BROOKLYN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES DARIENNE TURNER AS CURATOR OF INDIGENOUS ART

Darienne (Dare) Turner has been appointed Curator of Indigenous Art. Turner is currently Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art of the Americas at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she has been since 2017. She will join the Brooklyn Museum as its first full-time Curator of Indigenous Art in August 2023. 

In her new role, Turner will be instrumental in growing and researching the Brooklyn Museum’s North American Indigenous art collection, as well as developing canon-expanding exhibition programming. The Museum has one of the foremost collections of Native American art, with over 13,600 items dating primarily from 1100 b.c.e. to 1500 c.e. and the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Highlights include works from the American Southwest, particularly of the Hopi, Zuni, and other Pueblo groups in Arizona and New Mexico; and works from California, including of such Indigenous communities as the Pomo, Maidu, and Hupa. Other highlighted regions include the Pacific Northwest, particularly works of the Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, and Heiltsuk Nations; and the Great Plains, namely a group of early nineteenth-century Eastern Plains works acquired at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and works of the Osage Nation after the tribe’s removal to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Drawing on her rich experience with Indigenous art and cultures, Turner will bring this collection to today’s audiences.

Dare Turner is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe of California, an art historian, and a museum professional, whose mission is to bring Indigenous art to new audiences and interpret it in fresh and accessible ways. Turner currently serves as the Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art of the Americas at the Baltimore Museum of Art and is the first Native person to ever hold such a role at the institution. Central to Turner’s work is a deep engagement with Indigenous artists and community members and a commitment to anticolonial methodologies. She holds a master’s degree in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center and a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Stanford University.