| Patricia Marroquin Norby | |
| Birth Name: | Patricia Marroquin |
| Birth Place: | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Curator |
| Spouse: | Nathan Norby |
| Known For: | First associate curator of Native American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Alma Mater: | Clarke University (BFA) University of Wisconsin-Madison (MFA) University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (PhD) |
Patricia Marroquin Norby (born 1970) is an American associate curator of Native American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1] On September 14, 2020, she became the first full-time curator of Native American art at the museum.[2]
Patricia Marroquin, born in 1970 in Chicago, Illinois.[3] She is of Purépecha and Apache descent which she suppressed throughout her childhood and did not embrace until her college years. She learned about Mexican Purépecha healing traditions from her great-grandmother Maria Jesus Torres, who used leaves, herbs, and animal fat. Her heritage influences her interest in art. Her great-grandparents moved from Mexico to Chicago in the 1930s. She is married to Nathan Norby, a veterinarian.[4] Norby moved to Washington, D.C. in 2002.
Norby graduated from Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, with a Bachelor's degree in fine arts. She earned her Master's of Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in printmaking, photography, and video in 2002 and then had two internships at Washington, D.C. museums. She created an exhibition of Native American works of art from the George Gustav Heye Center collections of the Smithsonian Institution and artifacts stored at the Library of Congress from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In 2006, her work was exhibited in Art and Bus in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.[5] The same year, she used black ink and leaves to create "Family Medicine" and dried leaves in other works of art, which were published in a Chicana and Chicano art magazine. By 2006, she opened a business called Native Roots that sold organic foods made with values of indigenous people and jewelry made by Native Americans.
Norby has a doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in American studies with a specialization in Native American art history and visual culture.[6] She explored ways in which "European Americans have historically manipulated American Indian images to create a non-American Indian perspective"[7] and how modern nuclear power and industrial agriculture are reflected in fine art in her dissertation, "Visual Violence in the Land of Enchantment" of 2013. Norby filmed interviews with Native Americans about their urban life experiences the film called "Powwow".[8]
Norby was the director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago.[9] In 2016, she presented "Indians in the Archives: American Indian Art at the Newberry".[10]
She was an assistant professor of American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.[11] Norby served a short stint as senior executive and assistant director of the National Museum of the American Indian in New York.[12]
Norby explored the value of including Native American artists and communities in cultural institutions in the United States in "Museums Pivot: Shifting Paradigms for Collaboration" at the Indian Arts Research Centers' program, where she was keynote speaker, in 2021. In an interview for the article "A new voice at an old institution: Patricia Marroquin Norby," Norby states that cultural institutions in the United States are reviewing past practices regarding management and exhibition of Native American art and developing approaches that involve indigenous people and highlight Native American and Indigenous works of art. She discussed "Affirming Indigenous Representation: The Future of Native Art and Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art" online in March 2021.
Norby is the first full-time curator of Native American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[13] She held an exhibit of "Ground in Clay", which reflect the handing down of design aesthetics and techniques over a century. Boiled bee plant, used for painting, blackens when fired. Water and sky are references in the design of birds, seedlings, clouds, and rain.[14]
By 2016, she was a member of the board of trustees for the Field Museum of Natural History.[15], Norby is one of several indigenous board members of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. Others include board chair L. Stephanie Poston (Sandia Pueblo), and board members Walter Lamar (Blackfeet Tribe), Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), and JoAnn Chase (Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara).[16]