Education

Docents and Volunteers

Become a docent or volunteer at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). Learn something new, meet like-minded people, and have some fun!

Volunteers and docents can gain exposure to the workings of a major art museum and contribute valuable visitor services to a nonprofit institution. Our volunteers and docents contribute their talents, knowledge, skills, enthusiasm, and energy—and, in turn, provide an invaluable service to our community. Be a part of the contemporary Native art scene, share your expertise, and help support MoCNA’s mission. Volunteering at MoCNA offers a unique experience working with contemporary Native art alongside internationally recognized museum professionals, IAIA students, and other community volunteers.

Benefits include:

• A chance to meet new people with similar interests.
• Complimentary attendance to selected programs and events.
• Advance notice of events and programs.
• An invitation to a special volunteer and docent recognition event.
• Museum Store discounts.
• Educational training and resources about current exhibitions.
• Experience with museum standards and fieldwork

Here is a brief list of opportunities you can be involved with:

Education and Outreach

• Tours for schools and adult groups
• Walk-in tours
• Gallery conversation starters
• Assistance with public programs and special events
• Event set-up and breakdown

Exhibitions

• Gallery preparation
• Exhibition installation/de-installation
• Research projects
• Editing

General Administration

• Updating Library Catalogue and Image Archives
• Assistance with archiving printed materials and press clippings
• General office organization

Docents and Volunteers Portal (not for publication)

• Resource guides
• Docents curriculum guide info
• Manifestations curriculum

Internships

Internship opportunities at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) introduce interns to the museum’s Education, Exhibitions, Collections, and Administration departments. Placements are based on museum needs and requirements along with applicant’s skills and interests.

MoCNA has hosted internships with students from colleges and universities nationwide—students may be eligible to receive college credit.

Please submit the following:

• Letter of Intent (500 words max.)
• Résumé

For more information, please contact Museum Educator Wayne Gaussoin (Diné, Picuris, and French Descent) at (505) 428-5907 or wgaussoin@iaia.edu.

Social Engagement Artist Residency

MoCNA’s Social Engagement Art Residency (SEAR) of 2024 is funded by the Mellon Foundation. This partnership offers us the flexibility to mold a program based on Native artist social engagement and impact that meet the objectives of the Mellon Foundation while supporting MoCNA’s goals in terms of activating contemporary Native artist leadership, capacity, and community building.

MoCNA’s SEAR hosts two Indigenous artists twice a year for a ten-day residency at MoCNA located in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. Artists will have the chance to work together or brainstorm their own separate projects, working with their chosen local community or within the Santa Fe regional area. Examples of communities to work with would include advocacy groups and/or Indigenous communities addressing current social and political issues. Art works could cover various media and a wide range of project methods that engage the community or a specific facet of the community, strategically producing both artful and social outcomes. Artists are invited to give a talk about their work at the end of their residency at MoCNA.

While the outcomes of social practice art could result in video installations, sound installations, photography, prints, or murals, which function perfectly within a museum or gallery context, sometimes the results are also realized in the relationships themselves, in shifts of community power, community-driven strategies, and social infrastructures that resolve pre-existing conflicts, traumas, or social injustices. This opportunity provides Indigenous artists with a meaningful period of artmaking and interaction with IAIA students, MoCNA staff and faculty, and the Santa Fe arts community.

MoCNA looks to enable contemporary Native artists to negotiate and position community-driven Indigenous narratives within the public sphere. SEAR is a program that serves as a conduit to generate community dialogue and amplify Indigenous voices. MoCNA’s goal is to realize projects with artists that recognize and support contemporary Indigenous discourse and celebrate and engage the vibrant community that both MoCNA and the Santa Fe community have to offer.

Deadline

The deadline has passed for 2024.

SEAR Includes the Following:

• $3,000 stipend
• $300 supply stipend
• Travel costs
• Hotel room accommodations
• Local transportation in Santa Fe
• Per diem for the 10-day residency
• Access to MoCNA Education classroom for studio needs

What is Socially Engaged Art?

