Throughout his career in academia, Cherokee Nation citizen Dr. Joseph Pierce has embraced his passions for culture and literature, and his work has earned some notice for the associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York.
Dr. Joseph Pierce: Scholar in Residence at MoMA
NEW YORK – Throughout his career in academia, Cherokee Nation citizen Dr. Joseph Pierce has embraced his passions for culture and literature, and his work has earned some notice for the associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York.
Pierce is serving as a scholar in residence at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City during the 2024-25 academic year.
“What that means is I can spend time at the museum working with people there, learning from them there, and carrying out a couple of research projects that I have started recently,” Pierce said. “One is about the color red in Native American communities and how contemporary artists are harnessing the symbolism of red and redness in their work. The other is about the 1941 exhibition that was held at the museum, which was called ‘Indian Art of the United States’ when it was the first exhibition of Native American art at the museum and the only one to date. So, I’m curious. I’m trying to figure out how that exhibition came about and what happened after that.”
Pierce’s first research topic correlates with his upcoming book, “Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair.” He has one book published and has been with the Stony Brook faculty for 11 years, where he started the Native American and Indigenous Studies initiative, allowing students to minor in Native studies.
He had to apply three times for the prestigious and competitive MoMA residency.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity for me to be able to learn how a museum works from the inside, to learn what the curators are thinking about and how they’re thinking about art and to learn more about what the archival practices are like from inside of the institution,” Pierce said. “It’s an opportunity for me to do that with people who are really excited to have me there and to collaborate with me. So, it allows me to carry out some of the research that normally would happen kind of individually and kind of in an archive or at home.”
Pierce has enjoyed visibility and collaborated with other artists in New York’s art community for several years, which he believes helped him receive consideration from MoMA.
“One of the things that I’ve been really trying to figure out is how our contemporary thinkers, knowledge keepers, writers, artists – providing us with tools to challenge colonialism – challenge the structures and histories that have limited our peoplehood and our full expression of humanity,” he said. “A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to give a brief talk at the Museum of Modern Art about some of my contemporary research, and that introduced me to some of the people there.”
Discovering Cherokee Heritage
Growing up, Pierce did not know he was Cherokee. He is originally from Texas and is part of Stony Brook’s Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature. It was not until graduate school that he learned of his Cherokee lineage. He said the discovery set him on a path to discover the meaning of being Cherokee.
“And it’s not easy,” he said. “It’s not simple. I have worked with other Cherokee scholars and I am part of the community of Cherokee scholars that work at universities.”
Pierce has friends and colleagues in the Cherokee Nation, who he said have been welcoming and encouraging his work.
“Everyone has always said we want you here and we want you to be one of us,” he said. “That has inspired me to work really hard toward understanding what it means to be a Cherokee person and to be a good relative – to learn how to practice that in my everyday life, in my scholarship, in my teaching and in the things that I write.”
Advocacy for Native Communities
From New York, Pierce includes Cherokees and Natives in his advocacy, which encompasses an array of communities and peoples.
“I’ve been pretty involved in advocacy from the sort of position that I’m in and using the tools that I have to advocate for us as a people,” he said. “I can’t go back into the past and change what my experience has been. I can only use that experience to hopefully and humbly try to further Cherokee sovereignty. I’ve written a lot about adoption, my own family history and about trying to defend Cherokee sovereignty from people who pretend to be Cherokee. There’s that little part of me that wishes I could just sort of move to Tahlequah and just sort of like start over.”
Leave the center of the Western Art Universe for Tahlequah? Really?
With a short chuckle, Pierce said: “Admittedly, that’s not going to happen.”
Blox Content Management,BY D. SEAN ROWLEY Senior Reporter