CENTER OF ARTS AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Jessie Ryker-Crawford, IAIA Faculty

Biography:

Jessie Ryker-Crawford (White Earth Anishinaabe). Jessie Ryker-Crawford is a faculty member of the Museum Studies program and Indigenous Studies program.

Is an alumni of IAIA, with an AFA in both Museum Studies and Two-Dimensional Art. She then received a BA in Anthropology with a minor in American Indian Studies from the University of Washington and was accepted into the UW Anthropology Graduate program where she holds a Masters in Sociocultural Anthropology with a Certification of Museology and is continuing her graduate studies as a Ph.D. student focusing on the Native American Fine Art Movement and post-colonial reconstructions of identity as presented through contemporary Native American artists.

Ryker-Crawford has presented material on her studies at various conferences including the University of Washington, the American Studies Association and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. Her essay on the art work of C. Maxx Stevens is currently being published in the upcoming Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art bi-annual catalogue.

Education:

University of Washington, BA Anthropology; MA Sociocultural Anthropology; Doctoral candidate
Institute of American Indian Arts AFA Museum Studies, 2-D Art

Major Professional Activities:

Symposium:
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art
Symposium on Issues in Native American Fine Art:
Individualism, Community, and the Dominant Society: What can indigenous artists teach the mainstream?

Upcoming publication:
Family Gatherings: The Art of C. Maxx Stevens
in The Absence of Our Presence: The Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2005

Teaching Statement:

"My vision is to prepare students for the dynamic and changing world of museums and cultural centers, to allow them as new professionals within these fields to mold, shape and form the ways in which Native peoples are presented, are honored, are celebrated. We are, at this time in history, appropriating the museum genre for our own oral and written accounts of ourselves. We are reshaping what it means to be native to this land and what it means to be an indigenous person of worth. The next storytellers of our generation – the artists, the writers, the designers and the curators – are passing through the doors of IAIA. It is my great honor to be here as it enfolds."