The UCLA Department of Art History proudly presents the 2026 Gretchen Taylor Millson Distinguished Lecture, featuring Jolene Rickard, Associate Professor, Departments of Art History + Visual Studies, Art American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, Cornell University.
Professor Rickard’s lecture is entitled, “Creative Defiance as Sensory Ecologies.”
Dr. Jolene Rickard is an enrolled citizen of the Skarù·ręʔ – Tuscarora Nation, Turtle Clan, and associate professor of Indigenous Art in the History of Art & Visual Studies Department at Cornell University where she also holds affiliations with American Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and Art and Performance and Media Studies. Recent contributions include an essay on Sovereignty and Futurity in The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, 2023, and a curatorial intervention, Deskaheh à Genève, 1923-2023 : Défendre la souveraineté des Haudenosaunee / Deskaheh in Geneva, 1923-2023 : Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignty (Geneva, Switzerland, 2023). She is finalizing a monograph on Cayuga artist, Joe Jacobs, titled, Gayógoh:nó Stone Carving and Shaping Time.
Jolene is the 2025 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAASA – Native American Art Studies Association, served on the editorial board of the Smithsonian’s American Art (2017-2024), recently joined the editorial board for MIT Press, ARTmargins (2025), is a board member for the Otsego Institute for Native American Art (Fenimore Museum, NY) and an advisor to GRASAC – The Great Lakes Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture.She received a Ph.D. from the former American Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo.
The Gretchen Taylor Millson Distinguished Lectureship was established in memory of UCLA alumna Gretchen Millson in December 2009 by her husband, Dr. John J. Millson. Gretchen graduated from UCLA with a B.A. from the Department of Art in 1961. This endowed fund provides much-needed resources to the department to allow us to grow and continue our longstanding tradition of excellence. For more information, click here.
The presentation, with a reception to follow, will be held on Monday, May 11, 2026 at 4 PM at the Luskin Conference Center’s Laureate Room.
Kindly RSVP by May 4 to ycastellanos@support.ucla.edu or 310-825-0913.
