It was 170 years since a village led by the Little Thunders' great-great-grandfather was massacred by the U.S. Army, leaving eighty-six Lakota dead, many of them women and children. As I wrote in a November 2024 feature story for Smithsonian, the episode, which occurred 35 years before the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee, remains little known even today. I also reported how, while the village lay smoldering, Army Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, a noncombatant topographer attached to the force, collected dozens of Lakota belongings.
The absence of a dedicated exhibition for Frank Auerbach in Berlin, despite his legacy, has underscored the artist's historical ties and contributions to the art world.
