Virtual Art Talk: Oklahoma and its Influence on Leon Polk Smith

Join us online for a panel discussion with exhibition co-curator Joe Baker (Delaware); Dr. heather ahtone (Chickasaw/Choctaw) and Senior Curator at First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City as they discuss Oklahoma historically and how that framed Leon Polk Smith’s artwork.
Joe Baker is a Native arts leader and activist. As Executive Director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, he supports a multidisciplinary community of arts practitioners who create authentic stories challenging visitors’ expectations while illuminating the complexity of the human spirit. He is an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and co-founder and Executive Director of Lenape Center in New York. Baker graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BFA in design and an MFA in painting and drawing, and completed postgraduate study at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in its Management Development program. He served as the Lloyd Kiva New Curator of Fine Arts at the Heard Museum and the Director for Community Engagement at Arizona State University‘s (ASU) Institute for Design and the Arts. He is the recipient of the Virginia Piper Charitable Trust 2005 Fellows Award, the 2007 Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s Contemporary Catalyst Award, the 2008 Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian Design Award, and ASU’s Presidential Medal for Social Embeddedness, 2009.



Dr. heather ahtone is Senior Curator at First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. She examines the intersection between Indigenous cultural knowledge and contemporary art. She earned two undergraduate degrees: one in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and one in printmaking from the University of Oklahoma (OU). She continued on at OU for graduate studies, earning a master’s degree in art history and a doctoral degree in interdisciplinary studies (art history, anthropology, and Native American studies). Working in the Native arts community since 1993, she has curated numerous exhibits, publishes regularly, and continues to seek opportunities to broaden discourse on global contemporary Indigenous arts. Her adventures have included working at the OU Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, OU School of Geology and Geophysics, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, and the IAIA Museum. She is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and is descended from the Choctaw Nation.

Видео Virtual Art Talk: Oklahoma and its Influence on Leon Polk Smith канала HeardMuseum