Plymouth University academic curates American Indian exhibition

A Westcountry university professor is curating a national exhibition celebrating the history of Native Americans.

Dr Stephanie Pratt, associate professor of art history at Plymouth University, has helped bring together a selection of works by George Catlin, which went on show at the National Portrait Gallery in London yesterday and will be displayed until June 23.

Dr Stephanie Pratt, Associate Professor of Art History, is a long-time admirer of the works of George Catlin
George Catlin's 1832 painting of Stu-Mick-o-Sucks (translates as Buffalo Bull's Back Fat, named after the most delectable cut of bison) who was a chief of the Blackfoot tribe. It is on loan from Smithsonian American Art Museum

Dr Pratt, who has written extensively on the representation of Native American people, said: "As a person of Native American descent, I am very conscious of the extent to which Catlin's record of Plains Indian peoples dominates their representation even today. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to consider Catlin's Indian gallery and ask whether these striking images adequately address the historical reality of that time."

Catlin was an artist, writer and showman who documented Native American people and cultures to serve as a record of what he believed to be a passing way of life. National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne said he made "powerful and sympathetic portraits ... at a time of traumatic historical change".