Dan Namingha (born 1950) is a

Hopi The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado ...

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

. He is

Dextra Quotskuyva Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo (September 6, 1928 – February 2019) was a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native American potter and artist. She was in the fifth generation of a distinguished ancestral line of Hopi potters. In 1994 Dextra Quotsk ...

's son, and a great-great-grandson of

Nampeyo Nampeyo (1859Other sources cite 1860 or 1868. – 1942) was a Hopi-Tewa potter who lived on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. Her Tewa name was also spelled Num-pa-yu, meaning "snake that does not bite". Her name is also cited as "Nung-beh-yong," ...

. He is a member of the

Hopi-Tewa The Hopi-Tewa (also Tano, Southern Tewa, Hano, Thano, or Arizona Tewa) are a Tewa Pueblo group that resides on the eastern part of the Hopi Reservation on or near First Mesa in northeastern Arizona. Synonymy The name ''Tano'' is a Spanish bo ...

member of the Hopi Tribe. He lives in Santa Fe,

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

Early life and education

Namingha was born in Keams Canyon, Arizona, and grew up with his mother on his grandparents' ranch in Polacca on the

Hopi Reservation The Hopi Reservation () is a Native American reservation for the Hopi and Arizona Tewa people, surrounded entirely by the Navajo Nation, in Navajo and Coconino counties in northeastern Arizona, United States. The site has a land area of 2,53 ...

. As a child he would draw with coal while using grocery boxes as a canvas. In elementary school, Namingha would arrive early to create in a makeshift studio a teacher had created after noticing a lot of the Hopi and Tewa children had an interest in art. In high school, Namingha attended a

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

summer art program. He also studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

Style

Dan Namingha has been showing professionally as an artist for 40 years. His heritage inspires his work, which explores connections between physical and the spirit world and includes of

symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

ism. Drawing and painting was a natural part of Hopi childhood. It gave him a way to express his strong feelings about the culture and environment leading to a path of creative freedom. Dan feels that change and evolution are a continuum; socially, politically, spiritually and that the future of our planet and membership of the human race must be monitored to insure survival in the spirit of cultural and technology diversity. He says that only then can we merge the positive and negative polarization and balance so necessary to communal spirit of the universe. Dan Namingha's artworks are in the collections of the

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist Dr. Harol ...

, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

, the

Sundance Institute Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by actor Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and compo ...

, the Wheelwright Museum, the

New Mexico Museum of Art The New Mexico Museum of Art is an art museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe governed by the state of New Mexico, United States. It is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe that are part of the Museum of New Mexico. It is located one bloc ...

, the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

, and numerous foreign museums, including the British Royal Collection in London. DAN AND ARLO NAMINGHA ─ A FASCINATION WITH DUALITIES
,

, 2007

Recognition

In 2009, the Institute of American Indian Arts awarded him an honorary doctorate and in 2016, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture named Namingha its 2016 "Living Treasure." Namingha's work was part of ''Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting'' (2019–21), a survey at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in New York.

Family

His son Arlo Namingha is also a well-known sculptor, and his younger son Michael Namingha works in digital art. All three artists exhibit at the Namingha's Santa Fe gallery, Niman Fine Art.

Education

, Lawrence,

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

* Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico *

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

Publications

*''The Art of Dan Namingha'' by

Thomas Hoving Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving (January 15, 1931 – December 10, 2009) was an American museum executive and consultant and the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Early life He was born in New York City to Walter Hoving, the head of Tiff ...

, Abrams Publishing, New York

References

External links

Niman Gallery Santa Fe
- Artist's online portfolio and biography
Ann Korologos Gallery
- Paintings by Dan Namingha, biography, press, and video. {{DEFAULTSORT:Namingha, Dan 1950 births Living people Artists from Santa Fe, New Mexico Hopi Tribe of Arizona people Institute of American Indian Arts alumni Native American painters Native American sculptors Painters from New Mexico Pueblo artists 20th-century American sculptors 21st-century American sculptors Sculptors from New Mexico 20th-century Native American artists 21st-century Native American artists