Curator of Native American Art Archives

In Memory of Dr. Barbara Brotherton (1950–2025)

Seattle Art Museum on Jun 2 2025

This past weekend, we lost an extraordinary scholar, curator, and friend. Dr. Barbara Brotherton, who served as SAM’s Curator of Native American Art for over two decades, passed away after a brief battle with cancer surrounded by loved ones.

Barbara’s contributions to the museum world, Native communities, and the field of art history are immeasurable. For more than two decades at SAM, she championed the work of Native artists, built lasting relationships with tribal communities, and helped shift the curatorial model toward one grounded in trust, mutual respect and admiration, and deep reverence for Indigenous knowledge.

She brought with her not only curatorial expertise but also longstanding ties to Native communities in the Puget Sound region. Barbara received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Washington, where she studied with renowned scholars Bill Holm and Robin Wright and learned the Salish language and culture with Vi taqwseblu Hilbert. These early formative experiences shaped the course of her career and her deep respect for Coast Salish heritage.

In the early 1990s, Barbara served as a curator at the Burke Museum, where she developed exhibitions of Northwest Coast Native art and supported a Native oral history project. She collaborated with then-SAM curator Steven Brown in 1992 to write a tour for the museum’s Northwest Coast Native art collection. In 1994, she was appointed a research associate at the Burke to work on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) issues—an experience that deepened her commitment to ethical stewardship and Indigenous sovereignty in museums.

Before joining SAM, Barbara was an associate professor of art history at Western Michigan University, where her research centered on the arts of the Salish peoples of western Washington and southern British Columbia. She joined SAM in 2001, where she would go on to lead groundbreaking exhibitions and serve as a vital connector between the museum and Native communities.

Among the many exhibitions she curated or co-curated at SAM are:

Reinstallation of the Native American Permanent Collection (2007)
S’abadeb: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists (2008)
Behind the Scenes: The Real Story of the Quileute Wolves (2010)
Seattle Collects Northwest Coast Native Art (2014)
Pacific Currents (2015)
Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson (2018)
Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water (2022)
American Art: The Stories We Carry (2022)

Many of these projects were created in close collaboration with Community Advisory Committees composed of local tribal members—reflecting Barbara’s commitment to community-based curation and Native leadership in exhibition planning and interpretation.

Barbara was also a longtime board member of Lushootseed Research, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Puget Sound Native art, language, and oral traditions. Her work outside the museum was just as influential as her curatorial projects, reflecting her belief in the connection between community, culture, and education.

Barbara was not only a brilliant scholar and curator—she was a deeply compassionate colleague, a generous mentor, and a fierce advocate for Indigenous voices in museum spaces. Her legacy lives on in the relationships she nurtured, the exhibitions she created, and the many lives she touched.

We invite you to learn more about Barbara’s life and career through this oral history interview recorded in 2024, where she reflects on her personal and professional journey and the values and community connections that guided her.

Barbara Brotherton’s impact on SAM, the region, and the field of Native American art will be felt for generations to come. We are humbled to have walked alongside her.

An Honest Approach to Art: Inye Wokoma on Reimagining SAM’s American Art Galleries

Lily Hansen on Jan 11 2023

“Historically, when we say the word ‘American,’ it typically denotes white people. But the actual story of what has happened on this continent over the past half millennium is so much more complex.”
– Inye Wokoma

When deciding what artworks to include in their reinstallation of SAM’s American art galleries, SAM curator Theresa Papanikolas and co-curator Barbara Brotherton weren’t interested in including conventionally beautiful or visually engaging artworks that are typically thought of as examples of American art. Instead, they thoroughly examined every American-made artwork in SAM’s collection and its relationship to the history and evolution of the United States. To ensure the two-year project incorporated as many viewpoints as possible, the curators invited visual artist and Wa Na Wari co-founder Inye Wokoma to guest curate a gallery that captures his personal interpretation of what American art is.

In the interview above—filmed before the renovation of the galleries—Inye discusses the need to reverse society’s existing exclusionary interpretation of American art, being invited to curate a gallery at SAM, and the inspiration he found in some of the galleries’ original artworks.

Visit Inye’s gallery on view now in American Art: The Stories We Carry at SAM’s downtown location and reconsider your own definition of American art.

– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

Image: Chloe Collyer.

Muse/News: Evolving Art, Analog’s Return, and a New Artemisia

Rachel Eggers on Oct 31 2022

SAM News

“How Seattle Art Museum is working to make its American art galleries more inclusive”: The Seattle Times’ Jerald Pierce on American Art: The Stories We Carry. He spoke with SAM curators and several collaborators on the project to reimagine our American art galleries.

“As SAM looks ahead at the future of its newly redone galleries, Papanikolas said she hopes this will slow patrons down as they go through, taking in the historical works alongside the contemporary and finding new personal meaning in the art. Both Papanikolas and Brotherton said they know there are still moments in history that haven’t been highlighted in this particular version of the installation, and artists who aren’t yet in their collection, but they’re excited about the flexibility and nimbleness of these galleries and their ability to respond to an evolving definition of ‘American art.’”

