Kay WalkingStick Returns to the Heard Museum in 2026

Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School + Paintings from the Heard Collection

The Heard Museum’s first two new exhibitions of 2026 showcase the artistic talent and curatorial expertise of celebrated Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick. Organized by the New York Historical, Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School brings together breathtaking works by contemporary Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick and iconic 19th-century paintings from the Hudson River School. Side by side in the Grand Gallery, these works invite you to see the land through different lenses, exploring both deep reverence and the complex histories it holds and inviting you to reflect on the beauty, history, and stories of the landscapes. The exhibition also celebrates a shared reverence for nature, engages crucial questions about land dispossession and its reclamation by Indigenous peoples, and explores the relationship between Indigenous art and American art history.

Highlights of the exhibition’s more than 40 works include two of WalkingStick’s paintings that are directly inspired by Hudson River School artists such as Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886). Additionally, several of her most recent paintings, such as Niagara, Wampanoag Coast, Variation II, and New Hampshire Coast overlay geographically specific abstract Indigenous patterns onto representational landscapes in order to reassert an Indigenous presence long erased in depictions of North America as a pristine and unpopulated wilderness.

Above: Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935), Niagara, 2022. Oil on panel in two parts. The New York Historical, Purchased through the generosity of Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang; Nancy Newcomb; Anonymous; Barry Barnett; Helen Appel; Belinda and Charles Bralver; Dorothy Tapper Goldman; Margi and Andrew Hofer; Louise Mirrer; Jennifer and John Monsky; Suzanne Peck and Brian Friedman; Pam and Scott Schafler; Barbara and Elliott Wagner; and Linda Ferber, 2023.2ab © Kay WalkingStick

In 2002, the Heard Museum debuted So Fine! Masterworks of Fine Art from the Heard Museum, guest curated by WalkingStick. More than 20 years later, she returns to the collection to select rarely exhibited large-scale paintings for a fresh look at the collection’s enduring strength. Located in Freeman Gallery, Paintings from the Heard Collection features artworks by Native American artists spanning multiple generations, offering a dynamic view of Native painting through the decades.

Left: Steven Yazzie (Diné, b. 1970), Recurrence, 2011. Oil on canvas. Gift of Melvin Andre Medler. Heard Museum Collection.

Header: Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee, b. 1935), Our Land Variation II, 2008. Oil stick on paper. Miller Meigs Collections. Photo by JSP Art Photography © Kay WalkingStick