Ho-Chunk artist Truman Lowe left a profound legacy as an artist and teacher. A prolific multi-media creator, one of Lowe’s most significant influences was nature. Many of his art pieces carry the theme of the tree as a vessel for making water solid. This idea, combined with our site, situated on ancestral lands with two water sources, the Fox River and Rob Roy Creek, brings his work into a new context. The exhibition Movement: Water into Wood highlights his use of natural materials, coupled with his heritage and his relation to canoeing.  It is a tribute to his spirit, always in motion, even in his canoe “when he’s not on earth or in air.”

We’re thrilled to be showcasing his work with multiple programs over the summer! Movement: Water Into Wood can be viewed through August 31, 2025, with the purchase of Edith Farnsworth House tour tickets or grounds passes.

Truman Lowe (1944-2019)

Nationally-acclaimed artist Truman Lowe grew up on the banks of the Black River in Wisconsin, in a Ho-Chunk community near the town of Black River Falls. He received his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and his MFA in sculpture from UW-Madison. He went on to join the faculty at UW-Madison, where he taught for thirty-five years. From 1992-1995, he served as Chair of the Art Department. For many years, he also chaired the Chancellor’s Scholarship Committee, as part of his commitment to creating opportunities in higher education for diverse groups of students. He retired in 2010.

In 2000, Lowe took a leave of absence from the University to become the first Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC. There, he curated major retrospective exhibits of important twentieth-century artists, including George Morrison, Allan Houser and Fritz Scholder, and a series of smaller exhibits titled Continuum: 12 Artists, which showcased contemporary Native artists for the George G. Heye Center, the Manhattan branch of the NMAI.

Lowe’s own art reflects his Ho-Chunk heritage and culture, and the woodland environment of the western Great Lakes region where he lived most of his life. His sculptures and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the White House in 1997. It is the subject of Woodland Reflections: The Art of Truman Lowe by art historian Jo Ortel. His art is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, Des Moines Art Center, and the Chazen Museum at UW-Madison, among others.

Over the course of his long career, Lowe received numerous honors and awards, including the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), and the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2008). He was posthumously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native American Art Studies Association in 2019. In 2022, Lowe’s alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, recognized his considerable achievements in art and education by renaming its Fine Arts Center in his honor.

Truman Lowe’s art will be featured in a major retrospective at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian scheduled to open in October 2025.