Yve Chavez, Ph.D.
Yve Chavez is a member of the Gabrieleno Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians and assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma specializing in Native American art, with a focus on California Indian visual culture and the Franciscan missions. She is interested in the representation of Native Americans in museums and mainstream media, Native American identity, and Indigenous artistic responses to missionization within the Spanish colonial borderlands. Her current book project examines the survivance and adaptations of Indigenous artistic and architectural practices during and after California's mission era (1769-1834).
Professor Chavez earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. in Art History at the University of Washington, and a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University. After earning her Ph.D., she curated the first major solo exhibition of the work of Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rose B. Simpson at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, NM. She has published in Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Arts, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and The Journal of Pacific History. With Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache) she co-edited Visualizing Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives, and Museums, published by University of Arizona Press in 2022. She has earned grants and fellowships through the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Mellon Foundation.
Email: yvechavez@ou.edu
