Participants
Essayists
Hipólito Rafael Chacón
H. Rafael Chacón is Suzanne and Bruce Crocker Director of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture and Professor of Art History and Criticism at The University of Montana-Missoula, where he researches and writes primarily on architectural history and historic preservation. He received his Ph.D. in art history with honors from the University of Chicago. He has written on a range of topics related to Renaissance and baroque art, both in Europe and in the Americas, most recently focusing on revival style architecture in the U.S. Northwest during the late 19th century.
Alison Fields
Alison Fields is the Associate Director of the OU School of Visual Arts and the Mary Lou Milner Carver Professor of Art of the American West. Fields received a B.A. in English and Native American Studies from Colgate University, an M.A. in American Civilization from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her public history book, Chickasaw Women Artisans (Chickasaw Press, 2016), won the Independent Book Publishers’ Independent Spirit Award in 2017. The University of Oklahoma Press published her book, Discordant Memories: Atomic Age Narratives and Visual Culture, in 2020.
Ken Sievert
The firm of Sievert & Sievert CRC, est. in 1990, has engaged in historic surveys, nominations to the national register, cultural landscapes, and numerous projects within the Department of the Interior classifications of preservation, restoration, rehabilitation, or reconstruction. Prior to that, Sievert was an officer of Davidson / Kuhr Architects P. C. Sievert serves as historic architectural advisor to the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee (HPAC) adopted by the City of Great Falls and Cascade County, providing professional documents used to restore numerous historic structures throughout Montana and Yellowstone National Park. He received his Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1964 and his M.A. in Architecture in 2010. He has been a registered architect with the State of Montana since 1971.
Mandy Smoker Broaddus
A member of the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes, Smoker Broaddus is the current poet laurate of Montana. She earned a BA at Pepperdine University and an MFA at the University of Montana. She has taught courses at Fort Peck Community College and the University of Montana. Smoker is the author of the poetry collection Another Attempt at Rescue (2005). She co-edited I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights (2009). Smoker Broaddus currently works for Education Northwest as a Practice Expert in Indian Education. Her work focuses on the work of equity and inclusion for Native education in the Pacific Northwest. She currently serves on the National Advisory Council on Indian Education as an appointee by President Barack Obama.
Jodie Utter
Jodie Utter is the conservator of works on paper for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. She has worked in paper conservation as a technician, contract conservator, sole proprietor, and staff conservator in private practice and in institutions for the past twenty-five years. She holds a graduate degree from the Art Conservation Program at Winterthur/University of Delaware. She has worked for the MFA in Boston, Harvard University, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Utter has conducted extensive research on the watercolor materials and techniques of Charles M. Russell, resulting in a technical study published in the definitive book Charles M. Russell, Watercolors 1887-1926.
Emily Crawford Wilson
Emily Crawford Wilson is the senior curator of art at the C.M. Russell Museum. Prior to that, she has held positions at the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming; the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington; and at the NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale Florida. Wilson holds a B.A. in art history and English from the University of Florida and a M.A. in art history from Indiana University. She has contributed to various publications, most recently Charles M. Russell: The Women in His Life and Art (2018, C.M. Russell Museum) and Return to Calgary: C.M. Russell and the 1919 Victory Stampede (2019, CMRM).
Studio Conversations Participants
A Virtual Speaker Series Focusing on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
Cheryl Horn
Cheryl Horn is the Aunt of Selena Not Afraid, a young woman who went missing on January 1, 2020, in Big Horn County, Montana, primarily made up of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations. The county has one of the highest rates of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases in Montana.
Annita Lucchesi
Annita Lucchesi is a researcher, a scholar, and a community organizer of Cheyenne and Italian descent, currently living on Wiyot territory in Northern California. Annita’s community engaged work and scholarly projects are both inspired by her experiences as a survivor of violence, and stem from a commitment to uplift other Indigenous survivors and those impacted by violence. She is the founding Executive Director of Sovereign Bodies Institute, a non-profit research institute dedicated to community-engaged research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people. Sovereign Bodies Institute builds on Indigenous traditions of data gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people.
Jennifer White Bear
Jennifer White Bear is the mother of Bonnie Three Irons, a 35-year-old woman whose body was recovered during a search in the Wolf Mountains on the Crow Nation reservation in Montana on April 14, 2017. White Bear is now raising Bonnie’s 6 children. She is a powerful voice who has been involved in the MMIW effort and bringing attention to unsolved missing women’s cases in Montana.