Kathleen Ash-Milby

Kathleen Ash-Milby is a Navajo art historian and curator. She is currently the Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum. She previously worked at the National Museum of the American Indian's George Gustav Heye Center for two decades.
In 2024, Ash-Milby was a commissioner and curator of the exhibition for the American pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale featuring artist Jeffrey Gibson.

Early life and education

Kathleen Ash-Milby was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.
Ash-Milby attended Pacific Lutheran University and studied studio art before transferring to the University of Washington to study art history. She graduated in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in art history. During the summer after her junior year, she was an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, an experience she credited with inspiring her to pursue a career in museums. Ash-Milby received a master's degree in Native American art history from the University of New Mexico.

Career

Early curatorial career

Ash-Milby began her career as a curatorial research assistant at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian Research Branch, the original collections facility in the Bronx, NY, for the Museum of the American Indian.

American Indian Community House

In 2000 Ash-Milby began working at the American Indian Community House Gallery, a New York nonprofit that provides services for Native people living in the city. Ash-Milby served as curator and co-director of the AICH Gallery with AICH executive director Rosemary Richmond. In 2005, Ash-Milby curated a solo show for the gallery by artist Jeffrey Gibson.

National Museum of the American Indian

Ash-Milby returned to the NMAI's Heye Center in 2005, first as an assistant curator and eventually as an associate curator.
While at NMAI, Ash-Milby organized a large number of exhibitions, including a solo show by Edgar Heap of Birds produced as a collateral exhibition for the 52nd Venice Biennale, and solo shows at the museum by C. Maxx Stevens, Julie Buffalohead in, Meryl McMaster, and Kay WalkingStick. She also produced several thematic exhibitions for the museum, including Off the Map: Landscape in the Native Imagination ; HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor ; and Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound.
Ash-Milby's final exhibition for NMAI, a retrospective on artist Oscar Howe, opened in 2022 after her departure, and became a joint project with the Portland Art Museum.

Portland Art Museum

In 2018 Ash-Milby was named Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum, where she began in 2019.
Ash-Milby has overseen the repatriation of several objects, artifacts, and artworks from the museum's collection by Native makers that had been improperly purchased by their donors, which she said was a priority in her time at the museum.
In conjunction with the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, Ash-Milby commissioned and co-curated artist Jeffrey Gibson's solo exhibition The Space in Which to Place Me for the American pavilion. The exhibition, commissioned by the PAM and SITE Santa Fe, was the first solo exhibition by an Indigenous artist to represent the United States at the Biennale, and Ash-Milby was the first Indigenous person to curate an exhibition for the American pavilion.

Publications

Books

The American West: People, Places, and Ideas. By Kathleen Ash-Milby and Suzan Campbell. Corning, New York: Rockwell Museum. First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art. By Kathleen Ash-Milby, Bruce Bernstein, and Gerald McMaster. Washington, D.C. / Seattle: National Museum of the American Indian / University of Washington Press. Off the Map: Landscape in the Native Imagination. By Kathleen Ash-Milby, Kate Morris, and Paul Chaat Smith. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian. Most Serene Republics: Edgar Heap of Birds. By Kathleen Ash-Milby and Truman Lowe. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian. Hide: Skin as Material and Metaphor. By Kathleen Ash-Milby. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian. Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist. By Kathleen Ash-Milby and David W. Penney. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian. Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe. By Kathleen Ash-Milby and Bill Anthes. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian.

Chapters

"Indian Identity and Evaluating the Past: Bonita Wa Wa Calachaw Nuñez, an Indian Princess Painter". By Kathleen Ash-Milby. In Joyce M. Szabo : Painters, Patrons, and Identity: Essays in Native American Art to Honor J.J. Brody. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press.
"Finding Our Way: Negotiating Community at the American Indian Community House". By Kathleen Ash-Milby. In Lee-Ann Martin : Making a Noise!: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community. Banff, Alberta: Banff International Curatorial Institute.
"Landscape: Through an Interior View". By Kathleen Ash-Milby. In Duane Blue Spruce and Tanya Thrasher : The Land Has Memory: Indigenous Knowledge, Native Landscapes, and the National Museum of the American Indian. Chapel Hill, North Carolina / Washington, D.C.: University of North Carolina Press / National Museum of the American Indian.
"Alan Michelson: Landscapes of Loss and Presence". By Kathleen Ash-Milby. In Jennifer Complo McNutt and Ashley Holland : We Are Here!: The Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship 2011. Indianapolis / Seattle: Eiteljorg Museum / University of Washington Press.
"Native Makers/New Media". By Kathleen Ash-Milby. In Erika Suderburg and Ming-Yuen S. Ma : Resolutions 3: Global Networks of Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
"'Back Where I Were Born': Joseph E. Yoakum and the Imaginary Indian". By Kathleen Ash-Milby. In Mark Pascale, Esther Adler, and Édouard Kopp : Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw. Houston / New York / Chicago / New Haven, Connecticut: Menil Collection / Museum of Modern Art / Art Institute of Chicago / Yale University Press.

Articles

"Woven by the Grandmothers: Twenty-Four Blankets Travel to the Navajo Nation". By Kathleen Ash-Milby and Susan Heald. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation. 38 : 334–345. Washington, D.C.: American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works / Routledge..
"Gerald McMaster, ed. 'Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art. By Kathleen Ash-Milby. Great Plains Quarterly. Vol. 20, no. 3. pp. 244–245..
"Inclusivity or Sovereignty? Native American Arts in the Gallery and the Museum since 1992". By Kathleen Ash-Milby and Ruth B. Phillips. Art Journal. 76 : 10–38. New York: College Art Association..
. By Kathleen Ash-Milby. American Indian. Vol. 18, no. 3. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian..
. By Kathleen Ash-Milby. Art in America. Vol. 105, no. 9..
"Knowledge positions in Aotearoa and Turtle Island art museums". By Kathleen Ash-Milby, Maia Nuku, and Nigel Borell. Artlink. 40 : 12–22..