Becoming Yeffe Kimball: Modernism, Gender, and the Construction of a 'Native' Identity 1935-1978
[Thesis]
Stolte, Sarah Anne
Andrzejewski, Anna
The University of Wisconsin - Madison
2019
133 p.
Ph.D.
The University of Wisconsin - Madison
2019
Through a discussion of Yeffe Kimball's (1906-1978) work and career, this dissertation offers a window into intersections of performances of race, gender identities, and what it meant to be a modern American artist at mid-twentieth century. My examination of Kimball's success as a self-identified American Indian artist interrogates and intervenes in existing power structures that serve and are served by settler colonial history and culture. This significant contribution allows scholars to rethink challenging identity narratives in America-a nation built on the assimilation of American Indian peoples and the appropriation of their cultures. Kimball leveraged her privileges as a white person to navigate social strata of the arts world, even as Native artists with recognized ancestry such as Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota) were turned away from acceptance by mainstream museums. Through claiming Oklahoma as her birthplace, moving to New York City to study art, and later establishing residency in Provincetown, MA, Kimball leveraged both critical places and distinct post WWII American sensibilities that reified her assumed identity and solidified her long-term career. Kimball associated with notable individuals including Mable Dodge Luhan and Maria Martinez. Exposing the details of her remarkable career trajectory reimagines an American art history that accepts the parallel and distinct history of Native American art.