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Dan Namingha (born 1950) is aHopipainter andsculptor. He isDextra Quotskuyva's son, and a great-great-grandson ofNampeyo. He is a member of theHopi-Tewa member of theHopi Tribe. He lives inSanta Fe,New Mexico.
Namingha was born inKeams Canyon, Arizona, and grew up with his mother on his grandparents' ranch inPolacca on theHopi Reservation. 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 aUniversity of Kansas summer art program. He also studied at theInstitute of American Indian Arts and theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago.[1]
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 ofHopisymbolism.
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 theMuseum of Northern Arizona, theFogg Art Museum of Harvard University, theSmithsonian Institution, theSundance Institute, theWheelwright Museum, theNew Mexico Museum of Art,[2] theHeard Museum, and numerous foreign museums, including the British Royal Collection in London.[3]
In 2009, theInstitute of American Indian Arts awarded him an honorary doctorate and in 2016, theMuseum of Indian Arts and Culture named Namingha its 2016 "Living Treasure."[1]
Namingha's work was part ofStretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2019–21), a survey at theNational Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in New York.[4]
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.[3]
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