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Jolene K. Rickard

A member of the Tuscarora nation, Jolene Rickard has contributed to UB as an artist, a student, and a teacher. Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Rickard obtained a Bachelor of Fine and Applied Art from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an M.S. from Buffalo State College and a doctorate from UB. Her artistic and research interests center upon Native and Indigenous Arts in the Americas, as well as critical and cultural theory.

Rickard has received numerous grants for her exhibitions and research, including those from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Canada, and featured in the journals Artforum and Photography Quarterly and in books such as The Photograph and the American Indian and The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society.

She is a member of the College Art Association, the Native Art Association, and the Society of Photographic Educators. She is also on the Board of the New York State Historical Association, as well as a founding board member of the Otsego Institute of Native American Art History.

Most recently Rickard has been involved in the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in September 2004 in Washington, DC. She developed the "Wall of Gold" for Our Peoples, one of the museum's main galleries, which aims to tell the history of Native Americans from 1491 to the present day. She also co-curated the museum's Our Lives gallery, a space that explores the 21st century lives and identities of native peoples.


Affiliation(s): Art History
Record Group(s): 16
Biographical File Contains:
  • Photographs