Jennifer
McLerran, PhD
Assistant Professor
Director, NAU Art Museum
Old Main, NAU Art Museum M205
(928) 523-3620
Jen.McLerran@nau.edu
Jennifer McLerran’s academic achievements include a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Washington, an interdisciplinary master's degree in art and literature from the University of Colorado, and an M.F.A. in painting from Colorado State University. Her areas of specialization are twentieth-century Native American art, museum studies, and feminist theory. She has taught women's studies and art history courses at Ohio University, writing and art history courses at the University of Washington, and painting at Pacific Lutheran University and Colorado State University.
McLerran’s most recent publications include A New Deal for Native Art: Indian Arts and Federal Policy 1933-1943 (University of Arizona Press, 2008), a study of Native American art's commodity status and the indigenous maker's position as colonial subject during the New Deal era, and Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection (University of Washington Press, 2007). She has co-authored two books, Art Words: A Glossary of Contemporary Art Theory (with Thomas Patin) and Old Age in Myth and Symbol (with Patrick McKee), and contributed chapters to several others. Articles on Navajo weaving by McLerran include “Woven Chants: Red Rock Revival” (American Indian Art Magazine, Winter 2002) and “Textile as Cultural Text: Navajo Weaving as Autoethnographic Practice” (American Indian Art Magazine, Winter 2007). Other publications to which McLerran has contributed articles include American Indian Culture and Research Journal, The Gerontologist, and Feminist Studies.
Currently the director of the NAU Art Museum, she formerly served as curator of the Kennedy Museum of Art's Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection at Ohio University, where she conducted extensive research and curated exhibitions on Navajo weaving and Navajo, Hopi and Zuni silverwork and jewelry traditions. Over the course of this work, she consulted extensively with native artists and their family members, traditional ceremonial practitioners, and native scholars. She has also served as a NAGPRA consultant to Yellowstone National Park and conducted NAGRA consultations for the Kennedy Museum of Art, successfully repatriating sacred and ceremonial objects to the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes. Current curatorial projects include exhibitions of Navajo weaving for the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, New York.