Dr. John P. Lukavic, Denver Art Museum
John P. Lukavic (he/him/his) serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum where he specializes in Indigenous arts of North America. He is the organizing curator for such exhibitions as Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger (2021), Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer (2018), and Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967–1980 (2015), as well as lead curator for DAM’s reinstallation of their Indigenous Arts of North America galleries (2021). Lukavic received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma (2012) where he conducted his doctoral fieldwork with Southern Cheyenne moccasin makers and religious leaders in Oklahoma, and he received an M.A. in Museum Science from Texas Tech University (1999). In 2018, he was selected for the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University’s NextGen program for emerging top talent in the museum field. In 2019 Lukavic received an Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators for his essay in the Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer exhibition catalogue. He serves as Vice President for the Native American Art Studies Association as well as a Board member for the Denver Indian Center, Inc.
