The Denver Art Museum announced the appointment of Royce K. Young Wolf (Eastern Shoshone, Hidatsa and Mandan) as associate curator of Native arts, a role she began at the start of April.
“Celebrating Indigenous arts is a cornerstone of the work we do here at the DAM,” said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the museum. “As we step into the next century, holding one of our nation’s most compelling Indigenous arts collections, our institution needs profoundly impactful voices to continue that work. Royce K. Young Wolf’s appointment as associate curator of Native arts ensures we continue serving our community in offering the most compelling and forward-thinking programs and presentations.”
Young Wolf is a mother, language and culture activist, curator and artist. She is a member of the Ih-dhi-shu-gah (Wide Ridge) Clan and a child of the Ah-puh-gah-whi-gah (Low Cap) Clan, and is of Apsáalooke (Crow), ʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche), Swampy Cree and Scottish descent. Her work spans cultural advocacy, photography, composition and culturally responsive collection care and curatorial stewardship. Her advocacy is shaped in part by her experience as a fourth-generation Indian boarding school survivor, which influenced her shift from film and media to a focus on cultural and language preservation and revitalization.
She began her higher education journey in Denver after graduating from George Washington High School, receiving film and video production training from the Career Education Center and the Colorado Film School. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Fort Lewis College, followed by a master’s degree in Native American Studies and a doctorate in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. Her honors include the Cobell Scholarship, the Plains Anthropological Society Native American Student Research Award and the University of Oklahoma Social Sciences Graduate Student Research Award.
“I am excited to welcome Royce to the DAM as our next associate curator of Native arts,” said John P. Lukavic, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts and head of the museum’s Native Arts Department. “Her advocacy work as a curator, artist and a practitioner along with her perspective ensure we continue serving our community authentically, centering the deep history of Indigenous communities as well as continuing to evolve the platform for present and future Indigenous cultural and artistic conversations. I am excited to see her work.”
Young Wolf previously collaborated with elders to complete the MHA Nation Interpretive Center’s permanent exhibition on the history of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara people. She later served as the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Art and Curation and a Presidential Visiting Fellow in the History of Art Department at Yale University. She was also a member of the United Nations Global Indigenous Languages Caucus and the inaugural assistant curator of Native American and Indigenous art at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Her doctoral research focused on Indigenous rights and relationship-building through language revitalization and the arts, and her curatorial work emphasizes community collaboration, outreach and exhibition development with Indigenous knowledge keepers and artists.
In her new role, Young Wolf will work across museum teams to develop and implement strategic initiatives related to the Indigenous arts of North America, including establishing a collecting plan, securing new acquisitions, developing exhibitions and building relationships with Indigenous communities, artists, knowledge keepers and donors.
“I’ve always been taught that cultural items and artistic works by Indigenous artists or makers become creative vessels which make thoughts, songs and memories tangible,” Young Wolf said. “The work that I do as a curator of Indigenous arts is to seek an understanding of this meaningfulness and to invest in an artist’s legacy through the acts of collaboration and proper representation which elevates the artistic works, evokes ancestral memories and elicits visions of a collective tomorrow.”