Jolene Rickard

Jolene Rickard (born 1956 ) citizen of the Tuscarora Nation, Turtle clan, is an artist, curator, and visual historian at Cornell University, specializing in Indigenous peoples issues. Rickard co-curated two of the four permanent exhibitions for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

Biography Rickard, granddaughter of Tuscarora chief Clinton Rickard, was born in 1956 at Niagara Falls, New York. In 1977 Jolene Rickard attended the London College of Printmaking.

Well known pieces by the artist include 3 Sisters, a 1989 black-and-white photograph and color xerox (the artist's sleeping face interposed with squash, beans and corn, the Three Sisters staple crops); and I See Red in the 90's, a 1992 six-panel photograph series in protest of the quincentenary of Columbus' landing in America, also including a self-portrait. She sees her photography as ultimately linked to "the manipulations of light and texture and the representations of cosmological space and spirituality of earlier generations of Iroquois beadwork artists".

Academic career Rickard is currently an associate professor in the Department of Art History and American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University, and serves as the director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program. She also served as interim chair for the Art Department at Cornell between 2009 and 2010. Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, inaugural exhibitions: Our Peoples (2004–2014) and Our Lives (2004–2015), Washington, DC. Across Borders: Beadwork in Iroquois Life. Co-Curator. Collaboration with Dr. Ruth Phillips, Kanataka, Kanien'kehaka Raotitiohkwa Cultural Center and McCord Museum, Quebec, 1995–99.

Selected exhibitions Red River Crossing, visiting curator, Gary Sholette, The Swiss Institute, New York City, November 1996 Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Oct 2022-Jan 2023.

Awards Ford Foundation Research Grant Cornell University Society of the Humanities Fellowship on the thematic topic of "Global Aesthetics"; 2010-2011