Wed. Sept 16 | 5:30-7pm | In Conversation with Carolyn Kastner, Hadley Jensen + Iris Colburn
Join us for a lively conversation among curators! Featuring: Carolyn Kastner, curator emerita at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Hadley Jensen, curator of collections and research at the Wheelwright Museum Iris Colburn, curatorial associate at the MCA Chicago This event will be held in the exhibition (Klah Gallery). Please use the main museum entrance; doors will open at 5:15pm. Organized in conjunction with Emmi Whitehorse: Intimate Landscapes, panelists will consider Whitehorse’s early training in printmaking, situating her work in relation to artist and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (1940-2025), enrolled citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) and the Grey Canyon Group. Emmi Whitehorse: Intimate Landscapes is on view at the Wheelwright Museum through October 3, 2026. This two-part exhibition is the first museum retrospective of Whitehorse's work, tracing the arc of her artistic practice over the last four decades. All attendees must register. Seating is limited for this intimate event. PLEASE NOTE Registration is not refundable, this is an in-person only event. This event will not be recorded or available at a later time. Those registered as members who do not have a current membership will need to pay for a membership or risk their spots being re-assigned due to demand: Membership can be paid for at this link. If you register for a member spot and do not complete your membership, your seat will be refunded or reassigned. You may repurchase a paid spot as available. Support for Emmi Whitehorse: Intimate Landscapes is generously provided by the Walker Youngbird Foundation, the Mary Sully Foundation, and William G. and Kathleen L. Howard. Speaker bios: Carolyn Kastner is curator emerita at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her research, publications, and curatorial projects have always focused on the diversity of American art. During her tenure at the O’Keeffe Museum, she organized many exhibitions such as: Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land (2012), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: An American Modernist (2012), Miguel Covarrubias: Drawing a Cosmopolitan Line (2014), Georgia O’Keeffe’s Watercolors: 1916-1918 (2016), and The Black Place: Georgia O’Keeffe and Michael Namingha (2018). Prior to moving to Santa Fe, she lived in San Francisco where she taught art history at the California College of the Arts and organized exhibitions including: Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass by Native American Artists (2002), and Río Grande Traditions in Fiber and Clay (2001). She earned her Ph.D. in American Art History at Stanford University. Hadley Welch Jensen is curator of collections and research at the Wheelwright Museum. Her writing and exhibition projects have explored historical topics and contemporary practices, with a focus on painting, printmaking, textiles, histories of photography, and craft history and theory. Her curatorial projects include Outburst: Native American Art after Vietnam (co-curated with Henrietta Lidchi and Will Riding In, 2026); Emmi Whitehorse: Intimate Landscapes (2026); Visualizing Ké: New Works by Marwin Begaye (2025); Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles (co-curated with Rapheal Begay, 2023); Following the Thread: Navajo Textiles from the Thaw Collection (2023); and Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest (2023). She earned an MA and a PhD in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from Bard Graduate Center in New York. Iris Colburn is curatorial associate at the MCA Chicago, where she recently organized Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons (2024), the museum’s presentation of Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence (2024), and performances with Joelle Mercedes, Katinka Kleijn, and Micah Schippa. Her independent projects include Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984–2015 (2025), co-curated with Gareth Thomas Kaye for the third annual Chicago Exhibition Weekend. She has contributed writing to several publications, including Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence, Pope.L: Campaign, and Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago, where she wrote her MA thesis on Emmi Whitehorse’s practice, and a Bachelor of Arts in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Case Trading Post at the Wheelwright Museum
Non Member $15, Wheelwright Museum Member Free with Current Membership (Limit 2 spots per member)