DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts has named Dr. Denene De Quintal as the Assistant Curator of Native American Art in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and Indigenous Americas. She succeeds David Penney, the museum’s last curator of Native American Art who left the DIA in 2011.

“Native American history is a key component of Michigan’s elementary school curriculum, and the DIA’s galleries are the most visited by school groups,” said Salvador Salort-Pons, DIA Director. “Having a dedicated curator of Dr. De Quintal’s expertise to research and recommend acquisitions for this collection will allow us to create more relevant connections with our indigenous communities, student groups, and our general visitors.”

Most recently, De Quintal spent two years as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow in Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum. During her fellowship, she co-curated Eyes On: Julie Buffalohead (2018). She was also on the team that produced the large-scale cross-departmental exhibition Stampede: Animals in Art (2017). Her fellowship research focused on the Southern New England Native American material objects in the Denver Art Museum’s collection, especially the baskets.

“The DIA has a dynamic collection of artworks from the Indigenous Americas,” said De Quintal. “I look forward to introducing different aspects of the collection to the public and working with local and international Indigenous communities to share the museum’s diverse and vibrant Indigenous artwork collection.”

De Quintal taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She also interned at the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum in Rhode Island and served as a fellow at the Smithsonian Institute for Museum Anthropology where she worked on a project about the scarcity of Southern New England artifacts in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology’s artifact collection.

Paulla Dove Jennings, Curator Emerita of the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum, noted that De Quintal “was not only a dedicated student of native cultures but also, ended up becoming a good teacher. The DIA has made a great selection for the position. She will help the museum to grow and make its art collection more accessible to the general public.”

De Quintal earned her bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology with concentrations in Native American Studies and Latin American Studies at Cornell University. She attained her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in Cultural Anthropology. Her dissertation, “‘Race,’ ‘Face,’ and American Indian Nations: Native American Identity in Southern New England” focused on race and Native American identity in Southern New England. She was assisted and mentored by members of the Narragansett, Mohegan, Mashpee Wampanoag, Western Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Nipmuc, and Schaghticoke tribes.

She will join the DIA on October 7.