In 1977 Doug Schwartz, who was then the president of SAR, hired Art Wolf to be the curator of collections. Wolf’s task was to oversee the building of the facility that would become the IARC, which now stewards a collection of nearly 12,000 artworks.
Santa Fe’s Youth Development Program houses incarcerated youth from Santa Fe and surrounding areas, many of whom come from Native American communities. As stewards of important cultural works, the School for Advanced Research’s Indian Arts Research Center has developed a program that enables the education staff to facilitate art activities with these youth. Open until February 7, 2020, From Within, shares the work that has been created created out of this partnership.
For Felicia Garcia, SAR’s new curator of education at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC), one of the most exciting reasons to be at SAR is a proven dedication to community that drives much of the work at the IARC. We spoke with Felicia about what makes the IARC unique, the importance of land acknowledgement practices, and how the education department fits within the organization. Listen to the full interview and explore highlighted excerpts.
SAR is proud to present a series of conversation-style presentations exploring today’s world of cultural preservation. This year’s IARC speaker series takes us on a journey beyond the Pueblo communities within which we are situated, to shed light on the many remarkable ways indigenous-based cultural preservation is happening nationally.
Two decades ago, with a vision of a space for artists that would elicit feelings of warmth and personality, SAR commissioned a new artist studio. The Native American artist fellowship program—then in its fourth year—needed a space more conducive to artistic creativity. The Dubin Studio was built adjacent to the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) through the generosity of Ronald and Susan Dubin. Learn more about SAR’s two most recent contemporary Native American artist fellows and the Dubin Studio’s continued legacy of supporting artists through the open working space.
Erin Monique Grant, SAR’s 2019 Anne Ray Intern, reports on the 12th Annual International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums hosted in Temecula, California. Grant shares her experiences and reflects on the events that included a keynote address by US poet laureate Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek Nation).
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce the publication of the Guidelines for Collaboration, theoretical and practical guides to building successful collaborations between Indigenous communities, museums, and other collecting institutions. The Guidelines are the product of several years of critical discourse between over sixty Native and non-Native museum professionals, cultural leaders, artists, and scholars experienced in collaborative work in various institutions in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Available only in limited release until now, the Guidelines are already being used by internationally recognized institutions including Chicago’s Field Museum and University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) in collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute.
Parts of the IARC’s extensive collection of Southwestern Native art are now accessible through SAR’s eMuseum, which Day was instrumental in creating. As we talked, she told me about the collections review process that contributed to the development of eMuseum.
A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and also of Cherokee descent, Jeffrey Gibson was SAR’s 2008 Ronald and Susan Dubin Native artist fellow and is now a MacArthur fellow, the winner of one of the “genius” grants given annually by the MacArthur Foundation.
SAR Announces 2019-2020 Resident Scholars: C.J. Alvarez, Patricia Crown, Rashmi Sadana, Fátima Suárez, and Davina Two Bears.
