Kristen Dorsey (Chickasaw Nation) is a doctoral student in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA. For most of her professional life, Dorsey was a jeweler and sculptor, exhibiting her work at museums nationally including the Smithsonian, the Peabody Essex Museum, MoCNA, and others. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art and across the Chickasaw Nation. 

It was through her art practice that she found her passion for curation. She collaborated with fellow Chickasaw artists to develop the traveling exhibition: Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art (June 2018 - January 2021). She was a contributing author for the Visual Voices catalog and also assisted exhibition text development. She co-curated the exhibit Matriarchs (October 2018 - January 2019) with Jaclyn Roessel (Diné) for the El Segundo Museum of Art. She collaborated with museum staff on exhibition materials and supplemental educational materials. Dorsey served on the El Segundo Arts and Culture Committee where she worked with her committee to install a mural by Nanibah Chacon (Diné/Chicana) in conversation with Mercedes Dorame (Tongva).

kristendorsey@g.ucla.edu