Chris Pappan is an artist of Kanza, Osage and Lakota descent. His cited influences are Heavy Metal and Juxtapoz magazines, and the Lowbrow art movement with its cultural roots in 1970s underground comics, punk, and hot rod cultures. His art reflects the dominant culture’s distorted perceptions of Native peoples and is based on the Plains Native art tradition known as Ledger Art. Chris is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and a nationally recognized painter and ledger artist. His work is in the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington D.C); The Field Museum of Natural History; The Newberry Library, The North American Native Museum (Geneva, Switzerland); Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, Montana); and The Spencer Museum of Art (Lawrence, Kansas), among others. Chris recently exhibited his work at the Field Museum in Drawing on Tradition, a two-year exhibition and intervention into the decades old and problematic Native North American Hall, which has changed little since its establishment in the 1950s. The exhibition presented a contemporary view of Indigenous perspectives, acting as an agent of change within the institution.
