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.
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.
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.
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce the appointment of Elysia Poon as the new director of SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center (IARC). With over a decade of experience within the organization as the IARC curator of education and nearly twenty years of museum experience, Poon has demonstrated a commitment to collaborative programming and a dedication to community-based collections care. Under her leadership, the IARC will continue to advance national conversations around how collecting institutions and Native American communities can work together to foster cultural heritage and promote contemporary art practices.
Printmaker and painter Jordan Ann Craig has turned to a new outlet for her creativity: lingerie. Her new company, Shy Natives, founded with her sister Madison Craig, has such compelling, fresh designs, it was recently featured in Vogueworld, a daily online news site of Vogue Magazine.
2019 Ronald and Susan Dubin Native Artist Fellow, Ian Kuali’i takes the stage on August 8, 2019, in SAR’s Eric S. Dobkin Boardroom to share about his fellowship experience. Through hand-cut paper works and ephemeral Land Art/Earth Works installations, Kuali’i bridges contemporary and traditional techniques and designs while addressing themes related to his own history and identity, as well as what he expresses as “intertwined system of bio-cultural landscape and modernization”
