One hopes there was a long and complicated discussion about the placement of the first painting that greets visitors at the entrance of the Kay WalkingStick exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian. The curators have chosen a recent painting, from 2011 — a large-scaled, sun-drenched Western landscape, with a colorful overlay of Navajo textile design superimposed on one side of its long, horizontal format.

It is both characteristic of WalkingStick’s work, and misleading. A visitor with no preconceived ideas about the artist, who is one of the most distinguished artists of Native American descent working today, would probably jump to a number of conclusions, all of them at least partly wrong: that WalkingStick makes the kind of art you see in the tourist-oriented galleries of Santa Fe, anodyne and decorative, with a regional flavor; that she is Navajo and grew up in the West; that her vision is fundamentally naturalistic, celebratory and cheerful. You might even make assumptions about what she looks like, how she talks and dresses, and where she lives and works.