UW–Madison alumna Patricia Marroquin Norby has been hired as the first full-time Native American art curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Norby earned her master of fine arts degree from the School of Education’s Art Department in 2002.
Norby has previously served as senior executive and assistant director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian-New York. She has also been the director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry, a research library in Chicago, and written scholarship on self-representation in Indigenous art.
“Historical and contemporary Native American art embodies and confronts the environmental, religious, and economic disruptions that Indigenous communities have so powerfully negotiated — and still negotiate — through a balance of beauty, tradition, and innovation,” Norby said in a statement on ARTnews.com. “I am deeply honored to join with American Indian and Indigenous artists and communities in advancing our diverse experiences and voices in The Met’s exhibitions, collections, and programs. This is a time of significant evolution for the museum.”
In her new position, reported ARTnews.com, Norby will work to facilitate long-term relationships between Indigenous communities and the museum and focus on creating what she called “meaningful systematic change.”
Read more about Norby’s appointment on the ARTnews.com website, here.