Social practice art is an interdisciplinary means that utilizes social space and relationships and works with communities as ways to recover knowledge and redefine notions of power. It offers agency on a broad spectrum of social, cultural, psychological, political, and economic issues. Social practice art is particularly relevant to Indigenous art practices because it relies upon relationships, respect, protocols, and reciprocity. These processes create insights into community self-determination and community-driven processes that define sovereignty.

SEAR History

In 2014, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) created a 10-day Social Engagement Art Residency program. MoCNA’s Social Engagement Art Residency was funded by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) through the Artist Leadership Program for Museums and Cultural Institutions up until 2017. This partnership offered us the flexibility to mold a program based on Native artist social engagement and impact that met the objectives of the Smithsonian while supporting MoCNA’s goals in terms of activating contemporary Native artist leadership, capacity, community building, and the Native American Fine Art Movement. From 2017 to 2019, the SEAR program continued with a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Whereas the museum serves as a catalyst for artists to generate community dialogue and dynamic experiences, the MoCNA Social Engagement Residency realizes socially engaged art projects that celebrate and engage the vibrant community that IAIA, MoCNA, and Santa Fe offer. The museum looks to enable contemporary Native artists to negotiate and position community-driven Indigenous narratives within the public sphere.

Past Artists’ Bios by Year

Here is a listing of announcements for upcoming, current, and past artists.

Storytelling Through Comics (S1 W1): Jeffrey Veregge

Resources

While the museum is closed temporarily, we welcome you to engage with contemporary Native art through our array of online resources. Through art-making, curriculum guides, and other fun activities, visitors of all ages are able to engage with various works of art in MoCNA’s exhibitions and collections. We will be uploading new content every other week, so definitely come back!

At Home

Enjoy a series of activities for all ages, such as word search, crossword puzzles, word scramble, mazes, and trivia. Simply download, print, and enjoy!

• Indigenous Futurisms Crossword Puzzle
• Indigenous Futurisms Word Search
• Experimental Expressions Word Search
• Experimental Expressions Word Scramble

Educational Workbooks

The MoCNA Education program has created a series of educational workbooks for each of the artists featured in the Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future exhibition. These workbooks explore topics related to the artwork and interests of each artist.

1. Storytelling Through Comics (S1 W1): Jeffrey Veregge

Coloring Pages

Enjoy coloring pages depicting a work of art in our collection or exhibitions. These coloring pages were created by Daniel McCoy Jr (Muscogee Creek/Citizen Band Potawatomi) ’16, from MoCNA collections and exhibitions. Simply download, print, and color away. Share your creations with us on Instagram by tagging @iaiamocna. We can’t wait to see your creations! Download and view 2020_iaia_mocna_daniel_mccoy_jr_coloring_pages (compressed file with all 10 coloring pages, 20.5 MB).

Manifestations: New Native Arts Criticism

Manifestations Curriculum Guide (cover)

The edited volume Manifestations: New Native Arts Criticism addresses the most pressing concerns in the field of contemporary Native arts practice, including the nature of place, identity debates, pedagogy, vocabulary, professional standing, and our global presence. As the central training institution for emerging Native artists, poets, filmmakers and museum studies professionals nationally for the past fifty years, the Institute of American Indian Arts is the authority on Indigenous aesthetic practice in Native North America. Not since the Heard Museum’s 1992 Shared Visions has such a comprehensive survey of our field been attempted. A product of the Ford Foundation’s Advancing the Dialogue in Native Arts in Society initiative, IAIA’s Manifestations publication represents the most authoritative source for emerging dialogues on Native arts practices and concerns.

Manifestationshighlights the work and biographies of sixty contemporary Native artists who have made central contributions to the contemporary Native art field. The publication features sixty biographical essays by fourteen Indigenous authors (curators, art historians, anthropologists, and academics), more than 100 full-color reproductions four contextual essays by senior theorists and scholars, and forewords by the MoCNA Director Patsy Phillips (Cherokee) and the Vision Project manager Will Wilson (Navajo).

Manifestations: New Native Arts Criticism senior editor is Dr. Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache). The publication can be purchased in the Museum Store. For more information about purchasing the book, please call (505) 983-1666.

Download and view the Manifestations Curriculum Guide.