Sold Out–The 27th Annual Kreines Lecture on Decorative Arts and Design–Glass Art: A New Interpretation of American Indian Cultures

Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 2–3 p.m.

Free. Reservations required. 

*Limited tickets available.*

The 1960s witnessed the beginning of two influential art movements in the United States: Studio Glass Art and contemporary Native American Arts. Both intersected in the 1970s at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the founding of the Native Glass Art movement. 

Join us for the 27th Annual Kreines Lecture, where scholar and curator Dr. Letitia Chambers (Cherokee) will discuss the exhibition Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass. Her talk, “Glass Art: A New Interpretation of American Indian Cultures,” will explore how these two movements came together and how Native artists today are melding the properties inherent in glass art with their cultural ways of knowing. 

Please join us for the lecture with lite bites to follow. 

About the Speaker: 

Letitia Chambers, PhD, is recognized for her accomplishments as a CEO, her contributions to public policy, and her service to educational and non-profit organizations.

Chambers private sector experience includes serving as CEO for 20 years of a highly successful Washington, DC based consulting firm, which she sold to a large global consulting firm where she became a Managing Director. 

Chambers then served as CEO of the Heard Museum, where she led major financial reforms and made significant improvements in facilities. Since retiring from the Heard, she has maintained a consulting practice and curated several major exhibitions, including the acclaimed Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass which is currently traveling to major museums across the country.

Earlier in Chambers career, in the 1970s, she served on the U.S. Senate staff as the first woman to be named Staff Director of a standing committee. In 1992, she served as the Chief Budget Advisor to the Clinton/Gore transition, and in 1996, Ambassador Chambers served as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations General Assembly. In 2004–2005, she headed the state system of higher education in New Mexico.

Chambers has served on several corporate Boards of Directors, as well as on Boards of numerous educational and non-profit organizations, including as former Chair of the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums and former Chair of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden. 

She has authored numerous articles and reports and is also the author of Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass, a book published by the Museum of New Mexico Press and now in its third printing.

Chambers resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband, the Honorable Peter P. Smith, former U.S. Congressman (VT.) 

*Please note: Museum lectures will take place in Gallery 105 during the renovation of the lower level.    

Presented by Mrs. Kenneth Kreines and the Decorative Arts Society of Cincinnati in Memory of Dr. Kenneth Kreines. 

If you need accessibility accommodations, please contact us in advance at [email protected].