George Morrison, Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo (Standing in the Northern Lights)
George Morrison, Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo (Standing in the Northern Lights), was an Ojibwe painter and sculptor from Minnesota and member of the Grand Portage Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe, whose work is associated with Surrealism and the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States. He is best known for his abstract landscape paintings and monumental wood collages, which draw on childhood memory and reflect a deep connection with the natural world. In 2020, he became the first Native American artist whose work was acquired for the National Gallery of Art’s New York School collection in Washington, D.C.
Born near the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, Morrison studied at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design; diploma, 1943) and the Art Students League in New York (1943–1946), where he held the Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Traveling Scholarship and became part of a circle of abstract expressionists. In 1947, Morrison began teaching at the Cape Ann Art School, which he and Albert Kresch took over in 1948 and renamed the Rockport Art School.
Through the 1950s, Morrison was active as a teacher and exhibiting artist in New York and Provincetown. In 1952, after receiving a Fulbright Scholar award, he studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and Antibes, and at the University of Aix-Marseilles. In 1954, he returned to New York, where he was associated with prominent artists such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock. He held a succession of teaching positions in Minneapolis and Duluth and at the Dayton Art Institute (Ohio), Cornell University, Penn State University, Iowa State Teachers College, the Rhode Island School of Design (1963–1970), and the University of Minnesota, where he taught American Indian Studies and art from 1970 until his retirement in 1983.
In 1968, Morrison won the grand prize at the Fourth Invitational Exhibition of Indian Arts and Crafts in Washington, D.C. In 1997, his large sculpture Red Totem (1980) was exhibited at the White House. In 1999, Morrison was named the first Master Artist by the Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.
Photograph from the Archives of the University of Minnesota libraries.