The artists Rick Bartow, David Bradley, Bob Haozous, David Johns, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Emmi Whitehorse represent what I aimed for:

To acknowledge important contemporary artists and to highlight the significance of Native American Modernism and Postmodernism.

Once I had made a commitment for serious collecting based on my art-historic rationale, I tried to follow these general standards, only restricted in quantity by my very limited financial possibilities:

• Each work has to stand on its own artistic merits

• It has to be a representation of a few artists , each adding a distinct personal artistic expression to a defined communality that bears art historic and socio- cultural significance beyond that of the singular artist.

  
  

• In acknowledging the artist in his/her own right and to deepening the understanding for the singularity of his/her evolving, vision and artistic practices, each artist has to be represented with a body of works.

  
  

Building a collection that focuses on Native American artists I aimed for:

• connecting with already recognized Native artists of more or less my own generation

• acknowledging these contemporary Native artists as role models for the indispensable achievements all cultures depend on, especially in times of radical change:

The artist as catalyst for cultural innovation and transformation; The artist as the creator of timely expressions in the given time and space.

The artists as cross-cultural mediator and communicator.

• choosing artists with distinctly different singular, personal reflection on being an artist of Native American descent, each adding a distinct style, content and perspective to the diversity in Native modernism.

This commitment to a few artists with a body of works, instead of broader representation with singular works by many artists, had to painfully exclude other significant artists.