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Lloyd Kiva New, 86, Teacher of Indian Artists
Lloyd Kiva New, an artist and designer who taught generations of American Indian artists at the Institute of American Indian Arts, an innovative school that he and a colleague founded in Santa Fe, N.M., died on Friday in a hospital in Santa Fe, where he lived. He was 86.
Mr. New, a Cherokee born in Oklahoma, was the first art director and the longtime president of the institute, which had a predominantly Native American faculty. He had a broad, humanistic approach to the arts, stressing creative links to the traditional arts but urging students not to be bound by them and to reject stereotypical notions of American Indian art and culture.
''He felt that the tradition should serve as the basis for contemporary native artists to flex their imagination and creativity,'' said Rick West, the director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington.
''He liberated native artists,'' Mr. West said.
Beginning in 1946, when he set up a studio in Scottsdale, AZ., he sold Cherokee-derived designs to Neiman-Marcus and other stores. Mr. New gave up a career as a fashion designer in the late 1950s for a number of progressive educational projects, including the Southwest Indian Arts Project and the Phoenix Indian School.
2002
Obituary of artist Lloyd Kiva New, as published in the New York Times on February 10, 2002.
(c) New York Times.
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