Research and Interests
Rebecca Dobkins is a professor of anthropology and the curator of Native American art at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University. Dobkins has curated over two dozen exhibitions at the museum since its opening in 1998 and is responsible for caring for the collection of Native American art and for working with contemporary Indigenous artists and communities, particularly those in Oregon and the Northwest. Dobkins teaches courses in cultural anthropology, Indigenous Studies, and museum studies, including Imagining Indigenous Futures and Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights, and the Environment.
Selected Publications
2023 (Forthcoming) Epilogue: Printmaking at IAIA, 1980-Present. In Experimental exPRESSion: Printmaking @IAIA, 1963-1980, Ryan Flahive, editor. Santa Fe: Institute of American Indian Arts.
2022 The Art of Ceremony: Voices of Renewal from Indigenous Oregon. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
2022 TRANSFORMATIONS: The George and Colleen Hoyt Collection of Northwest Coast Art. Salem, OR: Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University.
2019 Beautiful Triumphs. In Blurring the Line: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship 2019, edited by Jennifer Complo McNutt and Dorene Red Cloud. Indianapolis: Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, pp. 23-24.
2017 Critical Impressions: The Intersectional Space of Printmaking in Native Art. In: Native Art Now! Developments in Native American Art 1992-2012, edited by Veronica Passalaqua and Kate Morris. Indianapolis: Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Ch. 3.
2017 Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25. Salem, OR: Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University. Distributed by University of Washington Press. With essay co-authored with heather ahtone and essay by Prudence F. Roberts.
2017 Tribes of the Oregon Country: Cultural Plant Harvests and Indigenous Relationships with Ancestral Lands in the Twenty-First Century. Rebecca Dobkins, Susan Stevens Hummel, Ceara Lewis, Grace Pochis, and Emily Dickey. Oregon Historical Quarterly 118(4): 488-517.
2016 Dobkins, R., Lewis, C., Hummel, S. and E. Dickey. Cultural plant harvests on federal lands: perspectives from members of the Northwest Native American Basketweavers Association. Res. Pap. PNW-RP-608. Portland OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station.
2012 Marie Watt: Lodge. Salem, OR: Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University. Distributed by University of Washington Press.
2008 Joe Feddersen: Vital Signs. Seattle: University of Washington Press, in association with Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University. A volume in the Jacob Lawrence Series on American Artists. With essays by Barbara Earl Thomas and Gail Tremblay.
2002 Rick Bartow: My Eye. Salem, OR: Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University. Distributed by University of Washington Press.
1997 Memory and Imagination: The Legacy of Maidu Indian Artist Frank Day. Oakland: Oakland Museum. Distributed by University of Washington Press. With essays by Carey Caldwell and Frank LaPena. Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 1997.
Selected Residencies, Fellowships, and Honors
Sitka Center for Art and Ecology Residency, 2021
Institute of American Indian Arts, invited research on Native American printmaking, 2020
Santa Fe Art Institute, Truth and Reconciliation Residency, 2019
Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria, B.C., 2019
Earle A. Chiles Award, for promoting Native American cultures and art to generate greater public understanding of High Desert native communities, 2012
Northern Quebec Faculty Development Institute, Association for Canadian Studies in the US, 2009
Millicent C. McIntosh Fellowship of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation, 2007-2009
National Society of Collegiate Scholars Faculty of the Year Top Ten Finalist, 2006
Graves Award in the Humanities, 2002
Oregon Council for the Humanities Research Grant, 2000
Grants for Research and Exhibition Projects
Ford Family Foundation (for the exhibition and book project Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25 at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art), 2017
Oregon Cultural Trust, Cultural Development Grant for the book project The Art of Ceremony, 2015-16
United States Department of Agriculture, United States Forest Service. Cooperative Agreement
(researching barriers to tribal member use of federal lands for harvesting of traditional
plant resources), 2013-15; renewed 2016-17; renewed 2017-18
National Endowment for the Arts Art Works (for commission of new work), 2011-13
National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence (for reinstallation of permanent
Native American Gallery at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art), 2010
National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Grant (for The Art of Ceremony project), 2008-09
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Native American Visual Arts Award, (for the publication of Joe Feddersen: Vital Signs), 2008
National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces Program (for The Art of Ceremony
project, Hallie Ford Museum of Art), 2007
Degrees Held
- Ph.D., Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
- M.A., English, University of California, Berkeley
- B.A., Women's Studies, Summa cum laude, University of Massachusetts at Amherst