WHEN:
July 17, 2025–May 31, 2026
For more information visit the Met website.
WHERE:
The Met Fifth Avenue
Gallery 746 North
New York, NY 10028
A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Born in Chippewa City, a remote Native American village on the shore of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, George Morrison (Wah-wah-ta-ga-nah-gah-boo and Gwe-ki-ge-nah-gah-boo, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, 1919–2000) overcame innumerable challenges—poverty, a life-threatening childhood illness, social isolation, racial and cultural barriers—to become a leader of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, which he collaboratively defined both publicly and behind the scenes.
...Morrison’s influence on the American Abstract Expressionist movement began in September 1943, when he arrived in New York City by train to study at the Art Students League on a fine arts scholarship. Immersing himself in the city’s vibrant cultural scenes, Morrison studied painting and drawing, contributed to numerous exhibitions and publications, and openly challenged the mainstream art establishment of his generation. He also formed important connections with peer artists including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Lois Dodd, and Louise Nevelson, among others. Morrison’s deep appreciation for urban life—specifically industrial landscapes, jazz, and literature—shaped his artistic practice and imagery and permanently impacted the trajectory of the New York School.
Technically trained in figure drawing, portraiture, landscape painting, and graphic arts, Morrison shifted to abstract approaches in his New York years, specifically automatism, propelling his unique visual language—a fusion of his interest in the subconscious, Ojibwe aesthetic sensibilities, and ties to his homelands. The artist’s involvement with the rise of Abstract Expressionism enhanced the movement’s broader “American” context by imbuing it with a distinctive Indigenous perspective. Between 1943 and 1970, Morrison lived and worked in New York and regularly exhibited in group shows and solo exhibitions. His work was consistently noted by well-known art critics. A 1953 Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the University of Aix-Marseilles in France—followed by a John Jay Whitney Fellowship the same year—earned him international recognition.
Morrison’s prolific career lasted until 2000, long after his return to Minnesota from New York. It culminated with his famous Horizon Series, a suite of small-scale oil and acrylic paintings that synthesized his technical skill and creative imagination with his love for his home on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, along the north shore of Lake Superior..."
