Frank Buffalo Hyde – and that’s his birth name, not artistic license he invented later – is a Santa Fe based artist, social critic and satirist. He’s also an incredibly modest, brainy, nice guy who, despite his growing fame in the art world, keeps to his day job in a local antique store and can be encountered with his family hanging out with ordinary folks, not the art crowd, on the Plaza. That formula seems to work – Hyde has a stellar resume and besides exhibitions all over the U.S., he has also had shows in France and Russia. Despite competition from the Superbowl, there’s a big crowd waiting for him at the museum where he is offering a personal tour of his newest exhibition. He started to paint as a young man, he explains, because the art he otherwise saw did not reflect his life as a Native American in the 1ti80’s. Since then, tradition and modernity have been key themes of his work, with the emphasis on the double edged nature of innovations. His latest exhibit takes on social media and, especially, the i-phone and the new medium of the “selfie”. The group of Indian riders all equipped with selfie sticks is, at first glance, just amusing. But as usual with Hyde’s work, there are layers. This painting alludes to his ambivalence about modern technology. The obsession with selfies, he believes, takes people out of real communication and presence. On the other hand, at Standing Rock, where the Native Americans have led the battle against a polluting pipeline, the presence of cell phones and the ability to send out photos so easily and quickly helped ensure the safety of the protesters, who otherwise might have been exposed to far more undocumented violence. The football huddle is just that, until he explains that it reminds him of the Native American Round Dance, while he likes to imagine his pyramid of Hopi cheerleaders as encouraging and “cheering on” the revival of Native culture and tradition. The buffalo burger is funny, but his accompanying text has bite: