, Los Angeles.

Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan; Portland Art Museum, Portland; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover; Saint Louis Art Museum; Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Frost Art Museum, Miami. In 2027, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., will present a major solo exhibition of her work.

Red Star’s work is held in more than eighty public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth; Denver Art Museum; Baltimore Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; and the British Museum, London, among many others.”

-wendyredstar.com, 2026

RMCAD + PUBLIC EVENTS

Artist TALK

Projects, Process, and Crow History

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Wendy Red Star’s work engages Crow history through sustained archival research and long-term project development. This talk will move through selected projects from across her career, tracing how different bodies of work are connected through research, archives, and material investigation. The presentation offers a broader view of how ideas evolve over time, how research functions as a foundation rather than a theme, and how multiple projects can remain in conversation with one another across years.

RMCAD Only Events

Student Event

Behind-the-Scenes: Sustaining an Art Practice

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

This small-group session for RMCAD students focused on the parts of an art practice that are rarely addressed in the classroom but are essential to long-term sustainability. Drawing from real projects and lived experience, Wendy Red Star discussed the behind-the-scenes realities of working as an artist: project budgeting, payment structures, fabrication, working with institutions and galleries, taxes, contracts, and the invisible labor that supports the visible work. The session emphasizes practical knowledge, transparency, and conversation. Students asked questions about what it actually takes to maintain an art practice over time, navigate systems of power and money, and make informed decisions as they move forward in their own careers.

STUDENT-LED Q+A SESSION

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Fine Arts student, Kira Medina, moderated this Student-Led Q&A Session, which is a casual, in-person conversation open to RMCAD students, faculty, and staff. Guided by student voices, these discussions generate valuable professional advice for all students.

Recommendation List

VASD Program visiting artists and designers provide a recommendation list that gives insight into their work, practice, and research. Artist Wendy Red Star recommends:

The Feminist Fur Trade — Shelagh D. Grant
The History of Beads — Lois Sherr Dubin
Indian Rawhide: An American Folk Art — Mable Morrow
Historical Fashion in Detail: The 17th and 18th Centuries
Native American Clothing: An Illustrated History