Kevin Red Star

Kevin Red Star was born in 1943 on the Crow Indian Reservation in Lodge Grass, Montana. He was raised in a creative family that values art and culture. During his second year in high school in 1962, he was chosen to be the first group of students at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. In 1965 Kevin was awarded a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. That same year, he won both First Prize and the Governor’s Trophy Award at the Scottsdale National Indian Art Exhibition. He returned to Montana and attended Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana and Eastern Montana College. In 1975, he was invited back to the Institute of American Indian Art as an artist-in-residence. Throughout his career, he has received major accolades and honors. In 1995, he was selected as a Copenhaver Scholar-in-Residence at Roanoke Collage in Salem, VA. Later that year he participated in the cultural exchange with the Russian Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. In May 1997, Kevin Red Star received an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Fine Art from Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. He also received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA), Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2010. Since embarking on his professional artistic journey, the acknowledged master artist is considered a visual historian and ambassador for his Native Crow culture. In more recent years, Kevin’s biography, Kevin Red Star “Crow Indian Artist”, written by Daniel Gibson won the Multi-Cultural Non-Fiction Category of the 2015 USA Best Book Awards. In 2018 he received ‘The Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts’ in Helena, MT. Kevin also was awarded in 2018 the James R. Parks Trustee Purchase Award at the Autry Museum’s Masters of American West Exhibition in Los Angeles, CA. This year Kevin is a tenured artist at The Prix de West at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Kevin’s work can be found in many museum collections nationally and internationally to name a few: The Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of the American Indian, United States Department of State, the National Portrait Museum, Washington, DC; the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; the C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT; the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ; the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, IN; the Whitney Museum, Cody, WY and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. He has been featured in special exhibitions around the world including shows in France, Belgium, Germany, China and Japan. Kevin Red Star is known for his historical detail depicting the tribal legacy of his Crow (Apsáalooke) Native American heritage. In the world of museums and private collections, he is equally respected for the content of his unique imagery, for his artistic productivity spanning the past fifty plus years and for the enduring value of his work. “Indian culture has in the past been ignored to a great extent. It is for me, as well as for many other Indian artists, a rich source of creative expression. An intertwining of my Indian culture with contemporary art expression has given me a greater insight concerning my art. I hope to accomplish something for the American Indian and at the same time achieve personal satisfaction in a creative statement through my art.” Kevin Red Star.