Faculty & Staff Directory

Kate C. Duncan

PhD art history, University of Washington; MA art history and BA English, University of New Mexico. Duncan joined the School of Art in 1991. She has also taught at Seattle University, the Colorado College, the University of Washington and the University of Alaska.

Dr. Duncan's research is interdisciplinary. Research interests include the influence of curio shops on collecting and perceptions of Native American art; Native American floral beadwork; material culture and style analysis methodologies for use in identifying poorly documented material; cultural and cognitive factors affecting design change; and relationships between place, identity and ornamental patterning on early Athapaskan clothing. She specializes in Native North American art and material culture, particularly that of the Subarctic, Arctic, Northwest Coast, Southwest and Plateau. She has worked collaboratively with Native peoples in Alaska and Canada for several decades to make information on their art traditions more available to them and together expand knowledge about their art.

Duncan's most recent book is1001 Curious Things: Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Native American Art (University of Washington Press, 2000).  Based in a century of photos, scribbled notes, catalogs and ephemera from an iconic Seattle shop, the book examines the powerful influence that this and other curio operations have exerted on museum collections and public perceptions of Alaskan and Northwest Coast Native art. Both a reference volume and entertaining reading, it bursts with abundance of information about both the Native American arts and bizarre curiosities that have drawn in visitors for over a century

Her books dealing with Subarctic Athapaskan bead and clothing traditions include Northern Athapaskan Art: A Beadwork Tradition, University of Washington Press 1989  (winner of the 1991 Millia Davenport Publication Award, Costume Society of America); Out of the North: the Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, co-authored w/ Barbara Hail (Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University 1989); A Special Gift, the Kutchin Beadwork Tradition, w/ Eunice Carney, 1988, 1997 expanded reprint; Some Warmer Tone (University of Alaska Press, 1984.)

She has published essays on Plateau beadwork in the edited volumes: A Time of Gathering, 1991; A Song to the Creator: Artistic Traditions of Women of the Plateau 1996; and Native Arts of the Columbia Plateau, 1998, and on several contemporary Alaskan artists in St. James Guide to Native North American Artists, 1998.  Essays on Native American beadwork are forthcoming in the Technology and Visual Arts, Vol. 16, Handbook of North American Indians, Smithsonian Institution.

Dr. Duncan has worked collaboratively with Northern Athapaskan, Cree and Plateau beadworkers over several decades.  She is currently collaborating with Cook Inlet Dena'ina in study of meaning embedded in quilled and beaded patterning on 19th century Dena'ina garments.  She has advised on collections and/or exhibitions for the National Museum of the American Indian and Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institution, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology; National Park Service; Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Phoebe Hearst Museum, Washington State History Museum, Heard Museum and other North American museums.

Her work has been supported by grants from the Smithsonian, NEH, Getty, Wenner Gren. American Philosophical Society, Canadian Ethnology Service, Alaska Humanities Forum, Arizona State University and others. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art, University of Washington where she is an Associate Curator at the Burke Museum, and the Advisory Board for the online Journal of Surrealism and the Americas. An original member of the Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA) she recently stepped down from twelve years on its board, including four years as vice president and four as president.

At ASU Dr. Duncan is an affiliate faculty in Museum Anthropology, School of Human Evolution and Social Change and in American Indian Studies. She teaches regional courses on Native American art from prehistory to the present. Her seminars include "From Curiosity to Art", "Southwest Indian Art and Issues of Patronage," "Indian Art and the Invention of the Southwest," "Studies in Inuit Art," "Native American Women Artists," "Attribution Strategies for Native American Art" and "Museums and Material Culture."