Artist, curator, and Native American activist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith studied art education at Farmingham State College before earning a Master of Arts in Art from the University of New Mexico. In addition to her art, Smith lectures widely and works to improve the prominence of contemporary Native American art.

Smith's Island Press print Celebrate 40,000 Years of American Art was featured in the 48th Venice Biennale and is now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other works by Smith are in the collections of the Museum of Mankind in Vienna, Austria, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and the National Museum of American Art. She has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for the Arts (1997), an Arts Service Award from the Association of American Cultures (1990), and an Honorary Doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1992). Smith's visit to Island Press was generously supported in part by the Women's Society of Washington University in St. Louis.