Loading AI tools
American curator From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kathleen Ash-Milby is a Navajo art historian and curator—currently Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum. She previously worked at the National Museum of the American Indian's George Gustav Heye Center for two decades.
Kathleen Ash-Milby | |
---|---|
![]() Ash-Milby in 2018 | |
Born | |
Nationality | Navajo Nation, United States |
Education | University of Washington (B.A.); University of New Mexico (M.A.) |
Occupation(s) | Curator, art historian |
Years active | 2001–present |
Employer | Portland Art Museum |
Title | Curator of Native American Art |
In 2024 Ash-Milby curated the exhibition for the American pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale featuring artist Jeffrey Gibson.
Kathleen Ash-Milby was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[1] She is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.[2]
Ash-Milby attended Pacific Lutheran University and studied studio art before transferring to the University of Washington to study art history.[3] She graduated in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in art history.[3] During the summer after her junior year, she was an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, an experience she credited with inspiring her to pursue a career in museums.[3] Ash-Milby received a master's degree in Native American art history from the University of New Mexico.[1]
Ash-Milby began her career as a curatorial research assistant at the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, a branch location of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).[3]
In 2001 Ash-Milby began working at the American Indian Community House (AICH) Gallery, a New York nonprofit that provides services for Native people living in the city. Ash-Milby served as curator and co-director of the AICH Gallery alongside artist G. Peter Jemison. In 2005, Ash-Milby curated a solo show for the gallery by artist Jeffrey Gibson.[4]
Ash-Milby returned to the NMAI's Heye Center in 2005, first as an assistant curator and eventually as an associate curator.[1]
While at NMAI, Ash-Milby organized a large number of exhibitions, including a solo show by Edgar Heap of Birds produced as a collateral exhibition for the 52nd Venice Biennale,[3] and solo shows at the museum by C. Maxx Stevens in 2012[1] and Kay WalkingStick in 2015.[5] She also produced several thematic exhibitions for the museum, including Off the Map: Landscape in the Native Imagination (2007); HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor (2010); and Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound (2017).[1]
Ash-Milby's final exhibition for NMAI, a retrospective on artist Oscar Howe, opened after her departure.[2]
In 2018 Ash-Milby was named Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum (PAM), where she began in 2019.[2]
Ash-Milby has overseen the repatriation of several objects, artifacts, and artworks from the museum's collection by Native makers that had been stolen or improperly purchased by their donors,[6] which she said was a priority in her time at the museum.[2]
In conjunction with the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, Ash-Milby commissioned and co-curated artist Jeffrey Gibson's solo exhibition The Space in Which to Place Me for the American pavilion.[4] The exhibition, commissioned by the PAM and SITE Santa Fe, was the first solo exhibition by an Indigenous artist to represent the United States at the Biennale,[4] and Ash-Milby was the first Indigenous person to curate an exhibition for the American pavilion.[7]
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.