Early last month, the Denver Art Museum raised the curtain on “Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967-1980,” an exhibition featuring about 40 colorful, rarely seen artworks by a controversial figure who died in 2005. Mr. Scholder, who blended figurative and Pop Art influences into his own style, challenged the stereotypical depiction of American Indians as one-dimensional — showing them instead, for example, as real people with beer cans or draped in United States flags. And though he said he was not Native American (he was one-quarter Luiseño), Mr. Scholder was part of the New American Indian Art movement, which brought Native American artists into the contemporary art world and infused their work with more freedom, more possibility and more visibility.

The exhibition for this trailblazing artist fits the Denver Art Museum like a pair of well-worn moccasins. The museum has also done much to change the stature of Native American art.