In the Arizona art world, Peggy Lanning is a self-made maven.
With few favors afforded her as she started out in the 1970s, Lanning overcame cultural and financial hurdles to provide representation for American Indian artists too often slighted by status quo gallery owners. In those times, many were still convinced that only non-Native artists were capable of offering serious business relationships.
As a testament to her four decades of effort, Lanning was invited to be the guest curator of a special exhibit showcasing renown Navajo artists. The exhibit, premiering Thursday, May 16, and titled “Six Navajo Masters: Abeyta, Begay, Johns, Whitehorse, Whitethorne & Yazzie,” will be presented by the Booth Western Art Museum, located in Cartersville, Ga., and serves as the country’s largest permanent exhibition space for Western art.
Shortly before Lanning retired as the manager and owner of the Turquoise Tortoise and Lanning galleries and sold them, Seth Hopkins, director of the Booth museum, met with her and raved about the talent she displayed.
“He said he would like to have a show and he’d like to call it ‘Navajo masters,’” Lanning said. “And I have four of those Navajos right there in my gallery.”
The Turquoise Tortoise, which Lanning opened in 1971 in Phoenix, moved to Sedona in ’81. At that time, the idea behind Lanning Gallery, a gallery staple focused less on Native representation and more on broader fine and contemporary art, hadn’t yet been conceived.
“We had grown up together,” Lanning said of the Navajo artists who have been with her from the start. “David Johns has been with me 40-something years and Tony Abeyta, 30-something. It’s not as though I waited until they were big guys, either. We’ve grown up together, and then they’ve outgrown the Tortoise.”
Though Johns and Abeyta have both shown in much larger galleries, Lanning said, “They won’t leave home. They don’t forget their roots.”
According to Lanning, achieving her goals in the art world back in her early days meant doubling down on self-belief and having enough confidence to weather the storms.
“I’d look behind me and there wasn’t a damn thing but air, so I had to kind of pull my own little red wagon, if you will,” she said.
Over the years, Lanning accrued and maintained a staff of roughly eight employees, eventually including a dedicated computer whiz as gallery management became an increasingly digital affair. Though personnel did change, usually one fact remained the same: Lanning was the only member on staff to not possess a college degree.
“I came up through the school of hard knocks. But I still signed the checks,” she said with some brio and a laugh.
Inside Lanning’s West Sedona home, which her son Bob designed in 1990, sculptures by Larry Yazzie and earlier works by Johns and Abeyta adorn entryways and liven up walls. With them, Lanning delights in visually demonstrating how Native art is anything but static; though tradition is the deep well from which they draw inspiration, Navajo artists are always growing, always experimenting.
As a case in point, Johns has transcended his first forte of portraiture to garner repute as a master of abstract paintings. Lanning suggested this shift could be, at least in part, correlated with Johns’ development as a spiritual leader in his tribe.
“He’s quick to tell me, ‘This [portrait] is not anyone I know, this is not a photograph. In the Native tradition, to photograph or paint [a person’s] image means that you have stolen their soul, and when they die, they can’t take part of their soul with them because it’s on paper.”
In a statement, Johns described his artistic process in the following way: “My creations on paper or canvas do not come from a place of preconception. They come from the innermost chambers of my soul. The essence of what I am is a spiritual being. I am a Diné [Navajo] man of Tl’aashchi’í clan and born for the Kiyaa’áanii clan. Even as I write it, it feels like I am saying a prayer.”
Abeyta was just 17 when he began working with Lanning and used a telling quip to introduce her at a recent Northern Arizona University event.
“He stood up and he put his arm around me and he said, ‘I’ve been with Peggy with for at least 30 years, and I’ve been an artist for at least 25.’”
Lanning stressed that her lasting relationships with Navajo artists are the fruits of one guiding principle: Treat the artist with dignity, and appraise their art fairly.
“At the start, they would come in with a piece of art they made and they would say, ‘Well, I need at least $1,300.’” Lanning recalled. “And I would say to them, ‘Well, I can’t give you a penny more than $1,500,’ and they’d look at me, and it goes through, and it sinks in, and they’re in disbelief, because all the other whiteys will say, ‘Well I can’t give you more than $1,000, take it or leave it.”
“They would then ask me why, and I’d say, ‘Because I think it’s worth that, I think I can get $3,000 for it.’ They’re always so shocked. Then they would go tell other Navajo jewelers and sculptors — I didn’t go looking for them, they found me.”
“I never thought of myself as a curator,” Lanning said regarding her recent Booth museum honor. “But I do have an eye for art, people always told me that. And that has always saved me.”
