Research Interest

Indigenous Arts, Museum Studies, Curation, Indigenous Feminisms, Institutional Critique, Archival Studies, The History of Photography

Biography

Nancy Marie Mithlo is a scholar of race and representation who studies the social production and circulation of American Indian/Indigenous arts and cultures nationally and internationally. Her training as a cultural anthropologist (Stanford University PhD, 1993) informs the ethnographic case study and institutional critique approaches she utilizes. Mitho’s research offers a corrective lens to the often biased and narrow reading of American Indian cultures by focusing on the interior lives and motivations of Native artists in the politicized context of settler colonialism. She analyzes and exposes the politics of memory institutions – museums, archives, film, and fine arts. Her work goes beyond the often celebratory and descriptive art historical analyses of objects and their circulation by utilizing an empirical approach to theorization, working from an inductive or grounded theoretical analysis. Her most recent research employs cognitive science approaches to visitor reception studies. She remains active in Indigenous archival studies through her writing, teaching and research. A member of the Fort Sill Chiricahua Apache Tribe of Oklahoma and New Mexico, Mithlo is an active curator employing American Indian Curatorial Practice mandates of work that is long-term, mutually meaningful, reciprocal and with mentorship. She has led nine exhibits at the La Biennale di Venezia, the subject of her forthcoming book, Red Skin Dreams. A life-long educator, Mithlo has taught at the University of New Mexico, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Santa Fe Community College, Smith College, California Institute of the Arts, Occidental College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her co-edited book Visualizing Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives and Museums was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2022.

Publications

• Coauthor with Alexandra Sherman, “How Perspective-taking in Museums Can Lead to Increased Bias: A Call for ‘Less Certain’ Positions in American Indian Contexts.” Curator: The Museum Journal 2020, 63(3).
• “No Word for Art in Our Language?–Old Questions, New Paradigms.” Wicazo-Sa Review 2012, 27(1):111-126. 2012
• Co-author with Tressa Berman – “‘The Way Things Are,’ Curating Place as Feminist Practice in American Indian Women’s Art.” In Entering the Picture, Judy Chicago, The Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists, ed. Jill Fields, Pp.267-282.
• New York, NY: Routledge. “Blood Memory and the Arts: Indigenous Genealogies and Imagined Truths.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 2011, 35(4): 103-118.
• “‘A Real Feminine Journey’: Locating Indigenous Feminisms in the Arts.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 2009, 9(2): 1-30.
• “Re-appropriating Redskins—Pellerossasogna (Red Skin Dream): Shelley Niro at the 50th La Biennale di Venezia.” Visual Anthropology Review, 2005, 20 (2): 22–35.
• “‘Red Man’s Burden’: The Politics of Inclusion in Museum Settings.” American Indian Quarterly, 2004, 28(3 /4): 743–63.
• “‘We Have All Been Colonized’: Subordination and Resistance on a Global Arts Stage.” Visual Anthropology, 2004, 17 (3 /4): 229–45.

Projects

• Native American Scholars Take on “Killers of the Flower Moon” on NPR’s “It’s Been a Minute” with host Brittany Luse, November 14, 2023. Featuring Liza Black, Robert Warrior and Nancy Marie Mithlo
• “I Heard the Song of My Grandmother: Art and Indigenous Feminisms.” Symposium presentation with Kristen Dorsey (Chickasaw) Graduate student, University of California Los Angeles, Department of Gender Studies on the occasion of the Nevada Museum of Art’s 2022 exhibition

In the Media

• Harry Fonseca: Coyote Leaves The Rez