“What is America? Who is American? These are the questions that SAM strives to answer by including Asian, Latinx, Black, and Indigenous works in what was previously a series of rooms dominated by white male artists.” Kai Curry for Northwest Asian Weekly on the revamped American art galleries at SAM.

The Seattle Times also highlights “5 exhibitions to see during Native American Heritage Month,” including Indigenous Matrix: Northwest Women Printmakers at SAM. Curated by Kari Karsten and featuring works by Francis Dick, Susan Point, and more, it’s on view at SAM through December 11.

Local News

“Molly Vaughan’s After Boucher Brings Rococo to the Frye”: SAM’s 2017 Betty Bowen Award winner Vaughan recounts the process of her latest work, on view on the façade of the Frye Art Museum.

Yoona Lee for South Seattle Emerald on the work of attorney-turned artist Zahyr Lauren.

Crosscut’s Margo Vansynghel on the Northwest’s resurgence of interest in analog photography.

“But, as [Panda Labs owner Jessica] Fleenor and others proclaim under Instagram and TikTok posts featuring analog photography: #FilmIsNotDead. ‘Film is still very much alive,’ Fleenor says. And perhaps surprisingly, the comeback is in large part driven by a generation of ‘digital natives’ who developed a love for film photography and classic film cameras during the pandemic.”

Inter/National News

Jasmine Liu for Hyperallergic on the first official public statue of Emmett Till, just unveiled in Greenwood, Mississippi.

ARTnews’ Tessa Soloman reports from a talk held at the Islamic Museum of Art in Doha that invited four museum directors to tackle questions about museums and social responsibility.

Via Artnet’s Sarah Cascone: “A Painting Nearly Destroyed in the Beirut Blast of 2020 Has Been Identified as a Long-Lost Artemisia Gentileschi—and Is Now Undergoing Restoration.”

“‘This painting is definitely by Artemisia,’ Davide Gasparotto, the Getty Museum’s senior curator of paintings, who arranged for the work’s restoration and loan, told the New York Times. ‘It’s a very powerful, convincing painting—one of her most ambitious in terms of size and the complexity of the figures.’”

And Finally

It’s Halloween; it’s KXVO Pumpkin Dance time.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

A Curator Reflects: An Exploration That Never Ends

Seattle Art Museum on Oct 28 2022

As I write this, the first wave of visitors have finally experienced American Art: The Stories We Carry. This major reinstallation of our American art galleries has been two years (at least!) in the making and is the product of the work of a mighty team of collaborators, funded by generous grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The multiple crises of recent years, together with the museum’s commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity have made it essential that we question and dismantle the biases and myths that have historically driven—whether intentionally or not—our understanding and presentation of American art at the museum. As a curator of American art with a degree in European art history and a career in museums from Houston to Honolulu, I know well that the art of the United States does not begin and end with the oceans that define its coastal borders. Indeed, American art is as multilayered as America itself. More a collective of regions than a homogenous whole, the geopolitical expanse now known as North America is home to numerous clearly identifiable, yet often intersecting, communities, each of which is mirrored in equally layered artistic traditions and cultural practices.

To reflect and respond to the many-sidedness of American art, when embarking on this project we knew we needed to set aside art historical chronology and instead consider constellations of artworks from many different time periods and traditions. We immersed ourselves in the museum’s storage vaults, unearthing works that had not been exhibited in years—or, in some cases, ever—and contemplating the counterpoints they offered to the better known, classically canonical examples ordinarily on view in the museum’s American art galleries. These works speak volumes about the history of art at SAM and in this region, and they shed light on the communities that have been historically excluded in traditional narratives of American art.

Theresa Papanikolas & Barbara Brotherton at the opening of *The Stories We Carry* on October 20, 2022.

My use of the word “we” is intentional: Barbara Brotherton, SAM’s Curator of Native American Art, has been with me on this project every step of the way as a powerful ally in determining what American art can and should be at SAM. Over her 20 years at the museum, she has always been aware that Native American art is American art. Together, Barbara and I sought points of intersection between these two branches of the museum’s collection and for the first time envisioned a space in which they would intersect. Our work has been bolstered by a host of individuals—three artists, four interns, 11 advisors, and just about every museum department—all of whom brought knowledge that not only greatly enriched the project, but also established a collaborative model that will continue to shape exhibition planning at SAM.

All of us are delighted to share The Stories We Carry with you! In our new galleries, you will see old favorites alongside new and unexpected surprises that show how ideas persist across time and space and how history resonates in the present. And you will find curatorial interpretation (labels and wall texts) together with video clips from artists and experts—“living labels”—whose wisdom and perspective adds nuance to the objects on view. I’m also thrilled by the in-depth exhibition website, which brings you into the process with a project timeline, quotes, photos, and inspiring videos featuring our collaborators sharing their perspectives.

The Stories We Carry has definitely been a rich and rewarding journey. We invite you to now make it your story.

– Theresa Papanikolas, SAM Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art

Images: Alborz Kamalizad.